Marketing is the process of performing market research, selling products and/or services to customers and promoting them via advertising to further enhance sales. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves. It proposes that in order to satisfy its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of consumers and satisfy these more effectively than competitors. The term developed from an original meaning which referred literally to going to a market to buy or sell goods or services. Seen from a systems point of view, sales process engineering marketing is ''"a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions, whose methods can be improved using a variety of relatively new approaches."''

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably." A different concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing is defined as "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage."

If any of the 4Ps were problematic or were not in the marketing factor of the business, the business could be in trouble and so other companies may appear in the surroundings of the company, so the consumer demand on its products will decrease.

Organizational orientation

In this sense, a firm's marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from an organization's marketing department would be used to guide the actions of other departments within the firm. As an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D; department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.

The production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production and promotion of the product. Inter-departmental conflicts may occur, should a firm adhere to the marketing orientation. Production may oppose the installation, support and servicing of new capital stock, which may be needed to manufacture a new product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.

Herd behavior

Herd behavior in marketing is used to explain the dependencies of customers' mutual behavior. The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior. It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart card technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts." Other recent studies on the "power of social influence" include an "artificial music market in which some 19,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs" (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on "sales data from department stores and research companies;" a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about "which products are popular with like-minded consumers" (e.g., Amazon, eBay).

Further orientations

An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers, see also employer branding.

Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.

With consumers' eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of permission marketing such as branded content, custom media and reality marketing.

Marketing research

Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's marketing environment and attain information from suppliers. Marketing researchers use statistical methods such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlations, frequency distributions, poisson distributions, binomial distributions, etc. to interpret their findings and convert data into information. The marketing research process spans a number of stages, including the definition of a problem, development of a research plan, collection and interpretation of data and disseminating information formally in the form of a report. The task of marketing research is to provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and current information.

A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Thus, market research is a subset of marketing research.

Marketing environment

Market segmentation

Market segmentation pertains to the division of a market of consumers into persons with similar needs and wants. For instance, Kellogg's cereals, Frosties are marketed to children. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are marketed to adults. Both goods denote two products which are marketed to two distinct groups of persons, both with similar needs, traits, and wants.

Market segmentation allows for a better allocation of a firm's finite resources. A firm only possesses a certain amount of resources. Accordingly, it must make choices (and incur the related costs) in servicing specific groups of consumers. In this way, the diversified tastes of contemporary Western consumers can be served better. With growing diversity in the tastes of modern consumers, firms are taking note of the benefit of servicing a multiplicity of new markets.

Market segmentation can be defined in terms of the STP acronym, meaning Segment, Target and Position.

Types of marketing research

Marketing research, as a sub-set aspect of marketing activities, can be divided into the following parts:

Primary research (also known as field research), which involves the conduction and compilation of research for a specific purpose.

Secondary research (also referred to as desk research), initially conducted for one purpose, but often used to support another purpose or end goal.

By these definitions, an example of primary research would be market research conducted into health foods, which is used solely to ascertain the needs/wants of the target market for health foods. Secondary research in this case would be research pertaining to health foods, but used by a firm wishing to develop an unrelated product.

Primary research is often expensive to prepare, collect and interpret from data to information. Nevertheless, while secondary research is relatively inexpensive, it often can become outdated and outmoded, given that it is used for a purpose other than the one for which it was intended. Primary research can also be broken down into quantitative research and qualitative research, which, as the terms suggest, pertain to numerical and non-numerical research methods and techniques, respectively. The appropriateness of each mode of research depends on whether data can be quantified (quantitative research), or whether subjective, non-numeric or abstract concepts are required to be studied (qualitative research).

There also exist additional modes of marketing research, which are:

Exploratory research, pertaining to research that investigates an assumption.

Descriptive research, which, as the term suggests, describes "what is".

Predictive research, meaning research conducted to predict a future occurrence.

Conclusive research, for the purpose of deriving a conclusion via a research process.

Marketing planning

The marketing planning process involves forging a plan for a firm's marketing activities. A marketing plan can also pertain to a specific product, as well as to an organization's overall marketing strategy. Generally speaking, an organization's marketing planning process is derived from its overall business strategy. Thus, when top management are devising the firm's strategic direction or mission, the intended marketing activities are incorporated into this plan. There are several levels of marketing objectives within an organization. The senior management of a firm would formulate a general business strategy for a firm. However, this general business strategy would be interpreted and implemented in different contexts throughout the firm.

Marketing strategy

The field of marketing strategy encompasses the strategy involved in the management of a given product.

A given firm may hold numerous products in the marketplace, spanning numerous and sometimes wholly unrelated industries. Accordingly, a plan is required in order to effectively manage such products. Evidently, a company needs to weigh up and ascertain how to utilize its finite resources. For example, a start-up car manufacturing firm would face little success should it attempt to rival Toyota, Ford, Nissan, Chevrolet, or any other large global car maker. Moreover, a product may be reaching the end of its life-cycle. Thus, the issue of divest, or a ceasing of production, may be made. Each scenario requires a unique marketing strategy. Listed below are some prominent marketing strategy models.

Marketing specializations

With the rapidly emerging force of globalization, the distinction between marketing within a firm's home country and marketing within external markets is disappearing very quickly. With this in mind, firms need to reorient their marketing strategies to meet the challenges of the global marketplace, in addition to sustaining their competitiveness within home markets.

Buying behaviour

A marketing firm must ascertain the nature of customers' buying behavior if it is to market its product properly. In order to entice and persuade a consumer to buy a product, marketers try to determine the behavioral process of how a given product is purchased. Buying behavior is usually split into two prime strands, whether selling to the consumer, known as business-to-consumer (B2C), or to another business, known as business-to-business (B2B).

B2C buying behaviour

This mode of behaviour concerns consumers and their purchase of a given product. For example, if one imagines a pair of sneakers, the desire for a pair of sneakers would be followed by an information search on available types/brands. This may include perusing media outlets, but most commonly consists of information gathered from family and friends. If the information search is insufficient, the consumer may search for alternative means to satisfy the need/want. In this case, this may mean buying leather shoes, sandals, etc. The purchase decision is then made, in which the consumer actually buys the product. Following this stage, a post-purchase evaluation is often conducted, comprising an appraisal of the value/utility brought by the purchase of the sneakers. If the value/utility is high, then a repeat purchase may be made. This could then develop into consumer loyalty to the firm producing the sneakers.

B2B buying behaviour

Relates to organizational/industrial buying behavior. "B2B" stands for Business to Business. B2B marketing involves one business marketing a product or service to another business. B2C and B2B behavior are not precise terms, as similarities and differences exist, with some key differences listed below:

In a straight re-buy, the fourth, fifth and sixth stages are omitted. In a modified re-buy scenario, the fifth and sixth stages are precluded. In a new buy, all stages are conducted.

Use of technologies

Marketing management can also rely on various technologies within the scope of its marketing efforts. Computer-based information systems can be employed, aiding in better processing and storage of data. Marketing researchers can use such systems to devise better methods of converting data into information, and for the creation of enhanced data gathering methods. Information technology can aid in enhancing an MKIS' software and hardware components, and improve a company's marketing decision-making process.

In recent years, the netbook personal computer has gained significant market share among laptops, largely due to its more user-friendly size and portability. Information technology typically progresses at a fast rate, leading to marketing managers being cognizant of the latest technological developments. Moreover, the launch of smartphones into the cellphone market is commonly derived from a demand among consumers for more technologically advanced products. A firm can lose out to competitors should it ignore technological innovations in its industry.

Technological advancements can lessen barriers between countries and regions. Using the World Wide Web, firms can quickly dispatch information from one country to another without much restriction. Prior to the mass usage of the Internet, such transfers of information would have taken longer to send, especially if done via snail mail, telex, etc.

Services marketing

Services marketing relates to the marketing of services, as opposed to tangible products. A service (as opposed to a good) is typically defined as follows:

The use of it is inseparable from its purchase (i.e., a service is used and consumed simultaneously)

It does not possess material form, and thus cannot be touched, seen, heard, tasted, or smelled.

The use of a service is inherently subjective, meaning that several persons experiencing a service would each experience it uniquely.

For example, a train ride can be deemed a service. If one buys a train ticket, the use of the train is typically experienced concurrently with the purchase of the ticket. Although the train is a physical object, one is not paying for the permanent ownership of the tangible components of the train.

Services (compared with goods) can also be viewed as a spectrum. Not all products are pure goods, nor are all pure services. An example would be a restaurant, where a waiter's service is intangible, but the food is tangible.

See also

Advertising

Consumer behaviour

Demand chain

Distribution (Placement)

Market segmentation

Marketing acronyms

Outline of marketing

Positioning

Pricing

Product

Promotion (marketing)

Targeting (advertising)

Service dominant logic (marketing)

Types of marketing

White Space (management)

References

Category:Marketing Category:Business

Name	Mark Knopfler
Landscape	no
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Mark Freuder Knopfler
Born	August 12, 1949Glasgow, ScotlandUnited Kingdom
Instrument	Vocals, Guitar
Genre	Roots rock, Celtic rock, country, blues rock
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, producer, film score composer
Years active	1965–present
Voice type	Baritone
Label	Vertigo, Mercury, Warner
Associated acts	Dire Straits, The Notting Hillbillies
Url	MarkKnopfler.com
Notable instruments	Mark Knopfler StratocasterFender TelecasterGibson Les PaulPensa Custom MKII

Mark Freuder Knopfler OBE (born 12 August 1949) is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer.

Mark Knopfler is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977 with his brother David. After Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, Knopfler continued to record and produce albums as a solo artist under his own name. Knopfler has played in other groups occasionally, such as The Notting Hillbillies, and has guested on works by other artists, including Joan Armatrading, Chet Atkins, the Chieftains, Eric Clapton, The Dandy Warhols, Bob Dylan, Bryan Ferry, John Fogerty, Emmylou Harris, Jeff Healey, Jools Holland, Sonny Landreth, Phil Lynott, Van Morrison, Gerry Rafferty and Steely Dan. He has also produced albums for such artists as Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Willy DeVille, Randy Newman and even "Weird Al" Yankovic.

His musical scores include Metroland, Local Hero, Cal, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Wag the Dog, and Rob Reiner's classic, The Princess Bride.

He is one of the most respected fingerstyle guitarists of the modern rock era and was ranked #27 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."

Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits have sold in excess of 120 million albums to date.

He holds three honorary Doctorates in music, in the U.K.

Life and career

(1949–1976) Childhood and early life

Knopfler was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to an English mother and a Hungarian Jewish father, an architect whose anti-fascist sympathies forced him to flee the regime of his native Hungary. The family first moved to Scotland, but then settled in Knopfler's mother's home town of Blyth, in the north-east of England, when he was around 7 years old. There, he and his younger brother David attended Gosforth Grammar School, where he was inspired by his uncle Kingsley's harmonica and boogie-woogie piano playing. Later, in his teens, he wanted to buy an expensive Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster just like Hank Marvin's, but had to settle for a £50 twin-pick-up Höfner Super Solid. During the 1960s he formed and joined anonymous schoolboy bands, and listened to singers such as Elvis Presley and guitarists Chet Atkins, Scotty Moore, B.B King, Django Reinhardt, Hank Marvin and James Burton. At age 16, he made a local TV appearance as half of a harmony duo, along with a friend from school named Sue Hercombe. At the end of the course he secured a job in Leeds as a junior reporter on the Yorkshire Evening Post. Two years later, he decided to further his studies and eventually went on to graduate with a degree in English at the University of Leeds. He left his job as a reporter, and, hoping to pursue a career in music, performed with pub bands around town. He worked as a part-time lecturer at Loughton College and played with mates in a band called the Café Racers, during this period. He also played in a few bands such as Silver Heels and a duo with long-time associate UK bluesman Steve Phillips, who was later to be a member of The Notting Hillbillies. It was also in Harding's studio Bramley, Leeds, that in April 1970 Knopfler recorded a "demo" disk of an original (but unreleased) song: "Summer's Coming My Way".The song was written by Knopfler himself. Personnel on the recording were Mark Knopfler (guitar and vocals), Steve Phillips (second guitar), Dave Johnson (bass) and Paul Granger (percussion). Johnson and Granger were members of Knopfler's Silverheels group, which also included Mick Dewhirst on vocals.

Knopfler later moved to London and joined a High Wycombe-based band called Brewers Droop, appearing on the album The Booze Brothers. One night while spending some time with friends, the only guitar available was an old acoustic with a badly warped neck that had been strung with extra-light strings to make it playable. Even so, he found it impossible to play unless he finger-picked it. He said in a later interview, "That was where I found my 'voice' on guitar." Mark joined brother David in a band under the name Café Racers but also found himself another musical partner in David's flatmate, John Illsley, initially a guitarist who changed over to bass guitar and became the only other member of Dire Straits to figure throughout the band's career.

(1977–1995) The Dire Straits years

Dire Straits' first demos were done in three sessions during 1977, with Pick Withers as drummer, David Knopfler as rhythm guitarist and John Illsley on bass guitar. On 27 July 1977 they recorded the now famous demo tapes of five songs: "Wild West End", "Sultans of Swing", "Down To The Waterline", "Sacred Loving" (a David Knopfler song) and "Water of Love". In what was probably October they recorded "Southbound Again", "In The Gallery" and "Six Blade Knife" for BBC Radio London and, finally, on the 9th of November demo tapes were made of "Setting Me Up", "Eastbound Train" and "Real Girl". Many of these songs reflected Mark's experiences in Newcastle, Leeds and London, and were to be featured on their first album, the self-titled Dire Straits which was released in the following year: "Down To The Waterline" recalled images of life in Newcastle; "In The Gallery" is a tribute to a Leeds sculptor/artist named Harry Phillips, (father of Steve Phillips); and "Lions", "Wild West End" and "Eastbound Train" were all drawn from Mark's early days in the capital.

Initially on its release, Dire Straits received little fanfare in the UK, but when "Sultans of Swing" was released as a single it became a chart hit in The Netherlands and album sales took off across Europe and then in the United States and Canada, and finally the UK. The group's second album, Communiqué, produced by Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett, followed in 1979, reaching number one in France while the first album was still at number three.

There were frequent personnel changes within Dire Straits after the release of their third album Making Movies, with Mark Knopfler increasingly the driving force behind the group. Released in 1980, Making Movies marked a move towards more complex arrangements and production which continued for the remainder of the group's career. The album contained many of Mark Knopfler's most personal compositions, with the song "Romeo and Juliet", about a failed love affair becoming what critics call his best-loved song; with a trademark he developed keeping personal songs under fictitious names., and it was followed in 1984 by his scores for the films Cal and Comfort and Joy. Also during this time Knopfler produced Bob Dylan's Infidels album, as well as Aztec Camera and Willy DeVille; he also wrote Private Dancer for Tina Turner's comeback album of the same name.

Dire Straits' biggest studio album by far was their fifth, Brothers in Arms, recorded at Air Studios Montserrat and released in May 1985. It became an international blockbuster and spawned several chart singles including the US # 1 hit "Money for Nothing", which was the first video ever to be played on MTV in Britain. It was also the first compact disc to sell a million copies and is largely credited for launching the CD format as it was also one of the first DDD CDs ever released. Other successful singles were "So Far Away", "Walk of Life", and the album's title track. The band's 1985–86 world tour of over 230

Dire Straits regrouped in 1988 for the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert at Wembley Stadium, in which they were the headline act, and were accompanied by Elton John and Eric Clapton, who by this time had developed a strong friendship with Knopfler. Shortly after this, drummer Terry Williams left the band. In October 1988, a "best of" album, Money for Nothing, was released in October 1988 and reached number one in the United Kingdom.

Two live albums were released after On Every Street. Released in 1993, On the Night documented Dire Straits' final world tour. In 1995, following the release of Live at the BBC, Mark Knopfler quietly laid Dire Straits to rest and launched his solo career.

Since the break up of Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler has shown no interest in reforming the group. However, keyboardist Guy Fletcher has been associated with almost every piece of Knopfler's solo material to date, and Danny Cummings has made frequent appearances, including one on Knopfler's 2007 solo album, Kill to Get Crimson. In October 2008 Knopfler declined a suggestion by John Illsley that they should reform. Illsley said that a reunion would be "entirely up to Mark", while Knopfler is quoted as saying "Oh, I don't know whether to start getting all that stuff back together again", and that the global fame that came his way in the 1980s "just got too big".

(1996–present) As a solo artist

Mark Knopfler's first solo album, Golden Heart, featuring the UK single "Darling Pretty", was released in March 1996. During the recording sessions for the album the main line-up of Knopfler's backing band, also known as "The 96ers," was formed, featuring Knopfler's old bandmate Guy Fletcher on keyboards, and has lasted much longer than any Dire Straits line-up.

Also in 1996, Mark Knopfler recorded guitar for Ted Christopher's Dunblane massacre tribute cover of Knocking on Heaven's Door

In 1997 Knopfler recorded the soundtrack for the movie Wag the Dog. During that same year Rolling Stone magazine listed "Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll", which included "Sultans of Swing", Dire Straits' first hit. 2000 saw the release of Knopfler's next solo album, Sailing to Philadelphia. This has been his most successful to date, possibly helped by the number of collaborators to the album like Van Morrison.

In 2002 Mark Knopfler gave four charity concerts with former Dire Straits members John Illsley, Chris White, Danny Cummings and Guy Fletcher, playing old material from the Dire Straits years. The concerts also featured The Notting Hillbillies with Brendan Croker and Steve Phillips. At these four concerts (three of the four were at the Shepherd's Bush, the fourth at Beaulieu on the south coast) they were joined by Jimmy Nail, who provided backing vocals for Knopfler's 2002 composition "Why Aye Man".

Also in 2002 Knopfler released his third solo album, The Ragpicker's Dream. However, in March 2003 he was involved in a motorbike crash in Grosvenor Road, Belgravia and suffered a broken collarbone, broken shoulder blade and seven broken ribs. The planned Ragpicker's Dream tour was subsequently cancelled, but Knopfler recovered and was able to return to the stage in 2004 for his fourth album, Shangri-La.

Shangri-La was recorded at the Shangri-La Studio in Malibu, California in 2004, where The Band made recordings years before for their documentary/movie, The Last Waltz. In the promo for "Shangri-La" on his official website he said that his current line-up of Glenn Worf (bass), Guy Fletcher (keyboards), Chad Cromwell (drums), Richard Bennett (guitar) and Matt Rollings (piano) "play Dire Straits songs better than Dire Straits did." The "Shangri-La" tour took Mark to countries like India and the United Arab Emirates for the first time. In India, his concerts at The Curry Inn and Bangalore were very well received, with over 20,000 fans gathering at each concert to listen to a legend many thought would never visit their country.

In November 2005 a compilation, was released, consisting of material from most of Dire Straits' studio albums and Mark Knopfler's solo and soundtrack material. The album was made available in two editions: a single CD (with a grey cover) and also as double CD (with the cover in blue), and was well-received. The only previously unreleased track on the album is "All the Roadrunning", a duet with country music singer Emmylou Harris, which was followed in 2006 by an album of duets of the same name.

Released in April 2006, All the Roadrunning reached #1 in Denmark and Switzerland, #2 in Norway and Sweden, #3 in Germany, Holland and Italy, #8 in Austria and UK, #9 in Spain, #17 in the United States (Billboard Top 200 Chart), #25 in Ireland and #41 in Australia. All the Roadrunning was nominated for "Best Folk Rock/Americana Album" at the 49th Grammy Awards (11 February 2007) but lost out to Bob Dylan's nomination for Modern Times.

Joined by Emmylou Harris, Knopfler supported All the Roadrunning with a limited – 15 gigs in Europe, 1 in Canada and 8 in the USA – but highly successful tour of Europe and N America. Selections from the duo's 28 June performance at the Gibson Amphitheatre, Universal City, California, were released as a DVD entitled Real Live Roadrunning on 14 November 2006. In addition to several of the compositions that Harris and Knopfler recorded together in the studio, Real Live Roadrunning features solo hits from both members of the duo, as well as three tracks from Knopfler's days with Dire Straits.

A charity event in 2007 went wrong. A Fender Stratocaster guitar signed by Knopfler, Clapton, Brian May, and Jimmy Page was to be auctioned for £20,000 (or $40,000) to raise the money for a children's hospice, was lost when being shipped. It "vanished after being posted from London to Leicestershire, England." Parcelforce, the company responsible, has agreed to pay $30,000 for its loss.

Knopfler released his fifth solo studio-album Kill to Get Crimson on 14 September 2007 in Germany, 17 September in the UK and 18 September in the United States. During the autumn of 2007 he played a series of intimate 'showcases' in various European cities to promote the album. A tour of Europe and North America followed in 2008. Many older songs from the early solo days, such as Cannibals (from Golden Heart), were brought back to life. Cannibals opened up shows throughout Europe. Cannibals was received extremely well particularly in Ireland as it was released by an Irish Country Artist David Maguire in 2007. The new version of Cannibals that David Maguire and his Band released was the 7th most requested song on Irish radio that year.

Continuing a pattern of high productivity through his solo career, Knopfler began work on his next studio album, entitled Get Lucky, in September 2008 with long-time band mate Guy Fletcher, who again compiled a pictorial diary of the making of the album on his website. The album was released on September 14 the following year and Knopfler is currently on an extensive tour across Europe and America. The album met with moderate success on the charts (much of it in Europe) reaching #1 only in Norway but peaking in the Top 5 in most major European countries (Germany, Italy, Holland). The album peaked at #2 on the Billboard European Album chart and at #5 on the Billboard Rock Album chart.

Knopfler is a member of the Garrick Club in London and played an intimate solo gig there in February 2009.

In 2010, Knopfler appeared on the newest Thomas Dolby release, the EP "Amerikana". Knopfler performed on the track "17 Hills."

Country music

In addition to his work in Dire Straits and solo, Mark Knopfler has made several contributions to country music. In 1988 he formed country-focused band The Notting Hillbillies, and has given him two daughters Isabella (born 1998) and Katya Ruby Rose (born 2003). The family currently lives in Chelsea.

Musical style and equipment

Mark Knopfler is left-handed, but plays right-handed, and fingerpicks (using a personal variant of the clawhammer style) instead of using a plectrum (i.e., "pick"). Fingerpicking is usually associated with the acoustic guitar, but Knopfler usually (though not always) plays an electric guitar. Knopfler revealed during a French interview that he uses a pick for his rhythm work during recording sessions. Knopfler surprised the interviewer by pulling a pick out of his pocket and saying that he usually carries one. Knopfler has long favoured Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster style guitars and his Artist Series Stratocaster can be viewed on the Fender website. During the 1980s he came to appreciate the tone of the Gibson Les Paul and his original 1958 has been used regularly in the studio and on stage.

Guitars

Knopfler has approximated that he now owns "around 70 guitars". They include:

Pensa Custom MKII A custom Pensa Guitar given to Knopfler by his friend, Rudy Pensa, in 2005. Pensa custom-built solid body guitars, the model MK-1 MK-2 & MK-80, are named in honour of Knopfler. Red-painted (Stratocaster style) Melancon Pro Artist.

Hofner V-2 (Mark's first guitar)

Fender Stratocasters including a Fiesta Red '62 and a 1954 sunburst (one of the first ever produced) which he has named "Jurassic Strat"

Gibson Les Paul Special (used in the 1970s)

National Tricone, from 1928

National Style O Resonator guitar, from 1937 as used on "Romeo and Juliet". A replica of which is now available from National Resophonic Guitars.

Fender 1952 Telecaster.

Burns Baldwin, 12-strings (Angel of Mercy, later used on the Get Lucky-album)

Ovation Acoustic

Schecter Telecaster and Stratocaster models. (Used 1980-)

Rickenbacker (?) (Used on Portobello Belle, later on the ragpicker's dream session)

Fernandes Stratocaster

Ovation Adams (Love Over Gold-session, later used on the Brothers in Arms-tour)

Gibson Chet Atkins (Love Over Gold album)

Erlewine Automatic (Industrial Disease)

C. F. Martin & Company Martin Acoustics, Model HD-40MK and 000-40S Mark Knopfler, he also used a Martin 00028 on "Brothers in Arms".

Gibson SG (Two Young Lovers, Alchemy-tour)

Gibson Les Pauls 3 models: 1984, 1958, 1959

Pensa-Suhr R Custom, Knopfler's first Pensa. Used on the Brothers in Arms album (Ride Across the River and So far Away)

Gretsch (2 or 3 models): Super Chet and 6120 (Bought during 80's, used on Knopfler's solo album)

Steinberger GL2 (Brothers in Arms-tour)

Beltona Electro Resonator

Flamed Pensa: 3 models, used the first in late 80's

Gibson J45 (On Every Street-album)

Gibson Super 400 (Used on the on Every Street session and tour)

Godin L.R. Baggs (Used by Phil Palmer and Mark Knpofler on the last DS-tour)

Red Pensa (On Every Street-tour)

Ramirez Spanish Guitar, used during and after the last DS-tour

Black Pensa-Suhr (Golden Heart session and tour)

Acoustic 12-strings guitar (?) (Sailing to Philadelphia session-)

Gibson ES-335

National Triplate, from 1930 (Shangri-La session-)

Danelectro Silvertone

Gibson Southerner

Fender Jazzmaster

Eko 700

Teisco Spectrum, 2 models

Danelectro 59 DC

Fender Duo Sonic 11 (Kill to Get Crimson Session-)

Gibson Advanced Jumbo

Gibson ES-330

NS 14, Steve Phillips (Get Lucky session-)

Monteleone Isabella

Don Grosh Electrajet

Gibson Dove

Effects

Throughout his career Knopfler has used a wide selection of effect pedals in the studio and during live performances. Here is a list of some of his effects:

Alesis Quadraverb

BOSS BF-2 Flanger

BOSS CE-2 Chorus

BOSS CE-300 Chorus

BOSS CS-2 Compressor

BOSS DM-2 Delay

MXR Micro Amp

BOSS OC-2 Octaver

BOSS PH-2 Phaser

DeltaLab Digital Delay

Ibanez UE 303 Multi Effect

Lexicon 300 Reverb

Mantec Preamp

Master Room Reverb

Morley Volume Pedal

Mic-Mix Dyna-Flanger

MXR Analog Delay

Roland Graphic Equalizer

Roland SRE 555 Chorus/Echo

Yamaha REV 5

Zoom Multieffect 9010

Amplifiers

Knopfler has often used many different combinations of amplifiers and cabinets to create his desired sounds.

Crate VC5212 amplifier

Crate 2x12 cabinet

Fender Concert

Fender Vibrolux

Fender Twin Reverb

Gallien & Krueger amplifier

Jim Kelley combo

Jim Kelley heads

Komet amplifiers

Marshall JTM heads

Marshall 4x12 cabinet

Mesa Boogie heads

Music Man HD 130

Soldano SLO 100

Roland Jazz Chorus

Vox AC30

On the "Get Lucky" tour in 2010, Knopfler is using a pair of custom built Reinhardt guitar amp heads with matching cabinets , and a Tone King combo in between that is used on some songs.

Live performance

Knopfler has been known to sip tea on stage during live performances. Richard Bennett who has been playing with him on tour since 1996, has also joined in drinking tea with him on stage. photo On 31 July 2005, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, BC, the tea was replaced with whiskey as a "last show of tour" sort of joke.

Awards and acclaim

The Edison Award was awarded to Mark Knopfler for Outstanding Achievements in the Music Industry, the highest award for musicians in the Netherlands.

Grammy Awards 1986 – Best Country Instrumental Performance with Chet Atkins (for Cosmic Square Dance)

Grammy Awards 1991 – Best Country Vocal Collaboration with Chet Atkins (for Poor Boy Blues')

Grammy Awards 1991 – Best Country Instrumental Performance with Chet Atkins (for So Soft, Your Goodbye)

In 1993, Knopfler was made an honorary Doctor of Music at Newcastle University. In 1999, Knopfler was made an OBE.

In Summer 1995, Knopfler was made an honorary Doctor of Music at the University of Leeds.

In 2001, the Masiakasaurus knopfleri (a species of dinosaur) was named after him by scientists who had listened to his music while digging the fossils. On 11 July 2007, Knopfler was made an honorary Doctor of Music at Sunderland University.

Knopfler along with his band Dire Straits won the 1986 Grammy award for "Best rock performance by a duo or group with vocal" for their song "Money for Nothing."

In February 2009, Knopfler's British Grove Studios was the winner of the Music Producers Guild Award for 'Best Studio'.

Nominations

Grammy Awards 1986 – Song of the Year (songwriter) (for 'Money for Nothing')

Grammy Awards 1992 – Best Country Instrumental Performance with Chet Atkins (for 'Neck and Neck')

Grammy Awards 2007 – Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album with Emmylou Harris (for 'All the Roadrunning')

Knopfler's influence

Played together with Dire Straits' drummer Pick Withers on Bob Dylan's studio album Slow Train Coming, which was recorded in May 1979 and released 20 August; providing Dylan with what Dylan considered his best guitar backing since the days of Mike Bloomfield and Robbie Robertson. Knopfler also played in and co-produced Dylan's 1983 album Infidels.

British author and humorist Douglas Adams said about Knopfler, in his book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: "Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff drink."

The dinosaur species Masiakasaurus knopfleri was named after Knopfler. The palaeontologists were listening to Dire Straits recordings when they discovered the species.

On "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of "Money for Nothing", "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*", which merges the instrumentals of "Money For Nothing" with the lyrics to the theme song for the American television series The Beverly Hillbillies ("The Ballad of Jed Clampett"), Knopfler played guitar in the song, recreating the memorable guitar riff from the original song. He would only allow Yankovic to parody the song if he was allowed to play on the recording.

Knopfler's song "Going Home" from the soundtrack to Local Hero is played before kick-off at Newcastle United's home matches at St James' Park.

"Going Home" is also the theme music for John Stanley on Sydney radio station 2UE.

According to director Rob Reiner, Knopfler agreed to write the music for Reiner's The Princess Bride on one condition: Reiner had to put the hat that he wore in This Is Spinal Tap in Princess Bride, "somewhere in evidence", as homage to the rock mockumentary. The hat makes its appearance in Princess Bride in the Grandson's (Fred Savage) bedroom.

Indian cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar is a fan of Mark Knopfler. They once had a joint interview on cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle's show Harsha Online.

The 2008 stage production Celtic Thunder has covers of multiple Mark Knopfler songs. "Brothers in Arms", written by Mark Knopfler and performed originally by Dire Straits, is performed by Ryan Kelly. As well, the song "Irish Boy" (from Cal) and "Going Home" (from Local Hero) are performed together as an instrumental, entitled "Cal/Local Hero".

Discography

With Dire Straits

Solo albums

Type	studio
Name	Golden Heart
Cover	MK_Golden_Heart.jpg
Released	26 March 1996
Label	Vertigo Records, Warner Bros. Records (USA)
Producer	Mark Knopfler, Chuck Ainlay
Format	CD
Singles	"Darling Pretty", "Cannibals", "Rüdiger", "Golden Heart" (promo), "Imelda" (promo), "Don't You Get It" (promo)
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	studio
Name	Sailing to Philadelphia
Cover	MK_Sailing_to_Philadelphia.jpg
Released	26 September 2000
Label	Mercury, Vertigo, Warner Bros.
Producer	Mark Knopfler, Chuck Ainlay
Format	CD
Singles	"What It Is", "Sailing to Philadelphia", "Silvertown Blues"
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	studio
Name	The Ragpicker's Dream
Cover	MK_The_Ragpickers_Dream.jpg
Released	30 September 2002
Label	Mercury
Producer	Mark Knopfler, Chuck Ainlay
Format	CD & LP
Singles	"Why Aye Man", "Quality Shoe" (promo), "Devil Baby" (promo), "Hill Farmer Blues" (promo), "You Don't Know You're Born" (promo)
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	studio
Name	Shangri-La
Cover	MK_Shangri-La.jpg
Released	28 September 2004
Label	Mercury
Producer	Mark Knopfler, Chuck Ainlay
Format	CD & LP
Singles	"Boom, Like That", "The Trawlerman's Song"
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	live
Name	One Take Radio Sessions
Cover	One_Take_Radio_Sessions.jpg
Released	21 June 2005
Label	Warner Bros. Records
Producer	Mark Knopfler, Chuck Ainlay
Format	CD
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	ep
Name	The Trawlerman's Song EP
Cover	The_Trawlerman's_Song_EP.jpg
Released	2005
Label	Mercury
Producer	Mark Knopfler
Format	CD
From album
Writer
Tracks	"The Trawlerman's Song", "Back to Tupelo", "Song for Sonny Liston", "Boom, Like That", "Donegan's Gone", "Stand Up Guy"

Type	greatest
Name
Cover	Private_Investigations_-_Warner.jpg
Released	2005
Label	Mercury
Format	CD & LP
Singles	"All The Roadrunning" (promo), "This Is Us" (promo), "Beachcombing" (promo)
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	studio
Name	Kill to Get Crimson
Released	17 September 2007
Label	Mercury
Format	CD & LP
Singles	"True Love Will Never Fade", "Punish The Monkey"
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	studio
Name	Get Lucky
Released	14 September 2009
Label	Mercury
Format	CD & LP
Singles	"Border Reiver", "Remembrance Day"
From album
Writer
Tracks

Soundtrack albums

Type	soundtrack
Name	Local Hero
Cover	Knopfler-Local hero.jpg
Released	March, 1983
Label	Warner Bros. Records
Producer	Mark Knopfler
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	Music from 'Cal'
Released	1984
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	Comfort and Joy
Released	1984
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	The Color of Money
Released	1986
Label	MCA Records (MK's only song is "Two Brothers And A Stranger")
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	The Princess Bride
Released	1987
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	Last Exit to Brooklyn
Released	1989
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	compilation
Name	Screenplaying
Released	1993
Label	Phonogram
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	Wag the Dog
Released	1998
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	Metroland
Released	1999
From album
Writer
Tracks

Type	soundtrack
Name	A Shot at Glory
Cover	A Shot at Glory (album).jpg
Released	2001
From album
Writer
Tracks

Other albums

Missing...Presumed Having a Good Time (The Notting Hillbillies) (1990)

Neck and Neck (with Chet Atkins) (1990)

The Booze Brothers (with Brewers Droop) (1973/1989/1990)

All the Roadrunning (with Emmylou Harris, April 2006)

Real Live Roadrunning (with Emmylou Harris, November 2006)

Producer

Infidels (1983) by Bob Dylan. Although Mark disowned the reworked version of the album as released, his production is still noticeable. Left off the album, but later released on The Bootleg Series, is the critically acclaimed "Blind Willie McTell", featuring only Dylan, singing and playing piano, accompanied by Mark Knopfler on acoustic guitar.

Knife (1984) by Aztec Camera, a Scottish indie/new wave band, which was mostly a vehicle for the work of Roddy Frame, much as Dire Straits only ever recorded Mark Knopfler compositions.

Miracle (1987) by Willy DeVille, was dedicated to Mark and his wife 'for their support which was nothing short of a Miracle in a time of Dire Straits.' The album ends with the ballad "Storybook Love", the theme from The Princess Bride movie.

Land of Dreams (1988) by Randy Newman, includes the single "It's Money that Matters" which unabashedly revisits the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing".

Mark has just started his first album as a producer for another artist since the mid 80's, he is producing and playing on the as yet untitled new album by Bap Kennedy.

References

External links

Official website

Webradio PrivateInvestigations dedicated to Dire Straits&Mark; Knopfler

Mark Knopfler Boom Like That

the long road – Mark Knopfler Sessions

Mark Knopfler News

Mark Knopfler "Old News"

Category:1949 births Category:Alumni of the University of Leeds Category:Anglo-Scots Category:British guitarists Category:British male singers Category:British singer-songwriters Category:Dire Straits members Category:Fingerstyle guitarists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Lead guitarists Category:Living people Category:People from Glasgow Category:People from Newcastle upon Tyne Category:Religious skeptics Category:Resonator guitarists

Name	Mark Zuckerberg
Caption	Zuckerberg at South by Southwest in 2008.
Birth name	Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
Birth date	May 14, 1984
Birth place	White Plains, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard College (dropped out in 2004)
Occupation	CEO/President of Facebook (24% shareholder in 2010)
Years active	2004–present
Networth	US$6.9 billion (2010)
Relatives	Randi Zuckerberg (sister)
Awards	Time Person of the Year 2010
Home town	Dobbs Ferry, New York
Website	Facebook.com/MarkZuckerberg

}} Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer scientist, software developer and philanthropist best known for creating the social networking site Facebook, of which he is CEO and president. It was co-founded as a private company in 2004 by Zuckerberg and classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes while they were students at Harvard University. In 2010, Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year.

Personal life

Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York to Karen, a psychiatrist, and Edward, a dentist. Mark and three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle, were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York. although he has since described himself as an atheist.

At Ardsley High School he had excelled in the classics before in his junior year transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy, where Zuckerberg won prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) and Classical studies (on his college application, Zuckerberg listed as non-English languages he could read and write: French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek) and was captain of the fencing team. In college, he was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad. , Facebook is blocked by that country's Internet firewall. in 2008.]]

On Zuckerberg's Facebook page, he listed his personal interests as "openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism". Zuckerberg sees blue best because of red–green colorblindness; blue is also Facebook's dominant color.

Software developer

Early years

Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software as a child in middle school. His father taught him Atari BASIC Programming in the 1990s, and later hired software developer David Newman to tutor him privately. Newman calls him a "prodigy," adding that it was "tough to stay ahead of him." Zuckerberg also took a graduate course in the subject at Mercy College near his home while he was still in high school. and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he chose instead to enroll at Harvard College in September 2002.

Harvard years

By the time he began classes at Harvard, he had already achieved a "reputation as a programming prodigy," notes Vargas. He studied psychology and computer science and belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. In his sophomore year, he wrote a program he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a different program he initially called Facemash that let students select the best looking person from a choice of photos. According to Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, Arie Hasit, "he built the site for fun." Hasit explains:

We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the votes there would be a ranking.

The site went up over the weekend, but by Monday morning the college shut it down because its popularity had overwhelmed Harvard's server and prevented students from accessing the web. In addition, many students complained that their photos were being used without permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly, and the student paper ran articles stating that his site was "completely improper."

At the time of Zuckerberg's "fun" site, however, students had already been requesting that the university develop a web site that would include similar photos and contact details to be part of the college's computer network. According to Hasit, "Mark heard these pleas and decided that if the university won't do something about it, he will, and he would build a site that would be even better than what the university had planned." An earlier inspiration for Facebook may have come from Phillips Exeter Academy, the prep school from which Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. It published its own student directory, “The Photo Address Book,” which students referred to as “The Facebook.” Such photo directories were an important part of the student social experience at many private schools. With them, students were able to list attributes such as their class years, their proximities to friends, and their telephone numbers.

Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California, with Moskovitz and some friends. They leased a small house that served as an office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company. They got their first office in mid-2004. According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to return to Harvard but eventually decided to remain in California. They had already turned down offers by major corporations to buy out Facebook. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning:

It's not because of the amount of money. For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me. On July 21, 2010, Zuckerberg reported that the company reached the 500 million-user mark. When asked whether Facebook could earn more income from advertising as a result of its phenomenal growth, he explained:

I guess we could ... If you look at how much of our page is taken up with ads compared to the average search query. The average for us is a little less than 10 percent of the pages and the average for search is about 20 percent taken up with ads ... That’s the simplest thing we could do. But we aren’t like that. We make enough money. Right, I mean, we are keeping things running; we are growing at the rate we want to. Zuckerberg said that "it's OK to break things" "to make them better." Facebook instituted "hackathons" held every six to eight weeks where participants would have one night to conceive of and complete a project. Zuckerberg ranked number 23 on the Vanity Fair 100 list in 2009. In 2010, Zuckerberg was chosen as number 16 in New Statesman's annual survey of the world's 50 most influential figures.

Wirehog

A month after Facebook launched in February 2004, i2hub, another campus-only service, created by Wayne Chang, was launched. i2hub focused on peer-to-peer file sharing. At the time, both i2hub and Facebook were gaining the attention of the press and growing rapidly in users and publicity. In August 2004, Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Adam D'Angelo, and Sean Parker launched a competing peer-to-peer file sharing service called Wirehog. It was a precursor to Facebook Platform applications. Traction was low compared to i2hub, and Facebook ultimately shut Wirehog down the following summer.

Platform and Beacon

On May 24, 2007, Zuckerberg announced Facebook Platform, a development platform for programmers to create social applications within Facebook. Within weeks, many applications had been built and some already had millions of users. It grew to more than 800,000 developers around the world building applications for Facebook Platform. On July 23, 2008, Zuckerberg announced Facebook Connect, a version of Facebook Platform for users.

On November 6, 2007, Zuckerberg announced a new social advertising system called Beacon, which enabled people to share information with their Facebook friends based on their browsing activities on other sites. For example, eBay sellers could let friends know automatically what they have for sale via the Facebook news feed as they list items for sale. The program came under scrutiny because of privacy concerns from groups and individual users. Zuckerberg and Facebook failed to respond to the concerns quickly, and on December 5, 2007, Zuckerberg wrote a blog post on Facebook taking responsibility for the concerns about Beacon and offering an easier way for users to opt out of the service.

Legal controversies

ConnectU lawsuits

Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally making them believe he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU). They filed a lawsuit in 2004 but it was dismissed on a technicality on March 28, 2007. It was refiled soon thereafter in federal court in Boston. Facebook countersued in regards to Social Butterfly, a project put out by The Winklevoss Chang Group, an alleged partnership between ConnectU and i2hub. On June 25, 2008, the case settled and Facebook agreed to transfer over 1.2 million common shares and pay $20 million in cash.

In November 2007, confidential court documents were posted on the website of 02138, a magazine that catered to Harvard alumni. They included Zuckerberg's social security number, his parents' home address, and his girlfriend's address. Facebook filed to have the documents removed, but the judge ruled in favor of 02138.

Pakistan criminal investigation

In June 2010, Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan launched a criminal investigation into Zuckerberg and Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes after a "Draw Muhammad" contest was hosted on Facebook. The investigation also named the anonymous German woman who created the contest. Sidiqque asked the country's police to contact Interpol to have Zuckerberg and the three others arrested for blasphemy. On May 19, 2010, Facebook's website was temporarily blocked in Pakistan until Facebook removed the contest from its website at the end of May. Sidiqque also asked its United Nations representative to raise the issue with the United Nations General Assembly.

Paul Ceglia

On June 30, 2010, Paul Ceglia, the owner of a wood pellet fuel company in Allegany County, upstate New York, filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, claiming 84% ownership of Facebook and seeking monetary damages. According to Ceglia, he and Zuckerberg signed a contract on April 28, 2003 that for an initial fee of $1,000 entitled Ceglia to 50% of the website's revenue, as well as an additional 1% interest in the business per day after January 1, 2004, until website completion. Zuckerberg was developing other projects at the time, among which was Facemash, the predecessor of Facebook, but did not register the domain name thefacebook.com until January 1, 2004. Facebook management dismissed the lawsuit as "completely frivolous". Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told a reporter that Ceglia's counsel had unsuccessfully sought an out-of-court settlement. In an interview with ABC World News, Zuckerberg stated he was confident he had never signed such an agreement. At the time, Zuckerberg worked for Ceglia as a code developer on a project named "StreetFax". Judge Thomas Brown issued a restraining order on all financial transfers concerning ownership of Facebook until further notice; in response, Facebook removed the case to federal court and asked that the state court injunction be dissolved. According to Facebook, the injunction would not affect their business and lacked any legal basis.

Depictions in media

The Social Network

A movie based on Zuckerberg and the founding years of Facebook, called The Social Network, was released on October 1, 2010, and stars Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. After Zuckerberg was told about the film, he responded, "I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive." Also, after the film's script was leaked on the Internet and it was apparent that the film would not portray Zuckerberg in a wholly positive light, he stated that he wanted to establish himself as a "good guy".

The Social Network is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, which the book's publicist once described as "big juicy fun" rather than "reportage." The film's screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told New York magazine, "I don't want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling", adding, "What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy's sake, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?"

Disputed accuracy

Author Jeff Jarvis, of the forthcoming book Public Parts, interviewed Zuckerberg and believes Sorkin has made too much of the story up. He states, "That's what the internet is accused of doing, making stuff up, not caring about the facts."

According to David Kirkpatrick, the author of The Facebook Effect:The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World,"the film is only "40% true. . . he is not snide and sarcastic in a cruel way, the way Zuckerberg is played in the movie." He says that "a lot of the factual incidents are accurate, but many are distorted and the overall impression is false," and concludes that primarily "his motivations were to try and come up with a new way to share information on the internet."

On October 9, 2010, Saturday Night Live lampooned Zuckerberg and Facebook. Andy Samberg played Zuckerberg. The real Zuckerberg was reported to have been amused: "I thought this was funny."

Stephen Colbert awarded a "Medal of Fear" to Zuckerberg at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on October 30, 2010, "because he values his privacy much more than he values yours."

Zuckerberg authorized an account of his and Facebook's life written by David Kirkpatrick, the former technology editor at Fortune magazine, which came out in 2010, entitled The Facebook Effect.

Philanthropy

Zuckerberg donated an undisclosed amount to Diaspora, an open-source personal web server that implements a distributed social networking service. He called it a "cool idea."

Zuckerberg founded the Start-up: Education foundation. On September 22, 2010, it was reported that Zuckerberg had arranged to donate $100 million to Newark Public Schools, the public school system of Newark, New Jersey. Critics noted the timing of the donation as being close to the release of The Social Network, which painted a somewhat negative portrait of Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg responded to the criticism, saying, "The thing that I was most sensitive about with the movie timing was, I didn’t want the press about 'The Social Network' movie to get conflated with the Newark project. I was thinking about doing this anonymously just so that the two things could be kept separate." Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker stated that he and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had to convince Zuckerberg's team not to make the donation anonymously.

On December 8, 2010, Zuckerberg released a statement that he had become a signatory of The Giving Pledge.

References

External links

Official

Document list

Dynamic list of Mark Zuckerberg's patents and patent applications

Multimedia

Video of interview by Leslie Stahl – Sixty Minutes

Video of Interview by Rick Stengel – Time Magazine

Category:American atheists Category:American billionaires Category:American computer businesspeople Category:American computer programmers Category:American Internet personalities Category:American Jews Category:Businesspeople in information technology Category:Child businesspeople Category:Facebook employees Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Jewish atheists Category:People from Westchester County, New York Category:Phillips Exeter Academy alumni Category:1984 births Category:Living people Category:Time Persons of the Year

Name	Tina Fey
Caption	Tina Fey at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International promoting Megamind.
Birth name	Elizabeth Stamatina Fey
Birth date	May 18, 1970
Birth place	Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania,United States
Occupation	Actress, comedian, writer, producer
Years active	1994–present
Spouse	Jeff Richmond (2001–present; 1 child)

Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey (; born May 18, 1970) is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer. She has received seven Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four Writers Guild of America Awards. She was singled out as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008 by the Associated Press, which gave her its AP Entertainer of the Year award.

Early life

Fey was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a township just outside of Philadelphia. She is the daughter of Zenovia "Jeanne" (née Xenakes) – a brokerage employee of Greek descent – and Donald Fey, a university grant proposal-writer of German and Scottish descent. She has a brother, who is eight years older, named Peter.

Fey was exposed to comedy early. She recalls:

She also grew up watching Second City Television (SCTV) and cites Catherine O'Hara as a role model.

Fey attended Cardington Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School in Upper Darby. By middle school, she knew she was interested in comedy, even doing an independent-study project on the subject in eighth grade. She also anonymously wrote the newspaper's satirical column, The Acorn. Following her graduation in 1988, Fey enrolled at the University of Virginia, where she studied playwriting and acting. She graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama.

Career

Early career

After graduating, Fey originally had plans to do graduate work in drama at DePaul University in Chicago, but "I just got this feeling like it wasn't going to work out ... [that] they were going to take my money and then cut me from the program." She moved to Chicago anyway, knowing about the improvisational comedy troupe, The Second City. She took night classes at Second City, and had a day job working at the front desk of a YMCA facility in Evanston to pay for her classes. Once her Second City training began, she immersed herself in the "cult of improvisation", where she performed alongside Scott Adsit, Kevin Dorff, Rachel Dratch, Jenna Jolovitz, and Jim Zulevic. Improvisation became an important influence on her initial understanding of what it means to be an actress, as she noted in an interview for The Believer in November 2003: She also performed at the ImprovOlympic theater.

Saturday Night Live (1997–2006)

While performing shows with the Second City in 1997, Fey submitted several scripts to NBC's variety show Saturday Night Live (SNL), at the request of its head writer Adam McKay, a former performer at Second City. for SNL following a meeting with SNL creator Lorne Michaels, and moved to New York. Fey told The New Yorker, "I’d had my eye on the show forever, the way other kids have their eye on Derek Jeter." She co-wrote the "Sully and Denise" sketches with Rachel Dratch, and after watching herself, decided to diet and lost 30 pounds. She told The New York Times, "I was a completely normal weight. But I was here in New York City, I had money and I couldn't buy any clothes. After I lost weight, there was interest in putting me on camera." In 1999, McKay stepped down as head writer, which led Michaels to approach Fey for the position.

In 2000, Fey began performing in sketches, Fey said she did not ask to audition, but that Michaels approached her. Michaels explained that there was "chemistry" between Fey and Fallon. Her role in Weekend Update was well received by critics. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "...Fey delivers such blow darts – poison filled jokes written in long, precisely parsed sentences unprecedented in Update history – with such a bright, sunny countenance makes her all the more devilishly delightful." Dennis Miller, a former cast member of SNL and anchor of Weekend Update, was pleased with Fey as one of the anchors for the segment: "...Fey might be the best Weekend Update anchor who ever did it. She writes the funniest jokes". Robert Bianco of USA Today, however, commented that he was "not enamored" with the pairing.

In 2001, Fey and the writing staff won a Writers Guild of America Award for SNL's 25th anniversary special.

The pairing of Fey and Fallon ended in May 2004 when Fallon last appeared as a cast member. He was replaced by Amy Poehler. It was the first time that two women co-anchored Weekend Update. Fey revealed that she "hired" Poehler as her co-host for the segment. The reception to the teaming of Fey and Poehler was positive, with Rachel Sklar of the Chicago Tribune noting that the pairing "has been a hilarious, pitch-perfect success as they play off each other with quick one-liners and deadpan delivery".

30 Rock (2006–present)

in October 2007.]]

In 2002, Fey suggested a pilot episode for a situation comedy about a cable news network to NBC, who rejected it. The pilot was reworked to revolve around an SNL style series, and was accepted by NBC. She signed a contract with NBC in May 2003, which allowed her to remain in her SNL head writer position at least through the 2004–2005 television season. As part of the contract, Fey was to develop a primetime project to be produced by Broadway Video and NBC Universal. She began developing the pilot project under the working title Untitled Tina Fey Project. The pilot, directed by Adam Bernstein, centered on the head writer of a variety show and how she managed her relationships with the show's volatile star and its executive producer. In October 2006, the pilot aired on NBC as 30 Rock. Although the episode received generally favorable reviews, it finished third in its timeslot.

The network renewed the series for a second season, which began in October 2007. The show's third season premiered on October 30, 2008. The premiere episode set records for the highest ratings of the series. In January 2009, NBC renewed 30 Rock for the 2009–2010 season.

In 2007, Fey received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series. The show itself won the 2007 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2008, she won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Emmy awards all in the category for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. The following year, Fey again won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award in the same categories, and was nominated for an Emmy Award. In early 2010, Fey received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Lead Actress. 30 Rock was renewed for the 2010–2011 season in March 2010.

Sarah Palin

In September and October 2008 Fey made a guest appearance on SNL to perform a series of parodies of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. On the 34th season premiere episode, aired September 13, 2008, Fey imitated Palin in a sketch, alongside Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton. Their repartee included Clinton needling Palin about her "Tina Fey glasses". The sketch quickly became NBC.com's most-watched viral video ever, with 5.7 million views by the following Wednesday. Fey reprised this role on the October 4 show, and on the October 18 show where she was joined by the real Sarah Palin. The October 18 show had the best ratings of any SNL show since 1994. The following year Fey won an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her impersonation of Palin. Fey returned to SNL in April 2010, and reprised her impression of Palin in one sketch titled "Sarah Palin Network".

In December 2009, Entertainment Weekly put her impersonation on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, writing, "Fey's freakishly spot-on SNL impersonation of the wannabe VP (and her ability to strike a balance between comedy and cruelty) made for truly transcendent television."

Other work

In 2000, Fey partnered with fellow SNL cast member Rachel Dratch in the Off Broadway two-woman show Dratch & Fey at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City. The production was well received by critics. Tim Townsend of The Wall Street Journal in review of Dratch & Fey, wrote that the fun part of watching them perform was "seeing how comfortable they are with each other". She appeared as a guest judge on the November 25, 2007 episode of the Food Network program Iron Chef America. Fey has appeared in Disney's campaign "Year of a Million Dreams" as Tinker Bell, along with Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan and Gisele Bündchen as Wendy Darling. She has also done commercials for American Express credit card.

On February 23, 2008, Fey hosted the first episode of SNL after the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. For this appearance, she was nominated for an Emmy in the category of Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program. Fey hosted SNL for a second time on April 10, 2010, and for her appearance she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.

Feature films

In 2002, Fey appeared in the surreal comedy Martin & Orloff. She made her debut as writer and co-star of the 2004 teen comedy Mean Girls. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Fey's high school life at Upper Darby High School and on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. The cast includes other past cast members of SNL including Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler. The film received favorable reviews, and was a box office success, grossing $129 million worldwide.

at the premiere of Baby Mama in New York.]]

In a 2004 interview, Fey expressed that she would like to write and direct movies in which she has small parts. In 2007, she was cast in the animated comedy film Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters as the teens' mother, a giant burrito.

Fey and former SNL castmate Amy Poehler starred in the 2008 comedy Baby Mama. The movie was written and directed by Michael McCullers. The plot concerns Kate (Fey), a business woman, who wants a child but, discovering she has only a million-to-one chance of getting pregnant, decides to find a surrogate: Angie (Poehler), a white-trash schemer. Baby Mama received mixed reviews, but many critics enjoyed Fey's performance. Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote: "Fey is a delight to watch throughout. Able to convey Kate's intentions and feelings through the simple looks and inflections, she never melodramatizes her situation; nor does her efficient, perfectionist side become overbearing." The movie grossed over $64 million at the box office.

Fey's projects after 2008 include her lending her voice to the character Lisa in the English language version of the Japanese animated film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (titled Ponyo for its U.S. release). In 2009, she appeared in The Invention of Lying, alongside Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe, and Christopher Guest. Her next film role was in Shawn Levy's 2010 comedy Date Night, a feature that focuses on a married couple, played by Fey and Steve Carell, who go on a date; however, the night goes awry for the two. Also in the same year, she voiced Roxanne Ritchie, a television reporter, in the DreamWorks animated film Megamind (2010).

In July 2010 it was announced that Fey will star in an upcoming comedy entitled Mommy & Me alongside Meryl Streep, who will play her mother. The film will be directed by Stanley Tucci.

In the media

Fey was ranked in the Hot 100 List at number 80 on Maxim magazine in 2002. and one of People magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People in 2007, 2008, and 2009. In 2007, she was included in People's 100 Most Beautiful issue. Also in 2007, Fey placed seventh on the Hot 100 List on AfterEllen.com. She repeated the appearance the following year, however, being voted as number one on the list.

In 2001, Entertainment Weekly named Fey as one of their Entertainers of the Year for her work on Weekend Update. She again was named one of the magazine's Entertainers of the Year in 2007, and placed number two in 2008. In 2009, Fey was named as Entertainment Weekly's fifth individual in their 15 Entertainers of the 2000s list. The newspaper editors and broadcast producers of the Associated Press voted Fey the AP Entertainer of the Year as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008, citing her impression of Sarah Palin on SNL. She has appeared on Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 list of the 100 most powerful celebrities in 2008, 2009, and 2010, at No. 99, No. 86, and No. 90 respectively.

In 2007, the New York Post included Fey in New York's 50 Most Powerful Women, ranking her at number 33. Fey was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2007 and 2009, as selected annually by Time magazine. Fey's featured article for the 2009 list was written by 30 Rock co-star, Alec Baldwin.

Personal life

in April 2010]]

Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, composer on 30 Rock. They met at Chicago's Second City and dated for seven years before marrying in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on June 3, 2001. They have a daughter—Alice Zenobia Richmond—who was born on September 10, 2005, during Fey's tenure at SNL. Fey returned to the show on October 22, saying "I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract; the baby and I have only a verbal agreement." In April 2009, Fey and Richmond purchased a $3.4 million apartment in the Upper West Side in New York City.

Fey has a scar a few inches long on the left side of her chin and cheek. Responding to questions about its origin, Fey was quoted in the November 25, 2001, New York Times article as saying: "It's a childhood injury that was kind of grim. And it kind of bums my parents out for me to talk about it". She has said she was reluctant to discuss the incident in part because "It's impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it." Fey favors the right (non-scar) side of her face when acting as her character Liz Lemon. At the 64th Golden Globe Awards, Fey wore a blue puzzle piece to raise awareness for the organization. In April 2008, she participated in Night of Too Many Stars, a comedy show benefit for autism education.

Fey is also a supporter of Mercy Corps, a global relief and development organization, in their campaign to end world hunger. Fey narrated a video for Mercy Corps's Action Center in New York City, describing hunger as a symptom of many wider world problems. She also supports the Love Our Children USA organization, which fights violence against children, who named her among their Mothers Who Make a Difference in 2009. She is the 2009 national spokesperson for the Light The Night Walk, which benefits the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

In June 2010, it was announced she would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.

Detailed works

{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ As a writer |- ! style="width:10%;"| Year/s ! style="width:20%;"| Title ! style="width:5%;"| Medium ! style="width:65%;"| Notes |- | 1997–2006 | Saturday Night Live | TV | Head writer 1999–2006 |- | 2004 | Mean Girls | Film | Screenplay adapted from Queen Bees and Wannabes |- | 2006–present | 30 Rock | TV | Episodes written:Season 1: (8/21) "Pilot", "The Aftermath", "Tracy Does Conan", "The Head and the Hair"^‡, "Black Tie"^‡, "Up All Night", "The C Word", "Hiatus"Season 2: (4/15) "SeinfeldVision", "Somebody to Love"^‡, "MILF Island"^‡, "Cooter"Season 3: (5) "Do-Over", "Christmas Special"^‡, "St. Valentine's Day"^‡, "The Bubble", "The Natural Order"^‡Season 4: (4) "Season 4", "Secret Santa, "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter"^‡, "I Do Do"‡denotes episode co-written. |}

{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ As an actress |- ! style="width:10%;"| Year/s ! style="width:20%;"| Title ! style="width:5%;"| Medium ! style="width:15%;"| Role/s ! style="width:50%;"| Notes |- | 1998–2006, 2008, 2010 | Saturday Night Live | TV | Multiple | Includes being a cast member from 1998 to 2006, host of Weekend Update (2000–2006), guest in 2008 and 2010, and made five appearances impersonating Sarah Palin. |- | 1999 | Upright Citizens Brigade | TV | Kerri Downey | One episode |- | 2002 | Martin & Orloff | Film | Southern Woman | |- | 2004 | Mean Girls | Film | Ms. Norbury | |- | 2006 | Artie Lange's Beer League | Film | Gym Secretary | |- | 2006 | Man of the Year | Film | Herself | Saturday Night Lives Weekend Update with Fey and Amy Poehler was featured in the movie |- | 2006–present | 30 Rock | TV | Liz Lemon | Main role | |- | 2008 | Baby Mama | Film | Kate Holbrook | |- | 2009 | Ponyo | Film | Lisa | Voice (English version) |- | 2009 | | Film | Shelley | |- | 2009 | SpongeBob's Truth or Square | TV | Herself | |- | 2010 | Date Night | Film | Claire Foster | |- | 2010 | Megamind | Film | Roxanne Ritchi | Voice |}

Awards and nominations

The following awards are categorized under the year they were announced (and not necessarily the year covered by the award ceremony).

{| class="wikitable sortable" |- ! Year ! Award ! Category ! Work ! Result |- | 2001 | Emmy Award | Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2001 | WGA Award | Comedy/Variety series | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2001 | WGA Award | Comedy/Variety special | Saturday Night Live: 25th Anniversary Special | Won |- | 2002 | Emmy Award | Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program | Saturday Night Live | Won |- | 2002 | WGA Award | Comedy/Variety series | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2003 | Emmy Award | Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2003 | WGA Award | Comedy/Variety Series | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2003 | WGA Award | Comedy/Variety Special | Saturday Night Live: NBC 75th Anniversary Special | Nominated |- | 2004 | Teen Choice Award | Choice TV Actress: Comedy | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2005 | People's Choice Awards | Favorite Funny Female Star | | Nominated |- | 2005 | Teen Choice Award | Choice Comedian | | Nominated |- | 2005 | WGA Award | Best Adapted Screenplay | Mean Girls | Nominated |- | 2007 | Emmy Award | Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2007 | Emmy Award | Lead Actress in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2007 | Emmy Award | Writing for a Comedy Series | "Tracy Does Conan" for 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2007 | WGA Award | Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2007 | WGA Award | New Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2007 | WGA Award | Comedy/Variety Special | Saturday Night Live | Won |- | 2008 | Emmy Award | Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2008 | Emmy Award | Lead Actress in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2008 | Emmy Award | Writing for a Comedy Series | "Cooter" for 30 Rock | Won |- | 2008 | Emmy Award | Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2008 | Golden Globe Award | Actress in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2008 | Golden Globe Award | Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2008 | Screen Actors Guild Awards | Female Actor in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2008 | Screen Actors Guild Awards | Ensemble in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2008 | WGA Award | Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2009 | Golden Globe Award | Actress in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2009 | Golden Globe Award | Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2009 | Screen Actors Guild Awards | Female Actor in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2009 | Screen Actors Guild Awards | Ensemble in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2009 | WGA Award | Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2009 | WGA Award | Episodic Comedy | "Cooter" for 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2009 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series | Portrayal of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live | Won |- | 2009 | Emmy Award | Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2009 | Emmy Award | Lead Actress in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2010 | Golden Globe Award | Actress in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2010 | Golden Globe Award | Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2010 | Screen Actors Guild Awards | Female Actor in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Won |- | 2010 | Screen Actors Guild Awards | Ensemble in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2010 | Emmy Award | Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2010 | Emmy Award | Lead Actress in a Comedy Series | 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2010 | Emmy Award | Writing for a Comedy Series | "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" for 30 Rock | Nominated |- | 2010 | Emmy Award | Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program | Saturday Night Live | Nominated |- | 2010 | Teen Choice Award | Choice Movie Actress: Comedy | Date Night | Won |- | 2010 | Mark Twain Prize for American Humor | American Humor | | Won |}

References

Further reading

Baldwin, Kristen. "'Update' With Destiny." Entertainment Weekly. May 2, 2002. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Smith, Kyle. "Leap of Fey." People Magazine. May 3, 2004. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Schwartz, Missy. "The Smartest Girl in The Class." Entertainment Weekly. May 7, 2004. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Ryder, Caroline. "A Conversation with Tina Fey." Women's Health Magazine. March 2007. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Rys, Richard. "Exit Interview: Tina Fey." Philadelphia Magazine. April 3, 2008. Accessed July 15, 2009.

Baldwin, Kristen. "Tina Fey: One Hot 'Mama'." Entertainment Weekly. April 9, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Jacobs, A.J. "Tina Fey, Make Us Laugh." Esquire Magazine. May 1, 2008. Accessed July 15, 2009.

Carnwath, Ally. "Queen of the jokers." The Guardian. May 4, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Goodwin, Christopher. "And funny with it." The Guardian. May 11, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Moran, Caitlin. "Tina Fey and Sarah Silverman: the new queens of comedy." The Times October 3, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Carter, Bill. "It’s Easy to Find Tina Fey on TV, but Not Her Show." The New York Times. October 13, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2009.

Brown, Laura. "Tina Fey Rocks." Harper's Bazaar. November 2009. Accessed October 7, 2009.

Pringle, Gill. "Tina Fey — From spoofer to movie stardom." The Independent. March 19, 2010. Accessed March 19, 2010.

Walker-Mitchell, Donna. "Witty woman." The Sydney Morning Herald. March 28, 2010. Accessed March 28, 2010.

External links

Interview on Fresh Air, aired November 3, 2008

Category:1970 births Category:Actors from Pennsylvania Category:American actors of German descent Category:American actors of Greek descent Category:American actors of Scottish descent Category:American Christians Category:American comedy writers Category:American film actors Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Greek descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American television actors Category:American television producers Category:American television writers Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (television) winners Category:Greek Orthodox Christians Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians from the United States Category:Emmy Award winners Category:ImprovOlympics Category:Living people Category:Mark Twain Prize recipients Category:Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Parodies of Sarah Palin Category:People from New York City Category:People from Delaware County, Pennsylvania Category:Second City alumni Category:University of Virginia alumni Category:Writers from Pennsylvania Category:Writers from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners Category:Women comedians Category:Women television writers

For the punk rock musician, see Ricky Scaggs.

Name	Ricky Skaggs
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Richard Lee Skaggs
Born	July 18, 1954Blaine, Kentucky
Instrument	singer, mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle
Genre	Country, bluegrass
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, session musician, bandleader, producer, arranger
Years active	1960s-present
Label	Sugar Hill, Epic, Rounder, DCC, Atlantic, Camden, Rebel, Hollywood, Legacy, Skaggs Family
Associated acts	Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, J. D. Crowe and New South, Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band, The Whites, Kentucky Thunder, Bruce Hornsby
Url	http://www.skaggsfamilyrecords.com/

Richard Lee "Ricky" Skaggs (born July 18, 1954) is a country and bluegrass singer, musician, producer, and composer. He primarily plays mandolin; however, he also plays fiddle, guitar, and banjo.

Biography

Early career

Ricky Skaggs was born in Cordell, Kentucky. He started playing music at age 5 after he was given a mandolin by his father, Hobert. At age 6, he played mandolin on stage with Bill Monroe. At age 7, he appeared on television's Martha White country music variety show, playing with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. He also wanted to audition for the Grand Ole Opry at that time, but was told he was too young.

In his mid-teens, Skaggs met a fellow teen prodigy, guitarist Keith Whitley, and the two started playing together with Whitley's banjoist brother Dwight on radio shows. By 1970, they had earned a spot opening for Ralph Stanley and Skaggs and Keith Whitley were thereafter invited to join Stanley's band, the Clinch Mountain Boys

Skaggs later joined J. D. Crowe's New South. For a few years, Skaggs was a member of Emmylou Harris's Hot Band. He wrote the arrangements for Harris's 1980 bluegrass-roots album, Roses in the Snow. In addition to arranging for Harris, Skaggs sang harmony and played mandolin and fiddle in the Hot Band.

Neotraditionalism and experimentation

Into the 1990s and 2000s, Skaggs has embraced his bluegrass roots, as well as experimenting with new sounds. With his band, Kentucky Thunder, he is a perennial winner of Grammy Awards and International Bluegrass Music Association for best bluegrass album.

"I always want to try to promote the old music, as well as trying to grow, and be a pioneer too," Skaggs once said.

In 2000, he shared the stage with Vermont-based jam band, Phish. On March 20, 2007, Skaggs released an album with rock musician Bruce Hornsby.

In 2008, Skaggs released an album he recorded with The Whites on his Skaggs Family Records label.

In 2008, Skaggs recorded a bluegrass version of "Old Enough" by the Raconteurs with Ashley Monroe and the Raconteurs. He played mandolin on the track as well as shared vocals with Jack White, Brendan Benson, and Ashley Monroe.

Discography

Awards

Grammy Awards

1983 Best Country Instrumental Performance: New South (J.D. Crowe, Jerry Douglas, Todd Phillips, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs) for Fireball

1984 Best Country Instrumental Performance: Ricky Skaggs for Wheel Hoss

1986 Best Country Instrumental Performance (Orchestra, Group or Soloist): Ricky Skaggs for Raisin' The Dickins

1991 Best Country Vocal Collaboration: Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner & Vince Gill for Restless

1999 Best Bluegrass Album: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder for Bluegrass Rules!

1998 Best Country Collaboration with Vocals: Clint Black, Joe Diffie, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Patty Loveless, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, Pam Tillis, Randy Travis, Travis Tritt & Dwight Yoakam for Same Old Train

2000 Best Bluegrass Album: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder for Ancient Tones

2000 Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder for Soldier Of The Cross

2003 Best Country Performance By A Duo or Group With Vocal: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder for A Simple Life

2004 Best Bluegrass Album: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder for Brand New Strings

2006 Best Bluegrass Album: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder for Instrumentals

2006 Best Musical Album For Children, "Songs From The Neighborhood, The Music Of Mr. Rogers"

2008 Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album: Ricky Skaggs and The Whites for Salt Of The Earth

2009 Best Bluegrass Album Honoring The Fathers Of Bluegrass 1946 & 47

CMA (Country Music Association) Awards

1982 Male Vocalist of the Year: Ricky Skaggs

1982 Horizon Award: Ricky Skaggs

1983 Instrumental Group of the Year: Ricky Skaggs Band

1984 Instrumental Group of the Year: Ricky Skaggs Band

1985 Entertainer of the Year: Ricky Skaggs

1985 Instrumental Group of the Year: Ricky Skaggs Band

1987 Vocal Duo of the Year: Ricky Skaggs & Sharon White

IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Awards

1998 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

1998 Album Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder for Bluegrass Rules!

1999 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2000 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2000 Instrumental Album Of The Year: David Grisman, Ronnie McCoury, Sam Bush, Frank Wakefield, Bobby Osborne, Jesse McReynolds, Ricky Skaggs & Buck White for Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza

2000 Recorded Event Of The Year: David Grisman, Ronnie McCoury, Sam Bush, Frank Wakefield, Bobby Osborne, Jesse McReynolds, Ricky Skaggs & Buck White for Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza

2002 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2003 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2004 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2005 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2006 Instrumental Group Of The Year: Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2008 Recorded Event of the Year: Everett Lilly & Everybody and Their Brother; Featuring Everett Lilly, Bea Lilly, Charles Lilly, Daniel Lilly, Mark Lilly, Marty Stuart, Rhonda Vincent, Billy Walker, Ronnie McCoury, Rob McCoury, David Ball, Charlie Cushman, Larry Stephenson, Joe Spivey, Eddie Stubbs, Jason Carter, Dickey Lee, Freddy Weller, Mike Bub, Rad Lewis, Andy May, Darrin Vincent, Marcia Campbell, Clay Rigdon, Eric Blankenship and Bill Wolfenbarger (artists); Charles Lilly & Bill Wolfenbarger (producers); Swift River Music

BluegrassJournal.com Readers Poll: We Are Family; Jeff & Sheri Easter, The Lewis Family & The Easter Brothers (artists); Jeff & Sheri Easter (producers); Daywind Records

Other Awards and Accomplishments

R&R; Best New Artist

Billboard magazine's Artist of the Year

Musician Magazine- Voted One of the Top 100 Guitarists of the Century

Artist of the Decade- Listeners' Poll Award BBC Radio 2

CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music rank #37 in 2003.

Judge for the 2nd annual Independent Music Awards

References

Independent Music Awards - Past Judges

1997 Interview with Ricky Skaggs

Himes, Geoffrey. (1998). "Ricky Skaggs". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 486–7.

Ricky Skaggs, age 7, plays with Flatt & Scruggs on the Martha White Show

Ricky Skaggs articles, interviews and CD reviews at Country Standard Time

Ricky Skaggs Biography

External links

Skaggs Family Records

Ricky Skaggs and the Whites at exclaim

Category:1954 births Category:American country singers Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American country guitarists Category:American male singers Category:American bluegrass musicians Category:American multi-instrumentalists Category:Living people Category:American mandolinists Category:Musicians from Kentucky Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grand Ole Opry members Category:People from Lawrence County, Kentucky Category:Epic Records artists Category:The Country Gentlemen members Category:Rebel Records artists Category:Rounder Records artists

Caption	Wahlberg at the Shooter premiere in London, March 2007
Birthname
Birth date	June 05, 1971
Birth place	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Othername	Marky Mark Monk D
Occupation	ActorProducerRapper (former)
Yearsactive	1989-present
Spouse	Rhea Durham (2009-present; 4 children)
Url	Official site

Mark Robert Michael Wahlberg (born June 5, 1971) is an American actor, former rapper, and producer of film and television. He was known as Marky Mark in his earlier years, and became famous for his 1991 debut as a rap musician with the band Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. He was named #1 on VH1's 40 Hottest Hotties of the 90's. He is well known for his roles in films such as Boogie Nights (1997), Three Kings (1999), The Perfect Storm (2000), Planet of the Apes (2001), The Italian Job (2003), I Heart Huckabees (2004), Four Brothers (2005), The Departed (2006), Invincible (2006), Shooter (2007), and The Fighter (2010). He has also served as the executive producer of the TV series Entourage and Boardwalk Empire.

Early life

Wahlberg was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest of nine children, with siblings Arthur, Jim, Paul, Robert, Tracey, Michelle, Debbie (died in 2003 at age 44), and Donnie. He is of Irish, English, Swedish, and French Canadian ancestry. His mother, Alma Elaine ( Donnelly), was a bank clerk and nurse's aide, and his father, Donald Edward Wahlberg, was a Teamster who worked as a delivery driver. His parents divorced in 1982. Wahlberg had a Roman Catholic upbringing and attended Copley Square High School (but never graduated) on Newbury Street in Boston.

Legal troubles

Wahlberg claims to have been in trouble 20–25 times with the Boston Police Department as a youth. By the age of 13, Wahlberg had developed an addiction to cocaine and other substances. At 15, he harassed a group of African American school children on a field trip by throwing rocks (causing injuries) and shouting racial epithets. When he was 16, Wahlberg approached a middle-aged Vietnamese man on the street and, using a large wooden stick, knocked him unconscious (while calling him "Vietnam fucking shit"), he also attacked another Vietnamese man, leaving him permanently blind in one eye, and attacked a security guard (again using racist language). For these crimes, Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder, pleaded guilty to assault, and was sentenced to two years in jail at Boston's Deer Island House of Correction, of which he served 45 days. In another incident, the 21-year-old Wahlberg fractured the jaw of a neighbor in an unprovoked attack. Commenting in 2006 on his past crimes, Wahlberg has stated: "I did a lot of things that I regretted and I have certainly paid for my mistakes." He said the right thing to do would be to try to find the blinded man and make amends, and admitted he has not done so, but added that he was no longer burdened by guilt: "You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning."

After landing in prison following this assault he decided to change his ways. According to Wahlberg, "As soon as I began that life of crime, there was always a voice in my head telling me I was going to end up in jail. Three of my brothers had done time. My sister went to prison so many times I lost count. Finally I was there, locked up with the kind of guys I'd always wanted to be like. Now I'd earned my stripes and I was just like them and I realized it wasn't what I wanted at all. I'd ended up in the worst place I could possibly imagine and I never wanted to go back. First of all I had to learn to stay on the straight and narrow." Wahlberg first relied on the guidance of his parish priest to turn his back on crime. He told his street gang that he was leaving them and had "some serious fights" with them over it. The actor commented in 2009: "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and I've done bad things. But I never blamed my upbringing for that. I never behaved like a victim so that I would have a convenient reason for victimizing others. Everything I did wrong was my own fault. I was taught the difference between right and wrong at an early age. I take full responsibility".

Career

Music

Wahlberg first came to fame as the younger brother of Donnie Wahlberg of the successful 1980s and 1990s boy band New Kids on the Block. Mark, at age thirteen, had been one of the group's original members, along with Donnie, Danny Wood, Jordan Knight, and Jonathan Knight. Uninterested in the group's bubblegum pop and squeaky-clean image, however, he soon quit. It was his departure that eventually allowed Joe McIntyre to take his place as the fifth member of the group.

Wahlberg began recording as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, earning a hit with "Good Vibrations" from the album Music for the People. The record was produced by brother Donnie and later hit #1 on The Billboard Hot 100, later becoming certified as a Platinum single. In the video, widely broadcast on music video channels, Mark was shown boxing, lifting weights and showing off his bare, well-muscled torso. The second single, "Wildside," peaked at #5 on Billboards Hot Singles Sales chart and at #10 on The Billboard Hot 100. It was certified as a Gold single. Marky Mark opened for the New Kids on the Block during their last tour. The second Marky Mark LP, You Are Something Special, was not as successful as the prior, yielding only a minor hit single in the title track. Wahlberg later collaborated with reggae / ragga singer Prince Ital Joe. The project combined rap and ragga vocals with strong eurodance music (as in the singles Happy People, United, Life in the Streets, and Babylon) courtesy of Frank Peterson and Alex Christensen as producers.

He briefly became embroiled in controversy when he appeared to endorse the homophobic comments made by Shabba Ranks when they appeared as guests on the British chat show The Word. When Ranks made the statement that "gays ought to be crucified", Wahlberg remained in silence at his comments, which made the public believe he agreed with them. He later publicly dissociated himself from Ranks' comments.

Mark's cocky, street-wise persona contributed to his fame. During concert performances, he was known for stripping to a pair of white briefs, gyrating his hips and rubbing his crotch. In the dedication of his 1992 book Marky Mark, co-authored with photographer Lynn Goldsmith, Wahlberg says in the preface that "I wanna dedicate this book to my cock". shot by Herb Ritts, following it with Calvin Klein television ads. In 1992 the Calvin Klein billboard in New York's Times Square featured Wahlberg exclusively. Annie Leibovitz also shot a famous session of Mark Wahlberg in underwear for Vanity Fair's annual Hall of Fame issue. He also made a workout video titled The Marky Mark Workout: Form... Focus... Fitness (ISBN 1-55510-910-1). Although Wahlberg made several sexual references in the video, it was passed as exempt from classification because he was able to disguise them with hip hop slang. Notably, he says to a female participant before doing an exercise, "If I get diesel (muscular), maybe I'll get some skins" (a reference to the labia). He also says "I can't get no coochie (a reference to a woman's vagina) without no Gucci", which was a phrase that Mark heard from a toilet attendant during his visit to London.

Film

Wahlberg then began an acting career, making his debut in the 1993 TV movie The Substitute. His big screen debut came the next year, with the Danny DeVito feature Renaissance Man. Wahlberg was also considered for a role in the film Brokeback Mountain. It was originally intended to star him and Joaquin Phoenix, but Wahlberg was uncomfortable with the film's sex scenes and his role ultimately went to Jake Gyllenhaal.

Wahlberg starred in the American football drama, Invincible, based on the true story of bartender Vince Papale. He is also the executive producer of the HBO series Entourage which is loosely based on his experiences in Hollywood. He also appeared as a foul-mouthed Massachusetts State Police detective in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed thriller, The Departed in 2006, which netted him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture, and an NSFC Best Supporting Actor award.

Wahlberg has confirmed that he was approached to star in a sequel to The Departed, but it is still early in development. The sequel would reportedly revolve around the Staff Sergeant played by Wahlberg.

To prepare for his role in Shooter, Wahlberg attended long-range shooting training at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute near Pahrump, Nevada, and was able to hit a target at 2000 yards on his first day, a feat which took his instructor about six months to achieve. He has said in a number of interviews that he will retire at the age of 40 to concentrate on parenthood and professional golf. However, in early 2007 he indicated that the latter was no longer the plan as "his golf game is horrible". He played Jack Salmon, a leading role in Peter Jackson's film of The Lovely Bones. In 2007 he starred opposite Joaquin Phoenix in We Own the Night, a movie about a family of police officers in New York City. The movie also starred Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes.

Wahlberg will play the drug kingpin Jon Roberts in the remake of the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, which chronicles the story of the largest cocaine trafficker in Miami in the 1970s and 1980s, and he has persuaded Leonardo DiCaprio to play the supporting role.

He starred in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening as Eliot Moore, which premiered in movie theatres on June 13, 2008. The same year, he played the title role in Max Payne, based on a video game of the same name. While promoting Max Payne, Mark became involved in a feud with Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg and threatened to "crack that big (bleep)ing nose of his." Samberg had done an impression of Wahlberg in a Saturday Night Live skit titled "Mark Wahlberg Talks To Animals." However, Wahlberg later appeared in a follow-up skit parodying both the original skit, Samberg's impression of Wahlberg, and his own threats to Samberg.

Video games

Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch had their own video game in the game series on the Sega Mega-CD. Using various effects, the player is supposed to produce new versions of the videos to Marky Mark songs like "Good Vibrations" and "I Need Money". PC World.ca listed it as the eighth worst video game of all time. Wahlberg played the titular character in the Max Payne film based on the popular video games. Even though he was playing the character in the film, he stated that he was not going to play the games. Wahlberg is also set to star in David O. Russell's feature film adaptation of the first game in the Uncharted game series, Drake's Fortune, as main character Nathan Drake. He is set to star alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.

Personal life

Wahlberg is a committed Catholic who attends daily Mass, credits his faith and a priest from his childhood for helping him turn his life around, and recognizes the seriousness of his faith. He dated actresses Jordana Brewster and China Chow, his co-star in the film The Big Hit. Wahlberg and model Rhea Durham have been together since 2001 and got married on August 1, 2009 at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills. The couple have four children, Ella Rae (born September 2, 2003), Michael Robert (born March 21, 2006), Brendan Joseph (born September 16, 2008) and Grace Margaret (born January 11, 2010). It was revealed on his E! True Hollywood Story that Wahlberg dated actress Reese Witherspoon during and after the making of their 1996 film Fear.

Actively involved in charity, Wahlberg established the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation in May 2001 for the purpose of raising and distributing funds to youth service and enrichment programs.

Wahlberg has four tattoos done by various artists including Paul Timman. The tattoos include Sylvester the cat with Tweety in his mouth on his ankle, a tattoo of his initials MW with Wahlberg through them on his upper right arm, and a Bob Marley tattoo with "One Love" on his upper left arm. The final tattoo, which Wahlberg holds as his most meaningful, is the rosary tattoed around his neck, with a crucifix and the words "In God I Trust" resting over his heart.

Discography

Filmography

References

External links

Marky Mark, Won't You Please Come Back?

Mark Wahlberg Interview at Moviehole.net

Mark Wahlberg Interview on "Fresh Air"

Mark Wahlberg on The Hour

Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation

Mark Wahlberg Video Interview at the Premiere of "The Happening"

Category:1971 births Category:1990s rappers Category:American film actors Category:American male models Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American rappers Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American television producers Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Living people Category:Actors from Massachusetts Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts Category:American rappers of European descent Category:American people of French-Canadian descent Category:American people of Swedish descent

Name	Mark Twain
Caption	Mark Twain, detail of photo by Mathew Brady, February 7, 1871
Birthname	Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Pseudonym	Mark Twain
Birthdate	November 30, 1835
Birthplace	Florida, Missouri, U.S.
Deathdate	April 21, 1910
Deathplace	Redding, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, lecturer
Nationality	American
Genre	Fiction, historical fiction, children's literature, non-fiction, travel literature, satire, essay, philosophical literature, social commentary, literary criticism
Signature	Mark Twain Signatures-2.svg
Notableworks	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Spouse
Children	Langdon, Susy, Clara, Jean

]]

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which proved to be very popular and brought him nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.

Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".

Early life

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, to a Tennessee country merchant, John Marshall Clemens (August 11, 1798 – March 24, 1847), and Jane Lampton Clemens (June 18, 1803 – October 27, 1890).

Twain was the sixth of seven children. Only three of his siblings survived childhood: his brother Orion (July 17, 1825 – December 11, 1897); Henry, who died in a riverboat explosion (July 13, 1838 – June 21, 1858); and Pamela (September 19, 1827 – August 31, 1904). His sister Margaret (May 31, 1830 – August 17, 1839) died when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin (June 8, 1832 – May 12, 1842) died three years later. Another brother, Pleasant (1828–1829), died at six months. Twain was born two weeks after the closest approach to Earth of Halley's Comet. On December 4, 1985, the United States Postal Service issued a stamped envelope for "Mark Twain and Halley's Comet."

When Twain was four, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Missouri was a slave state and young Twain became familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he would later explore in his writing.

Twain’s father was an attorney and a local judge. The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was organized in his office in 1846. The railroad connected the second and third largest cities in the state and was the westernmost United States railroad until the Transcontinental Railroad. It delivered mail to and from the Pony Express.

In March 1847, when Twain was 11, his father died of pneumonia. The next year, he became a printer's apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother Orion. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. He joined the union and educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school. At 22, Twain returned to Missouri.

On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby inspired Twain to be a steamboat pilot. As Twain observed in Life on the Mississippi, the pilot surpassed a steamboat's captain in prestige and authority; it was a rewarding occupation with wages set at $250 per month, roughly equivalent to $}} a year today. A steamboat pilot needed to know the ever-changing river to be able to stop at the hundreds of ports and wood-lots. Twain studied 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of the Mississippi for more than two years before he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859.

While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat on which he was working, the Pennsylvania, exploded. Twain had foreseen this death in a dream a month earlier, which inspired his interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research. Twain was guilt-stricken and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. He continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed.

Missouri was considered by many to be part of the South, and was represented in both the Confederate and Federal governments during the Civil War. Twain wrote a sketch, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed", which claimed he and his friends had been Confederate volunteers for two weeks before disbanding their company.

Travels

, which features hand-stenciled paneling, fireplaces from India, embossed wallpapers and an enormous hand-carved mantel that the Twains purchased in Scotland (HABS photo)]] Twain joined Orion, who in 1861 became secretary to James W. Nye, the governor of Nevada Territory, and headed west. Twain and his brother traveled more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City. The experiences inspired Roughing It and provided material for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner. Here he first used his pen name. On February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous travel account "Letter From Carson – re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson's; music" with "Mark Twain".

Twain moved to San Francisco, California in 1864, still as a journalist. He met writers such as Bret Harte, Artemus Ward, and Dan DeQuille. The young poet Ina Coolbrith may have romanced him.

His first success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published in a New York weekly, The Saturday Press, on November 18, 1865. It brought him national attention. A year later, he traveled to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) as a reporter for the Sacramento Union. His travelogues were popular and became the basis for his first lectures.

In 1867, a local newspaper funded a trip to the Mediterranean. During his tour of Europe and the Middle East, he wrote a popular collection of travel letters, which were later compiled as The Innocents Abroad in 1869. It was on this trip that he met his future brother-in-law.

Marriage and children

Charles Langdon showed a picture of his sister, Olivia, to Twain; Twain claimed to have fallen in love at first sight. The two met in 1868, were engaged a year later, and married in February 1870 in Elmira, New York. who became a longtime friend.

The couple lived in Buffalo, New York from 1869 to 1871. Twain owned a stake in the Buffalo Express newspaper, and worked as an editor and writer. Their son Langdon died of diphtheria at 19 months.

In 1871, Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where starting in 1873, he arranged the building of a home (local admirers saved it from demolition in 1927 and eventually turned it into a museum focused on him). While living there, Olivia gave birth to three daughters: Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962) and Jean (1880–1909). The couple's marriage lasted 34 years, until Olivia's death in 1904.

During his seventeen years in Hartford (1874–1891), Twain wrote many of his best-known works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).

Twain made a second tour of Europe, described in the 1880 book A Tramp Abroad. His tour included a stay in Heidelberg from May 6 until July 23, 1878, and a visit to London.

Love of science and technology

, early 1894]] He was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory.

Twain patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments" (to replace suspenders) and a history trivia game. Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages only needed to be moistened before use.

His book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court features a time traveler from contemporary America, using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of storyline would later become a common feature of the science fiction sub-genre, Alternate history.

In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain at his home in Redding, Connecticut and filmed him. Part of the footage was used in The Prince and the Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film.

Financial troubles

Twain made a substantial amount of money through his writing, but he lost a great deal through investments, mostly in new inventions and technology, particularly the Paige typesetting machine. It was a beautifully engineered mechanical marvel that amazed viewers when it worked, but was prone to breakdowns. Twain spent $300,000 (equal to $}} today) on it between 1880 and 1894, but before it could be perfected, it was made obsolete by the Linotype. He lost not only the bulk of his book profits but also a substantial portion of his wife's inheritance. In 1893, he began a 15-year-long friendship with financier Henry Huttleston Rogers, a principal of Standard Oil. Rogers first made Twain file for bankruptcy. Then Rogers had Twain transfer the copyrights on his written works to his wife, Olivia, to prevent creditors from gaining possession of them. Finally, Rogers took absolute charge of Twain's money until all the creditors were paid.

Twain embarked on an around-the-world lecture tour in 1894 to pay off his creditors in full, although he was no longer under any legal obligation to do so. In mid-1900, he was the guest of newspaper proprietor Hugh Gilzean-Reid at Dollis Hill House. Twain wrote of Dollis Hill that he had "never seen any place that was so satisfactorily situated, with its noble trees and stretch of country, and everything that went to make life delightful, and all within a biscuit's throw of the metropolis of the world". He then returned to America in 1900, having earned enough to pay off his debts.

Speaking engagements

Twain was in demand as a featured speaker, and appeared before many men's clubs, including the Authors' Club, Beefsteak Club, Vagabonds, White Friars, and Monday Evening Club of Hartford. He was made an honorary member of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. In the late 1890s, he spoke to the Savage Club in London and was elected honorary member. When told that only three men had been so honored, including the Prince of Wales, he replied "Well, it must make the Prince feel mighty fine." In 1897, Twain spoke to the Concordia Press Club in Vienna as a special guest, following diplomat Charlemagne Tower. In German, to the great amusement of the assemblage, Twain delivered the speech "Die Schrecken der deutschen Sprache" ("The Horrors of the German Language").

Later life

degree, awarded to him by Oxford University.]] Twain passed through a period of deep depression, which began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of meningitis. Olivia's death in 1904 and Jean's on December 24, 1909, deepened his gloom. On May 20, 1909, his close friend Henry Rogers died suddenly.

In 1906, Twain began his autobiography in the North American Review. In April, Twain heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all she owned in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he volunteered a few autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. To further aid Coolbrith, George Wharton James visited Twain in New York and arranged for a new portrait session. Initially resistant, Twain admitted that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him.

Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls he viewed as surrogate granddaughters, the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club. The dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight."

Oxford University awarded Twain an honorary doctorate in letters (D.Litt.) in 1907.

In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:

His prediction was accurate – Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.

Upon hearing of Twain's death, President William Howard Taft said:

"Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature."

.]] Twain's funeral was at the "Old Brick" Presbyterian Church in New York. He is buried in his wife's family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. His grave is marked by a 12-foot (i.e., two fathoms, or "mark twain") monument, placed there by his surviving daughter, Clara. There is also a smaller headstone.

Writing

Overview

Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its frequent use of the word "nigger", which was in common usage in the pre-Civil War period in which the novel was set.

A complete bibliography of his works is nearly impossible to compile because of the vast number of pieces written by Twain (often in obscure newspapers) and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large portion of his speeches and lectures have been lost or were not written down; thus, the collection of Twain's works is an ongoing process. Researchers rediscovered published material by Twain as recently as 1995.

Early journalism and travelogues

. Historical marker and interior view available.]]Twain's first important work, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was first published in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. The only reason it was published there was that his story arrived too late to be included in a book Artemus Ward was compiling featuring sketches of the wild American West.

After this burst of popularity, Twain was commissioned by the Sacramento Union to write letters about his travel experiences for publication in the newspaper, his first of which was to ride the steamer Ajax in its maiden voyage to Hawaii, referred to at the time as the Sandwich Islands. These humorous letters proved the genesis to his work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama isthmus. All the while, Twain was writing letters meant for publishing back and forth, chronicling his experiences with his burlesque humor. On June 8, 1867, Twain set sail on the pleasure cruiser Quaker City for five months. This trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress.

In 1872, Twain published a second piece of travel literature, Roughing It, as a semi-sequel to Innocents. Roughing It is a semi-autobiographical account of Twain's journey to Nevada and his subsequent life in the American West. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work kept Roughing It's focus on American society but focused more on the events of the day. Entitled , it was not a travel piece, as his previous two books had been, and it was his first attempt at writing a novel. The book is also notable because it is Twain's only collaboration; it was written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner.

Twain's next two works drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi, a series of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875, featured Twain’s disillusionment with Romanticism. Old Times eventually became the starting point for Life on the Mississippi.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Twain's next major publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which drew on his youth in Hannibal. Tom Sawyer was modeled on Twain as a child, with traces of two schoolmates, John Briggs and Will Bowen. The book also introduced in a supporting role Huckleberry Finn, based on Twain's boyhood friend Tom Blankenship.

The Prince and the Pauper, despite a storyline that is omnipresent in film and literature today, was not as well received. Telling the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, the book acts as a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Pauper was Twain's first attempt at fiction, and blame for its shortcomings is usually put on Twain for having not been experienced enough in English society, and also on the fact that it was produced after a massive hit. In between the writing of Pauper, Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which he consistently had problems completing) and started and completed another travel book, A Tramp Abroad, which follows Twain as he traveled through central and southern Europe.

Twain's next major published work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, solidified him as a noteworthy American writer. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its predecessor. The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy's belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong. Four hundred manuscript pages of Huckleberry Finn were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. Some accounts have Twain taking seven years off after his first burst of creativity, eventually finishing the book in 1883. Other accounts have Twain working on Huckleberry Finn in tandem with The Prince and the Pauper and other works in 1880 and other years. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experienced, as critic Leo Marx puts it, a "failure of nerve". Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn:

If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.

Hemingway also wrote in the same essay:

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn, Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have heavily influenced the former book.

Twain next focused on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which featured him making his first big pronouncement of disappointment with politics. Written with the same "historical fiction" style of The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee showed the absurdities of political and social norms by setting them in the court of King Arthur. The book was started in December 1885, then shelved a few months later until the summer of 1887, and eventually finished in the spring of 1889.

Twain had begun to furiously write articles and commentary with diminishing returns to pay the bills and keep his business projects afloat, but it was not enough. He filed for bankruptcy in 1894.

His next large-scale work, Pudd'nhead Wilson, was written rapidly, as Twain was desperately trying to stave off the bankruptcy. From November 12 to December 14, 1893, Twain wrote 60,000 words for the novel.

Other authors to fall under Twain's attack during this time period (beginning around 1890 until his death) were George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In addition to providing a source for the "tooth and claw" style of literary criticism, Twain outlines in several letters and essays what he considers to be "quality writing". He places emphasis on concision, utility of word choice, and realism (he complains that Cooper's Deerslayer purports to be realistic but has several shortcomings). Ironically, several of his works were later criticized for lack of continuity (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and organization (Pudd'nhead Wilson).

Twain's wife died in 1904 while the couple were staying at the Villa di Quarto in Florence, and after an appropriate time Twain allowed himself to publish some works that his wife, a de facto editor and censor throughout his life, had looked down upon. Of these works, The Mysterious Stranger, depicting various visits of Satan to the Earth, is perhaps the best known. This particular work was not published in Twain's lifetime. There were three versions found in his manuscripts made between 1897 and 1905: the Hannibal, Eseldorf, and Print Shop versions. Confusion between the versions led to an extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently have the original versions as Twain wrote them become available.

Twain's last work was his autobiography, which he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in non-chronological order. Some archivists and compilers have rearranged the biography into more conventional forms, thereby eliminating some of Twain's humor and the flow of the book. The first volume of autobiography, over 736 pages, was published by the University of California in November 2010, 100 years after his death as Twain wished. It soon became an unexpected best selling book, making Twain one of very few authors publishing new best-selling volumes in all 3 of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Friendship with Henry H. Rogers

While Twain credited Henry H. Rogers, a Standard Oil executive, with saving him from financial ruin, their close friendship in their later years was mutually beneficial. When Twain lost three of his four children and his beloved wife, the Rogers family increasingly became a surrogate family for him. He became a frequent guest at their townhouse in New York City, their 48-room summer home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and aboard their steam yacht, the Kanawha.

in 1908]]

The two men introduced each other to their acquaintances. Twain was an admirer of the remarkable deafblind girl Helen Keller. He first met Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan at a party in the home of Laurence Hutton in New York City in the winter of 1894. Twain introduced them to Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for Keller's education at Radcliffe College. Twain is credited with labeling Sullivan, Keller's governess and companion, a "miracle worker". His choice of words later became inspiration for the title of William Gibson's play and film adaptation, The Miracle Worker. Twain also introduced Rogers to journalist Ida M. Tarbell, who interviewed the robber baron for a muckraking expose that led indirectly to the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust. On cruises aboard the Kanawha, Twain and Rogers were joined at frequent intervals by Booker T. Washington, the famed former slave who had become a leading educator.

While the two famous old men were widely regarded as drinking and poker buddies, they also exchanged letters when apart, and this was often since each traveled a great deal. Unlike Rogers' personal files, which have never become public, these insightful letters were published. The written exchanges between the two men demonstrate Twain's well-known sense of humor and, more surprisingly, Rogers' sense of fun, providing a rare insight into the private side of the robber baron.

In April 1907, Twain and Rogers cruised to the opening of the Jamestown Exposition in Virginia. Twain's public popularity was such that many fans took boats out to the Kanawha at anchor in hopes of getting a glimpse of him. As the gathering of boats around the yacht became a safety hazard, he finally obliged by coming on deck and waving to the crowds.

Because of poor weather conditions, the steam yacht was delayed for several days from venturing into the Atlantic Ocean. Rogers and some of the others in his party returned to New York by rail; Twain disliked train travel and so elected to wait and return on the Kanawha. However, reporters lost track of his whereabouts; when he failed to return to New York City as scheduled, The New York Times speculated that he might have been "lost at sea". Upon arriving safely in New York and learning of this, the humorist wrote a satirical article about the episode, offering to "...make an exhaustive investigation of this report that I have been lost at sea. If there is any foundation for the report, I will at once apprise the anxious public". This bore similarities to an earlier event in 1897 when he made his famous remark "The report of my death was an exaggeration", after a reporter was sent to investigate whether he had died. In fact, it was his cousin who was seriously ill.

Later that year, Twain and Rogers's son, Henry Jr., returned to the Jamestown Exposition aboard the Kanawha. The humorist helped host Robert Fulton Day on September 23, 1907, celebrating the centennial of Fulton's invention of the steamboat. Twain, filling in for ailing former U.S. President Grover Cleveland, introduced Rear Admiral Purnell Harrington. Twain was met with a five-minute standing ovation; members of the audience cheered and waved their hats and umbrellas. Deeply touched, Twain said, "When you appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do feel it".

In April 1909, the two old friends returned to Norfolk, Virginia for the banquet in honor of Rogers and his newly completed Virginian Railway. Twain was the keynote speaker in one of his last public appearances, and was widely quoted in newspapers across the country.

A month later, Twain was en route from Connecticut to visit his friend in New York City when Rogers died suddenly on May 20, 1909. Twain arrived at Grand Central Station to be met by his daughter with the news. Stricken with grief, he uncustomarily avoided news reporters who had gathered, saying only "This is terrible...I cannot talk about it". Two days later, he served as an honorary pallbearer at the funeral in New York City. However, he declined to join the funeral party on the train ride for the interment at Fairhaven. He said "I cannot bear to travel with my friend and not converse".

Views

Although Twain remained neutral during the Civil War, his views became more radical as he grew older. He acknowledged that his views changed and developed over his life, referring to one of his favorite works:

Anti-Imperialist

In the New York Herald, October 15, 1900, he describes his transformation and political awakening, in the context of the Philippine-American War, from being "a red-hot imperialist":

Before 1899 Twain was an ardent imperialist. In the late 1860s and early 1870s he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands. In the mid 1890s he explained later, he was "a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming over the Pacific." He said the war with Spain in 1898 was "the worthiest" war ever fought. In 1899 he reversed course, and from 1901, soon after his return from Europe, until his death in 1910, Twain was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States and had "tens of thousands of members". He summed up his views of revolutions in the following statement:

Civil Rights

Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and emancipation, even going so far to say “Lincoln's Proclamation ... not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also.” He argued that non-whites did not receive justice in the United States, once saying “I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature....but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him.” He paid for at least one black person to attend Yale University Law School and for another black person to attend a southern university to become a minister.

Mark Twain was a staunch supporter of women's rights and an active campaigner for women's suffrage. His "Votes for Women" speech, in which he pressed for the granting of voting rights to women, is considered one of the most famous in history.

Helen Keller benefited from Twain's support, as she pursued her college education and publishing, despite her disabilities and financial limitations.

Twain's liberal views on race were not shown in his early sketches of Native Americans. Of them, Twain wrote in 1870:

As counterpoint, Twain's essay on "The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper" offers a much kinder view of Indians. In his later travelogue Following the Equator (1897), Twain observes that in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by "whites" in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey"; his conclusion is that "there are many humorous things in this world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages".

Labor

Twain wrote glowingly about unions in the riverboating industry in Life on the Mississippi, which was read in union halls decades later. He supported the labor movement, especially one of the most important unions, the Knights of Labor. In a speech to them, he said:

Vivisection

Twain was opposed to vivisection as the word was understood by him in 1899 (the meaning of this word has been subject to change over time). Twain's objection was not on a scientific basis but rather an ethical one. He specifically cited the pain caused to the animal as his basis of his opposition to the practice.

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

Religion

Although Twain was a Presbyterian, he was sometimes critical of organized religion and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. He wrote, for example, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so", and "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian". Nonetheless, as a mature adult he engaged in religious discussions and attended services, his theology developing as he wrestled with the deaths of loved ones and his own mortality. His own experiences and suffering of his family made him particularly critical of "faith healing", such as espoused by Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science. His more inflammatory work on religion require a nuanced understanding of his theological arguments and criticism. At other times he wrote or spoke in ways that contradicted a strict deist view, for example, plainly professing a belief in Providence. In some later writings in the 1890s, he was less optimistic about the goodness of God, observing that "if our Maker is all-powerful for good or evil, He is not in His right mind". At other times, he conjectured sardonically that perhaps God had created the world with all its tortures for some purpose of His own, but was otherwise indifferent to humanity, which was too petty and insignificant to deserve His attention anyway.

In 1901 Twain criticized the actions of missionary Dr. William Scott Ament (1851–1909) because Ament and other missionaries had collected indemnities from Chinese subjects in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising of 1900. Twain's response to hearing of Ament's methods was published in the North American Review in February 1901: To the Person Sitting in Darkness, and deals with examples of imperialism in China, South Africa, and with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. A subsequent article, "To My Missionary Critics" published in The North American Review in April 1901, unapologetically continues his attack, but with the focus shifted from Ament to his missionary superiors, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

After his death, Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until his daughter Clara reversed her position in 1962 in response to Soviet propaganda about the withholding. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916. Little Bessie, a story ridiculing Christianity, was first published in the 1972 collection Mark Twain's Fables of Man.

Despite these views, he raised money to build a Presbyterian Church in Nevada in 1864, although it has been argued that it was only by his association with his Presbyterian brother that he did that.

Twain created a reverent portrayal of Joan of Arc, a subject over which he had obsessed for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing. In 1900 and again in 1908, he stated, "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books, it is the best."

Those who knew Twain well late in life recount that he dwelt on the subject of the afterlife, his daughter Clara saying: "Sometimes he believed death ended everything, but most of the time he felt sure of a life beyond."

Mark Twain's frankest views on religion appeared in his final Autobiography which was published 100 years after his death, in November 2010. In it, he said,

Twain was a Freemason. He belonged to Polar Star Lodge No. 79 A.F.&A.M.;, based in St. Louis. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice on May 22, 1861, passed to the degree of Fellow Craft on June 12, and raised to the degree of Master Mason on July 10.

Legacy

in the Braeswood Place neighborhood of Houston, Texas]]

Public Library in Garden City, Kansas]]

Twain's legacy lives on today as his namesakes continue to multiply. Several schools are named after him, including Mark Twain Elementary School in Houston, Texas, which has a statue of Twain sitting on a bench, and Mark Twain Intermediate School in New York. There are several schools named Mark Twain Middle School in different states, as well as Samuel Clemens High School in Schertz, near San Antonio, Texas. There are also other structures, such as the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge.

Mark Twain Village is a United States Army installation located in the Südstadt district of Heidelberg, Germany. It is one of two American bases in the United States Army Garrison Heidelberg that house American soldiers and their families (the other being Patrick Henry Village).

Awards in his name proliferate. In 1998, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts created the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, awarded annually. The Mark Twain Award is an award given annually to a book for children in grades four through eight by the Missouri Association of School Librarians. Stetson University in DeLand, Florida sponsors the Mark Twain Young Authors' Workshop each summer in collaboration with the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal. The program is open to young authors in grades five through eight. The museum sponsors the Mark Twain Creative Teaching Award.

in Sydney, Australia]]

Buildings associated with Twain, including some of his many homes, have been preserved as museums. His birthplace is preserved in Florida, Missouri. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri preserves the setting for some of the author's best known work. The home of childhood friend Laura Hawkins, said to be the inspiration for his fictional character Becky Thatcher, is preserved as the "Thatcher House".In May 2007, a painstaking reconstruction of the home of Tom Blankenship, the inspiration for Huckleberry Finn, was opened to the public. The family home he had built in Hartford, Connecticut, where he and his wife raised their three daughters, is preserved and open to visitors as the Mark Twain House.

Actor Hal Holbrook created a one-man show called Mark Twain Tonight, which he has performed regularly for about years. The broadcast by CBS in 1967 won him an Emmy Award. Of the three runs on Broadway (1966, 1977, and 2005), the first won him a Tony Award.

Additionally, like many influential individuals, Twain was honored by having an asteroid, 2362 Mark Twain, named after him.

Often, Twain is depicted in pop culture as wearing a white suit. While there is evidence that suggests that, after Livy's death in 1904, Twain began wearing white suits on the lecture circuit, modern representations suggesting that he wore them throughout his life are unfounded. There is no evidence of him wearing a white suit before 1904; however, it did eventually become his trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (such as the time he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter). In 2011, the US Postal Service plans to release another stamp in his honor.

Pen names

Twain used different pen names before deciding on Mark Twain. He signed humorous and imaginative sketches Josh until 1863. Additionally, he used the pen name Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for a series of humorous letters.

He maintained that his primary pen name came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms, a depth indicating safe water for passage of boat, was measured on the sounding line. A fathom is a maritime unit of depth, equivalent to two yards (1.8 m); twain is an archaic term for "two". The riverboatman's cry was mark twain or, more fully, by the mark twain, meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is deep and it is safe to pass".

Twain claimed that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Life on the Mississippi, he wrote:

Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN", and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; ... At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands – a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

Twain's version of the story about his nom de plume has been questioned by biographer George Williams III, the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, and Purdue University's Paul Fatout. which claim that mark twain refers to a running bar tab that Twain would regularly incur while drinking at John Piper's saloon in Virginia City, Nevada.

Bibliography

See also

American realism

''Christian Science (essay)

Bernard DeVoto (historian)

List of premature obituaries

Mark Twain's Library of Humor (anthology)

Regionalism (literature)

Warsaw Signal (newspaper)

References

Further reading

Lucius Beebe. Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News. Stanford University Press, 1954 ISBN 112218798X

Louis J. Budd, ed. Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1891–1910 (Library of America, 1992) (ISBN 978-0-94045073-8)

Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan, and Geoffrey C. Ward, Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 (ISBN 0-3754-0561-5)

Gregg Camfield. The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 (ISBN 0-1951-0710-1)

Guy Cardwell, ed. Mark Twain, Mississippi Writings (Library of America, 1982) (ISBN 978-0-94045007-3)

Guy Cardwell, ed. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad & Roughing It (Library of America, 1984) ISBN 978-0-94045025-7

James M. Cox. Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor. Princeton University Press, 1966 (ISBN 0-8262-1428-2)

Everett Emerson. Mark Twain: A Literary Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000 (ISBN 0-8122-3516-9)

Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ed. A Historical Guide to Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 (ISBN 0-1951-3293-9)

Susan K. Harris, ed. Mark Twain, Historical Romances (Library of America, 1994) (ISBN 978-0-94045082-0)

Hamlin L. Hill, ed. Mark Twain, The Gilded Age and Later Novels (Library of America, 2002) ISBN 978-1-93108210-5

Jason Gary Horn. Mark Twain: A Descriptive Guide to Biographical Sources. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999 (ISBN 0-8108-3630-0)

William Dean Howells. My Mark Twain. Mineloa, New York: Dover Publications, 1997 (ISBN 0-486-29640-7)

Fred Kaplan. The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 2003 (ISBN 0-3854-7715-5)

Justin Kaplan. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966 (ISBN 0-6717-4807-6)

J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson, eds. The Mark Twain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1993 (ISBN 0-8240-7212-X)

Jerome Loving, Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens (University of California Press; 2010) 491 pages; Draws on newly discovered archival materials in a detailed biography

Bruce Michelson. Mark Twain on the Loose. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995 (ISBN 0-8702-3967-8)

K. Patrick Ober. Mark Twain and Medicine: "Any Mummery Will Cure". Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003 (ISBN 0-8262-1502-5)

Albert Bigelow Paine. Mark Twain, A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Harper & Bros., 1912. ISBN 1847029833

Ron Powers. Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. ISBN 0306810867

Ron Powers. Mark Twain: A Life. New York: Random House, 2005. (0-7432-4899-6)

R. Kent Rasmussen. Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Facts On File, 2007. Revised edition of Mark Twain A to Z ISBN 0816062250

R. Kent Rasmussen, ed. The Quotable Mark Twain: His Essential Aphorisms, Witticisms and Concise Opinions. Contemporary Books, 1997 ISBN 0809229870

Jerome Loving. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens University of California Press, 2010 ISBN 9780520252578

External links

;Works by Mark Twain

Mark Twain Classics - Twain's Speeches, Essays, Stories, and Quotes.

Mark Twain Project Online

* . More than 60 texts are freely available.

Mark Twain's letters ed. by Albert Bigelow Paine (2 vol 1917) vol 2 online

Mark Twain Library, University of California Press. This series re-prints texts from the Papers and Works for students and the general reader.

The Works of Mark Twain, University of California Press. This series prints authoritative critical editions of Mark Twain's published works.

Mark Twain Papers, University of California Press. This series publishes Mark Twain's private papers–his letters, notebooks, unpublished literary works, and autobiography.

Jumping Frogs: Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain, University of California Press. The Jumping Frogs series of books brings neglected Mark Twain treasures—stories, tall tales, novels, travelogues, plays, imaginative journalism, speeches, sketches, satires, burlesques, and much more—to readers.

A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It. From The Atlantic Monthly. Nov. 1874: 591–594. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Co., November 1874. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Co., November 1874.

;Academic studies

The Mark Twain Papers and Project of the Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley. Home to the largest archive of Mark Twain's papers and the editors of a critical edition of all of his writings.

Buffalo Library Mark Twain Room, which houses the manuscript of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

;Life

Full text of the biography Mark Twain by Archibald Henderson

*

Mark Twain's Mississippi at Northern Illinois University Libraries

Mark Twain: The Licensed Jester Essay from 1943 by George Orwell about Mark Twain

;Other

Literary Pilgrimages – Mark Twain sites

PBS Twain Interactive Scrapbook and San Francisco Chronicle article documenting that Clemens did not say "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco".

The Fountain Pens used by Mark Twain

Images of First Appearances of Mark Twain Works

article and rare pictures of Mark Twain and photographer Napoleon Sarony

Google map with placemarks for places in America associated with Twain

Category:1835 births Category:1910 deaths Category:American agnostics Category:American humorists Category:American memoirists Category:American novelists Category:American satirists Category:American short story writers Category:American travel writers Category:Alternate history writers Category:American autobiographers Category:Writers from Connecticut Category:Writers from Missouri Category:Writers from Nevada Category:Literary collaborators Category:Holy Land travellers Category:People of the Philippine–American War Category:People of the California Gold Rush Category:People from Elmira, New York Category:People from Hannibal, Missouri Category:People from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People from Monroe County, Missouri Category:Lecturers Category:Critics of Christian Science

Name	Mark Ronson
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Occupation	Musician, DJ, producer
Birth name	Mark Daniel Ronson
Born	September 04, 1975Notting Hill, London, United Kingdom
Origin	New York City, New York, United States
Label	AllidoColumbiaRCARoc Nation
Years active	1993 – present
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, percussion, keyboards, drum machine, bass, clavinet, organ, piano
Associated acts	Duran Duran, Amy Winehouse, Daniel Merriweather, Jordan Galland, Wale,The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, the Business International
Url

Mark Daniel Ronson (born 4 September 1975) is an English DJ, guitarist, music producer, artist and co-founder of Allido Records. He currently works with his band under the music alias of Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.

While his debut album Here Comes the Fuzz failed to make an impact on the charts, his second album, Version included three top ten hits and won Ronson a BRIT Award for Best Male Artist 2008. His third studio album, Record Collection, was released on 27 September 2010.

Early life

Ronson was born at the Wellington Hospital, St John's Wood, to writer/socialite Ann Dexter-Jones and one-time band manager and real estate entrepreneur Laurence Ronson. His parents are of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, with ancestors from Austria, Russia, and Lithuania, and Ronson was brought up in Conservative Judaism. Ronson's family name was originally Aaronson but his grandfather Henry Ronson changed it to Ronson. Ronson is related to British Conservative politicians Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Leon Brittan, He has younger twin sisters, Charlotte Ronson, a fashion designer, and Samantha Ronson, a singer and DJ. After his parents broke up, his mother married Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones, which contributed to a childhood surrounded by music.

Career

Ronson went to high school at the private Collegiate School in New York. Attending Vassar College and then New York University (NYU), Ronson became a regular at downtown hip hop spots and made his name as a DJ on the New York club scene in 1993, charging $50 per job. Though a novice with little experience, he became known for his diverse, genre-spanning selection. Influenced by funk, the hip hop scene of New York and the more rock influence of the UK (all of which he incorporated in his sets) he attracted a wider audience. He was soon one of the most respected DJs and was being called on for celebrities' private parties. In 1999, Ronson was featured in an ad wearing Tommy Hilfiger denim in the recording studio for an ad campaign for the company.

Here Comes the Fuzz and initial producing

He moved on, however, to producing music after Nikka Costa's manager heard one of his gigs and introduced the musicians. He produced her song "Everybody Got Their Something", and soon Ronson signed a record contract with Elektra Records. Mark had produced tracks for Hilfiger ads, and in 2001 used the connection to have Costa's single "Like a Feather" used in an ad.

Ronson's first album, Here Comes the Fuzz, was released in 2003 and was critically acclaimed and a financial success, despite initially poor sales. On the album, he wrote the songs, made the beats and played guitar, keyboards, and bass. The album featured artists from diverse genres, including Mos Def, Jack White, Sean Paul, Nikka Costa, Nappy Roots and Rivers Cuomo. The best known song from the album, "Ooh Wee", samples "Sunny" by Boney M and features Nate Dogg, Ghostface Killah, Trife Da God, and Saigon. It featured that year in the movie Honey and its soundtrack. The song was later used in the movies Hitch and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Macy Gray, Christina Aguilera, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, and Robbie Williams.

Ronson became one of the regular DJs at Justin Timberlake's New York club, Suede, when it opened in 2003.

In 2004, Ronson formed his own record label, Allido Records, a subsidiary of Sony BMG's J Records, along with his longtime manager Rich Kleiman. The first artist he signed to Allido was rapper Saigon, who later left to sign with Just Blaze's Fort Knox Entertainment. He has signed Rhymefest, most well-known for winning the Grammy for co-writing Kanye West's "Jesus Walks".

Version

Ronson released a cover of The Smiths' track "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" under the title "Stop Me" on 2 April 2007, featuring singer Daniel Merriweather, which reached number 2 in the UK singles charts, the biggest hit for Ronson to date. Ronson remixed the Bob Dylan song "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" in promotion for the three disc Bob Dylan set titled Dylan released October 2007. Ronson has also produced Candie Payne's "One More Chance (Ronson mix)" in 2007.

The album has been well received by critics. In May 2007 it was awarded the title Album of the Month by the British dance music magazine, Mixmag. On 23 June, the DJ made the cover of the Guardian newspaper's Guide magazine, alongside singer Lily Allen.

In June 2007, Ronson signed DC hip hop artist Wale to Allido Records. In late 2007, he focused on production, working with Daniel Merriweather on his debut album, and recording again with Amy Winehouse and Robbie Williams.

On 24 October 2007 Ronson performed a one-off set at The Roundhouse in Camden, London as part of the BBC Electric Proms 2007. The performance featured the BBC Concert Orchestra and included special guests Terry Hall, Sean Lennon, Tim Burgess, Alex Greenwald, Ricky Wilson, Charlie Waller, Adele and Kyle Falconer.

Ronson received a Grammy Award nomination in early December 2007 for 'Producer of the Year, Non Classical', along with Timbaland and Mike Elizondo. Ronson's work with Amy Winehouse also received substantial praise, gaining 6 nominations. Back to Black, an album mostly produced by Ronson was nominated for 'Album of the Year' and 'Best Pop Vocal Album'. "Rehab" received nods for 'Best Female Pop Vocal Performance', 'Song of the Year' and 'Record of the Year'. Ronson would go on to win three Grammys for 'Producer of the Year' as well as 'Best Pop Vocal Album' and 'Record of the Year' (which he shared with Amy Winehouse) in early February 2008.

Ronson is credited as producer on a mixtape album called Man in the Mirror, released in January 2008 by the rapper Rhymefest which is a tribute to the pop star Michael Jackson. The album features Rhymefest appearing to speak to Michael Jackson using archive audio from interviews with the pop star.

Later in January 2008, Ronson received three nominations for the Brit Awards, including 'Best Male Solo Artist', 'Best Album' (Version) and 'Song of the Year' ("Valerie"). Ronson won his first Brit for 'Best Male Solo Artist' in mid February 2008 over favorite Mika. He also performed a medley of "God Put a Smile upon Your Face" with Adele, "Stop Me" with Daniel Merriweather and "Valerie" with Amy Winehouse.

The performance allowed for a large boost in sales in the iTunes UK Top 100. "Valerie" would jump almost 30 spots in the days after the event, while "Just", "Stop Me" and "Oh My God" all appeared in the chart as well. That same week, Ronson appeared twice in the UK Top 40, with "Valerie" rebounding to number 13 and "Just" at number 31, his fourth Top 40 hit from "Version". The Brits performance also allowed for "Version" to climb 18 spots to number 4.

Around this time, Ronson received his first number one on an international chart (Dutch Top 40) for "Valerie", which has spent four consecutive weeks at the top of the chart. He collaborated with Kaiser Chiefs on their third album.

Ronson has toured the album "Version" vigorously through both the UK and Europe during 2008. Notable sold out performances at The Hammersmith Apollo and Brixton Academy. Ronson is known to champion new upcoming artists on the road with him, such as Sam Sparro and Julian Perretta. Ronson's string backing was provided by the all-female string quartet Demon Strings. In May 2008, Ronson played at the largest private party in the world, the Trinty Ball in Trinity College Dublin. On 2 July 2008 in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits that were created by Ronson, along with tracks from the band's new album, Red Carpet Massacre. Ronson & the Version Players also brought Ronson's acclaimed live show to the event, performing songs from his album Version. Simon LeBon was one of his featured guest vocalists. As of March 2009 Ronson was working with the group on their upcoming 13th album. The Album, titled All You Need Is Now is scheduled for digital release on 21 December 2010. This will be followed by a physical release in February 2011.

Record Collection

At the launch of his most recent Gucci pop-up store in London, Ronson confirmed the name of his new album Record Collection, and said that he hoped to have it out by September 2010. Additionally, Ronson announced the name of his new band, "The Business Intl.'", which is the alias adopted by Ronson on the third studio album. The first single "Bang Bang Bang". which featured rapper Q-Tip and singer MNDR was released on 12 July 2010, where it peaked at number 6 on the UK Singles Chart, giving Ronson his fourth Top 10 hit. The single also saw success on the Irish Singles Chart, where it peaked at number 18. The second single from the album, "The Bike Song", was 19 September 2010 and features Kyle Falconer from The View and Spank Rock. The album was released on 27 September 2010.

Videos

Ronson created a video, along with Directors Gary Breslin and Jordan Galland: Circuit Breaker, which is a Homage to video hero The Legend of Zelda (video game)

Personal life

Ronson spends his time between New York and London; due to this and his childhood he has a Mid-Atlantic English accent. Ronson is the nephew of property tycoon Gerald Ronson. Mark has two sisters who are twins: Charlotte is a fashion designer and his other sister Samantha is a DJ and singer. He lived next door to, and was friends with, Sean Lennon. Ronson became a naturalised citizen of the United States in 2008.

In 2002, he began dating Quincy Jones's daughter, actress/singer Rashida Jones They became engaged in March 2003, with Ronson proposing by creating a crossword puzzle with the message "Will you marry me". They later broke up. In the beginning of 2008, Ronson briefly dated English model/socialite Daisy Lowe. Ronson went on to date Tennessee Thomas, the English drummer of American indie girl band The Like. The pair split in early 2009. In March of that year, Ronson was pictured with new girlfriend, Joséphine de La Baume.

In 2009 he participated in PETA's "Please Don't Wear Any Fur" campaign. He was also voted the most stylish man in UK by GQ magazine

Discography

Studio albums

Singles

;Other charted songs:

Notes: - As Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.

Production discography

Albums

1998: Flip Squad Allstars - The Flip Squad Allstar DJs

1999: The High & Mighty - Home Field Advantage (programming)

2001: Nikka Costa - Everybody Got Their Something

2002: Jimmy Fallon - The Bathroom Wall (mixing)

2002: Sean Paul - Dutty Rock

2002: Saigon - The Best of Saigon a.k.a. The Yardfather Volume 1

2003: Mark Ronson - Here Comes the Fuzz

2003: Macy Gray - The Trouble with Being Myself (programming)

2004: Consequence - Take 'Em to the Cleaners

2005: Ol' Dirty Bastard - Osirus

2005: Terry Sullivan - TheErthMoovsAroundTheSun (guitar)

2005: Teriyaki Boyz - Beef or Chicken

2006: Lily Allen - Alright, Still

2006: Rhymefest - Blue Collar

2006: Christina Aguilera - Back to Basics

2006: Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

2006: Robbie Williams - Rudebox

2006: Ghostface Killah - More Fish

2007: Wale - 100 Miles & Running

2007: Mark Ronson - Version

2008: Rhymefest - Man in the Mirror

2008: Adele - 19

2008: Estelle - Shine

2008: Wale - The Mixtape About Nothing

2008: Solange Knowles - Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams

2008: Nas - Untitled

2008: Q-Tip - The Renaissance

2008: Kaiser Chiefs - Off with Their Heads

2009: Wale & 9th Wonder - Back to the Feature

2009: Richard Swift - The Atlantic Ocean

2009: Wale - Attention Deficit

2009: Daniel Merriweather - Love & War

2009: The Rumble Strips - Welcome to the Walk Alone

2009: ODB - A Son Unique

2010: The Like - Release Me

2010: Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. - Record Collection

2011: Duran Duran - All You Need is Now

Singles

1997: Posse-O - "It's Up to You..."

1998: Powerule - "Heatin' Up"

1998: Powerule - "Rhymes to Bust" / "It's Your Right"

2001: Nikka Costa - "Like a Feather"

2002: J-Live - "School's In"

2004: Daniel Merriweather - "City Rules"

2004: Daniel Merriweather - "She's Got Me"

2005: Ol' Dirty Bastard - "Dirty Dirty"

2005: Rhymefest - "These Days"

2005: Rhymefest - "Brand New"

2006: Amy Winehouse - "Rehab"

2006: Robbie Williams - "Lovelight"

2006: Lily Allen - "Littlest Things"

2007: Amy Winehouse - "You Know I'm No Good"

2007: Robbie Williams - "Bongo Bong and Je Ne T'Aime Plus"

2007: Amy Winehouse - "Back to Black"

2007: Christina Aguilera - "Slow Down Baby"

2007: Candie Payne - "One More Chance"

2007: Amy Winehouse - "Love Is a Losing Game"

2008: Adele - "Cold Shoulder"

2008: Leon Jean-Marie - "Bed of Nails"

2008: Kaiser Chiefs - "Never Miss a Beat"

2008: Wiley - "Cash in My Pocket"

2008: Kaiser Chiefs - "Good Days Bad Days"

2009: Daniel Merriweather - "Change"

2009: Daniel Merriweather - "Red"

2009: Daniel Merriweather - "Impossible

Awards

Winner

Grammy Award 2008 Producer of the Year - Non-Classical, Record of the Year (with Amy Winehouse), Best Pop Vocal Album (also with Winehouse)

The BRIT Awards 2008 Best British Male Solo Artist

Vodafone Live Music Awards - Best Live Male - Winner 2008

Glamour Women of the Year - Men of the Year - Winner 2008

Nominations

BRIT Awards 2008 Best Album - Version, Best Single Valerie (feat. Amy Winehouse)

MOBO Awards 2010 Best Video - Bang Bang Bang (feat. Q-Tip & MNDR), Best Song - Bang Bang Bang (feat. Q-Tip & MNDR)

References

External links

Category:Never Mind the Buzzcocks Category:Grammy Award winners Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Allido Records artists Category:2000s singers Category:1990s singers Category:Hip hop DJs Category:English DJs Category:English male singers Category:Alternative rock musicians Category:Hip hop record producers Category:English record producers Category:The Collegiate School alumni Category:Jewish singers Category:English Jews Category:English immigrants to the United States Category:People from Notting Hill Category:People from Manhattan Category:1975 births Category:Living people Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States

Name	Mark Morrison
Background	solo_singer
Alias	Mack Morrison
Origin	Hanover, West Germany
Nationality	British
Born	May 03, 1972
Genre	R&B;, hip hop, rap, Dance
Years active	1995–present
Label	Mack Life Records}}

Mark Morrison (born 3 May 1972) is an English R&B; singer who saw success in the mid 1990s. His single "Return of the Mack" became a #1 or Top 10 hit in several European countries in 1996. The song peaked at #2 in America the following year.

Early life

Morrison was born in Hanover, West Germany, where his father was stationed as a soldier. His first release was "Crazy", in spring 1995; the single reached the Top 20 in the United Kingdom, with the minor hit "Let's Get Down" following in the autumn. "Return of the Mack" followed in spring 1996, and was the first single by a solo Black British male artist to reach the number 1 spot in the UK Singles Chart in the 1990s. It also sold more than two million copies in the US. A reissue of "Crazy" hit the Top 10 in summer 1996, with further single releases "Trippin'", "Horny" and "Moan and Groan" also making the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. Morrison's first album, also titled Return of the Mack, was released in 1996 by Warner Bros/Atlantic Records, and reached number 4 in the UK Albums Chart. As a result of these works, Morrison was nominated for four Brit Awards, though he won none, and received a Mercury Prize nomination, an MTV Europe Music Awards nomination, and five MOBO Awards nominations, of which he won "Best R&B; Act" in 1996. He also performed at the 1997 Brit Awards.

The performance at the Brit's influenced WEA and Morrison to release Only God Can Judge Me, a 9-track EP which contained live performances, interviews, prayers and three full-length songs including "Who's The Mack", which reached #13 in the UK.

Criminal record

In 1993, Morrison was fined £50 for obstructing a police officer, and in 1997 was fined £750 for threatening behaviour. He was later cleared of the offensive weapon charge.

He was convicted of affray for his part in a brawl in which a man was killed, and sentenced to community service. Morrison later was incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs for a year for paying a lookalike, to perform Morrison's court-appointed community service in Morrison's stead, while Morrison went on tour. Also in 1998, Morrison was banned from driving for six months and fined £1,380 after twice being caught driving without a licence.

In 2002, Morrison was arrested on suspicion of kidnap and car theft. He was released on bail but a policemen was later arrested on suspicion of taking a bribe from Morrison in return for his release.

In 2009, Morrison was arrested for an assault in London.

Return to music

Morrison appeared on the 1999 Brit Awards where he presented an award and introduced Josh Klemme and announced his return to music. He was signed to footballer Kevin Campbell's 2 Wikid label in 2003. His first release for the label, the "Just a Man"/"Backstabbers" single was a minor UK hit, reaching #48 in the UK Singles Chart in August 2004. In May 2006, Morrison released a limited edition DVD/CD version of his comeback album Innocent Man in the UK, independently through his own imprint Mack Life Records/Mona Records. He also featured on Cassidy's song "Innocent Man (Misunderstood)" from his B.A.R.S. The Barry Adrian Reese Story album. The track sampled Morrison's lyrics from his song, "Innocent Man". In 2008, he stated that he would never return to his home town of Leicester because the city had shown him "nothing but contempt", also calling himself "The Beatles of that city". In 2008, Morrison announced the release of a 'best of' compilation, King of British R&B;: The Best Of.. Mark Morrison, although it remains unreleased.

In 2010 a new album was announced, I Am What I Am, to be preceded by a single, "B'Day" in 2011.

Discography

Return of the Mack (1996)

Only God Can Judge Me (1997)

Innocent Man (2006)

I Am What I Am (2011)

References

Rolling Stone discography for Mark Morrison

Yahoo! discography for Mark Morrison

Interviews on the Leicester Bands website

External links

Mark Morrison Official website

Macklife Records Official website

Macklife TV Official website

Mark Morrison Official Youtube Page

Mark Morrison Official MySpace

Bio at SoulSite.de

Category:1972 births Category:Living people Category:People from Leicester Category:English male singers Category:Death Row Records artists Category:Black British musicians

Name	Mark Lowry
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Mark Alan Lowry
Voice type	Baritone
Genre	Southern Gospel
Occupation	Singer, Songwriter, Comedian, Author
Years active	1980-present
Url	http://www.marklowry.com/

Mark Alan Lowry (born June 24, 1958) is a Christian comedian, songwriter, and singer, best known for co-writing the song “Mary, Did You Know?”. Lowry performed with the Gaither Vocal Band from 1988–2001 and, in January 2009, he re-joined the group along with other "GVB" alumni Michael English and David Phelps. Lowry has recorded twelve albums, both music and comedy.

Early life

Lowry was born in Houston, Texas to Charles, an attorney, and Beverly Lowry. He often uses anecdotes of his young life in his comedy, as well as speaking of his experience with hyperactivity and Attention Deficit Disorder in his performances. Lowry is the self-described “Poster Boy for Hyperactivity.”

Early career

While attending Liberty Baptist College (now known as Liberty University), Lowry joined a college evangelistic team made of Charles Hughes and David Musselman and began singing. Lowry's comedy career inadvertently began from here. There would be an elongated pause in his singing performance while he waited for the soundtrack to be changed. Lowry began to fill this pause with a monologue. Lowry soon realized that the audiences at his performances were laughing not at him but at his monologues.

In 1978, Lowry was badly injured in an car accident near Carlisle, PA, while touring with a college evangelistic team. He sustained eleven broken bones, and spent a good deal of time in physical therapy recovering from the accident.

Mary, Did You Know?

In 1984, Lowry wrote the lyrics to the song "Mary, Did You Know?. He was asked to write a script for a church Christmas play. Lowry wrote a series of questions that he would like to ask Mary, the mother of Jesus. These questions were used in between the scenes of the play. Over the next decade, Lowry tried to find the music that would complete the song. Twelve years after writing the lyrics, musician and songwriter Buddy Greene wrote the music to the song. The Christmas play script became the song.

The song has become a popular Christmas song performed by more than thirty artists including, Clay Aiken, Kenny Rogers, Wynonna Judd, Michael English, Daniel Childs, Natalie Cole, and Michael Crawford among others.

The Gaither Vocal Band

In 1988, Lowry was approached by Bill Gaither and asked to join the Gaither Vocal Band as the baritone. Lowry's career with the Gaither Vocal Band spanned thirteen years during his first stint with the group. During this time Lowry's on-stage antics became popular with audiences. As a result, Lowry became the co-host of the many concerts and shows performed by Gaither and the Vocal Band with Gaither playing the straight man to Lowry's antics.

In June 2001, Lowry resigned from the Gaither Vocal Band after performing longer with the group than any previous member except Bill Gaither himself. After that, Lowry released several solo albums, including I Love to Tell the Story, A Hymns Collection.

On January 14, 2009, it was announced that Lowry would be returning to the Gaither Vocal Band.

Videos

Lowry's first video was Mark Lowry: My First Comedy Video made in 1988. Next, he made Mark Lowry: The Last Word in 1992 at the Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, TN. Next, he taped Mark Lowry: Mouth in Motion in 1993 at Carpenter's Home Church in Lakeland, Florida. The album won a Dove Award for Long Form Music Video of the Year at the 25th GMA Dove Awards in 1994. Then, after that, he made Mark Lowry: Remotely Controlled in 1995. Mark Lowry On Broadway was performed and captured to DVD at the Beacon Theatre in NYC in 2000, and Mark Lowry Goes to Hollywood was performed and captured to DVD at the Cerritos Center in Cerritos, CA, in January 2005.

Current projects

Lowry continues to tour the United States performing his music and comedy concerts as well as recording music and comedy CD albums and videos. In addition, Lowry records and publishes several iPod podcasts; in particular, Saturdays with Mark and Tony, a weekly podcast with Tony Campolo. Lowry is also co-hosting "Bill Gaither's Homecoming Radio" with Bill Gaither and Phil Brower.

Family

Lowry is single and has no children. He has two siblings - an older brother Mike of Lynchburg, Virginia and a younger sister, Melissa also of Lynchburg. He refers to his siblings as "perfect" at different times ("my older brother Mike, who is perfect... Melissa came along and she was perfect, too...") He also has three nieces and two nephews.

References

External links

The "ReMARKable" Site - MarkLowry.com, Lowry's official website

Gaither.com - home of Gaither records and the Gaither Vocal Band

Category:American comedy musicians Category:American baritones Category:Southern gospel performers Category:Baptist ministers from the United States Category:People from Houston, Texas Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:American Christians Category:Liberty University alumni Category:Baptists from the United States

Mark Gonzales (born June 1, 1968), also known as "Gonz" and "The Gonz," is an American professional skateboarder and artist. He is known in the skateboarding world as a pioneer of modern street skateboarding, currently skateboarding's most popular form.

Biography

Skateboarding career

Gonz came on the skateboarding scene at age 15 with a modern approach to street skating and made the cover of Thrasher magazine's November 1984 issue, riding a board from Alva, by whom he was sponsored at the time. He was soon to be picked up for sponsorship by Vision Skateboards.

In 1986, Gonzales performed a groundbreaking ollie at the Embarcadero in San Francisco. So historic was this incident for skateboarding, it became forever known as the "Gonz Gap" and helped make the Embarcadero a popular location for skateboarders.

Various media

Gonz has appeared in a few movies, including Harmony Korine's cult film Gummo, where he wrestles a chair. He was also the male lead in a 1997 Spike Jonze short film, How They Get There. A film called Beautiful Losers (film), about Contemporary Art and Street Culture, also features Gonzales and was released on August 2, 2008.

In 2007 he published a skateboarding video called "Gnar Gnar" that was shot with an old VHS camcorder and was limited to only 1000 VHS copies.

Most recently, Mark Gonzales was also featured in the music video "West Coast" by Jason Schwartzman's band, Coconut Records. This was a skate video sequence originally filmed in 1998 at a German museum, but edited and synced for this music video with his permission. He also recently directed and is featured in Coconut Records' new video "Any Fun" alongside actress Chloë Sevigny as well as skateboarder Alex Olson.

He is also a poet and author and has published several books including Social Problems, High Tech Poetry, Broken Dreams, and Broken Poems. In 2008, Drag City released a book called The Collected Fanzines that consists of reproductions of old zines that he collaborated with Harmony Korine in making.

Gonz also appears in the skate video game EA Skate and filmed a commercial to promote the game's release.

References

External links

Interview with Mark Gonzales in the frequency: The Snowboarder's Journal

Mark Gonzales at Rolf Contemporary

Krooked Skateboarding (Gonzales' skateboard company)

Mark Gonzales fiction and illustration in Frequency The Snowboard Journal (Gonzales' Interview)

Category:American skateboarders Category:Living people Category:1969 births

Mark Farina (born in Chicago, Illinois, USA on March 25, 1969) is a disc jockey and musician, known for his Chicago house, acid jazz and downtempo works. Notable releases include Mood (KMS Records, 1989) and the Mushroom Jazz series (Om Records, 1996–2010), and recently known also from house compilations El Divinio. He is primarily identified with the house music scene in San Francisco, California, where he resides, but DJs widely around the world.

Shortly after Mark befriended Derrick Carter in 1988 at a record store in Chicago, his passion for House music, and sharing it with the world, exploded. Mark experimented with a deeper style, dropping De La Soul, disco classics and other stuff that wasn’t being played in the main rooms of nightclubs. While exploring his love for the purist forms of House Music, Mark developed his trademark style, known as "Mushroom Jazz": acid jazz infused with the West Coast’s jazzy, organic productions along with urban beats. Fans embraced Mark’s downtempo style so much that he started a weekly Mushroom Jazz club night in San Francisco with Patty Ryan. In 3 years at the club, Farina and Mushroom Jazz established a very strong following. When the club closed, Farina continued the tradition by releasing a series of CDs under the same name, Mushroom Jazz. Since then, Mark has been traveling the globe performing hundreds of shows each year. His House sets have been described as the jazzy side of Chicago House mixed San Fran style. Some of his sets have been known to last up to 8 hours. Sometimes Farina will play two different rooms at the same party, showcasing his range of talents. URB, MUZIK and BPM Magazines have all had him on their Top DJs In The World lists.

Discography (Selected Releases)

Geograffiti EP (Great Lakes Audio)

Mushroom Jazz series

* Mushroom Jazz 7 (Om)

* Mushroom Jazz 6 (Om)

* Mushroom Jazz 5 (Om)

* Mushroom Jazz 4 (Om)

* Mushroom Jazz 3 (Om)

* Mushroom Jazz 2 (Om)

* Mushroom Jazz 1 (Om)

Fabric 40 (Fabric)

Live In Tokyo (Om)

House of OM (Om)

Sessions (MOS)

Seasons (Moonshine)

Imperial Dub (Imperial)

United DJs of America (DMC)

San Francisco Sessions (Om)

Connect (Om)

Live at Om w/Derrick Carter (Om)

Others

There is another Mark Farina in Perth, Western Australia, he is also in the music industry but not as well known as his American namesake.

There is also an Italo Disco/Eurobeat artist named Mark Farina (real name: Mauro Farina) who runs his own studio in Verona, Italy named Team Factory (Factory Team). Team Factory studios produced and still produces the majority of popular dance tunes that come out of Italy, including "What's Up" by DJ Miko, Hey Hey Guy by Ken Laszlo, "If You Say Goodbye" by Kate Project, and plenty others. Team Factory studios has been around since 1982.

External links

Website

Om Records biography

Early 90's Mark Farina Mixtapes

Category:1969 births Category:American DJs Category:Musicians from Chicago, Illinois Category:Living people Category:Club DJs Category:American house musicians

Name	Gillian Welch
Img alt	A slender, middle-aged woman with long brown hair plays guitar and sings into a microphone. She wears a cowboy hat and a red dress.
Background	solo_singer
Born	October 02, 1967 New York City, New York, U.S.
Origin	Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Instrument	singing, guitar, banjo, drums
Genre	Bluegrass, Americana, rock
Associated acts	Dave Rawlings Machine
Url	gillianwelch.com
Notable instruments	1956 Gibson J-50

Gillian Welch (; born October 2, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, Bluegrass, and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as "at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms". Howard Welch was born on October 2, 1967 in New York City, and was adopted by Ken and Mitzie Welch, comedy and music entertainers.

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External links

Official website

Gillian Welch at Rolling Stone

Category:1967 births Category:Living people Category:American female singers Category:American folk singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Berklee College of Music alumni Category:American bluegrass musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:People from Nashville, Tennessee Category:People from New York City Category:University of California, Santa Cruz alumni Category:American adoptees Category:American female guitarists Category:People from Santa Monica, California

Name	Emmylou Harris
Background	solo_singer
Born	April 02, 1947Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
Instrument	Voice, guitar
Genre	Folk, country rock, country, bluegrass, rock, pop, alt-country
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, producer, arranger
Years active	1969–present
Label	Jubilee, Reprise, Warner Bros., Elektra, Rhino, Nonesuch
Associated acts	Gram ParsonsJohn PrineJames Burton Rodney Crowell Bob Dylan Ricky Skaggs Beth Neilsen ChapmanDixie ChicksAlbert LeeArlo GuthrieNeil YoungThe BandDon Williams Dolly Parton Little FeatLinda RonstadtDave Matthews Patty Griffin Willie NelsonJohn DenverBruce SpringsteenSteve Earle Ryan AdamsBright Eyes SpyboyMark KnopflerJuice NewtonIris DementThe Nash Ramblers
Url	www.emmylouharris.com

Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, John Denver, The Band, Elvis Costello, Conor Oberst, and Dolly Parton.

Biography

Early years

Emmylou Harris is the daughter of career military officer Walter Harris and his wife Eugenia. Walter Harris, a member of the Marine Corps, was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Emmylou Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian. In high school she also won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously, learning to play the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar. Leaving college to pursue her musical aspirations, she moved to New York, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. She married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and in the following year recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, and Harris and her newborn daughter Hallie moved in with her parents in the Maryland suburbs on the edge of Washington, D.C.

With Gram Parsons

Harris soon returned to performing as part of a trio with Gerry Mule and Tom Guidera. One night in 1971, members of the country rock group The Flying Burrito Brothers happened to be in the audience. Former Byrds member Chris Hillman, who had taken over the band after the departure of its founder Gram Parsons, was so impressed by Harris that he briefly considered asking her to join the band. Instead, Hillman ended up recommending her to Parsons, who was looking for a female vocalist to work with on his first solo album, GP. Harris toured as a member of Parsons' band, The Fallen Angels, in 1973, and the couple shone during vocal harmonies and duets. Harris was quite pleased, and invested a lot emotionally in their relationship. Later that year, Parsons and Harris were working together to record a studio album, Grievous Angel. Parsons died in his motel room near what is now Joshua Tree National Park on September 19, 1973, from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol. Parsons's Grievous Angel was released posthumously in 1974, and three more tracks from his last sessions with Harris were included on another posthumous Parsons album, Sleepless Nights, in 1976. There was one more album of recorded material from that period of time that was packaged with the name, Live 1973, but wasn't released until 1982.

The working relationship between Harris and Parsons is one of great importance in country and country-rock music history. Parsons offered Harris a study in true country music, introducing her to artists like The Louvin Brothers, and provided her with a musical identity; Harris's harmony and duet vocals, on the other hand, were lauded by those who heard them, and helped inspire Parsons' performances. His death left her devastated at an emotional and musical crossroads. She eventually carried on with her own version of Parsons' musical vision, and was instrumental in bringing attention to his achievements. Harris's earliest signature song, and arguably her most personal one, "Boulder to Birmingham", written shortly after Gram's death, showed the depth of her shock and pain at losing Parsons. It was, according to her best friend Linda Ronstadt, the beginning of a "lifetime effort to process what had happened", and was just the first of many songs written and/or performed by Harris about her life with (and without) Parsons.

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham I would hold my life in his saving grace. I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham If I thought I could see, I could see your face. --"Boulder to Birmingham"

lyrics by Emmylou Harris''

Harris moved back to Washington D.C., and formed an electric band, The Angel Band, consisting of Bruce Archer on guitar, Tom Guidera on bass, Danny Pendleton on pedal steel and Mark Cuff on drums. Friend Linda Ronstadt invited Harris to join her in Los Angeles. Ronstadt, having a deep admiration for Harris's musicianship, informed everyone she could of Harris's talents and was instrumental in helping to get her work in musical venues (often singing with her), along the Sunset Strip. In fact, Harris credits Ronstadt with being the force behind her getting a record contract.

The Hot Band

Warner Brothers A&R; representative Mary Martin introduced Harris to Canadian producer Brian Ahern, who produced her major label debut album, Pieces of the Sky, released in 1975 on Reprise Records. The album was surprisingly eclectic, especially by Nashville standards, including cover versions of The Beatles' "For No One", Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and The Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love". It also featured "Bluebird Wine", a composition by young Texas songwriter Rodney Crowell, who was the first in a long line of songwriters whose talents Harris has championed. The record was one of the most expensive country records produced at the time, featuring the talents of James Burton, Glen Hardin, Ron Tutt, Ray Pohlman, and Bill Payne, as well as two tracks ("Before Believing" and "Queen of the Silver Dollar") that were cut with the Angel Band. Two singles were released: "Too Far Gone", which initially charted at #73 (a 1979 reissue hit #13), and Harris's first big hit, "If I Could Only Win Your Love", a duet with Herb Pedersen (later to be a founding member of The Desert Rose Band), which peaked at #4.

Executives of Warner Bros. Records (Reprise Records's parent company) told Harris they would agree to record her if she would "get a hot band". Harris did so, enlisting guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin, both of whom had played with Elvis Presley as well as Parsons. Burton was a renowned guitarist, starting in Ricky Nelson's band in the 1950s, and Hardin had been a member of The Crickets. Other Hot Band members were drummer John Ware, pedal steel guitarist Hank DeVito, and bassist Emory Gordy, Jr., with whom Harris had worked while performing with Parsons. Singer-songwriter Crowell was enlisted as a rhythm guitarist and duet partner. Harris's first tour schedule originally dovetailed around Presley's, owing to Burton and Hardin's continuing commitments to Presley's band. The Hot Band lived up to its name, with most of the members moving on with fresh talent replacing them as they continued on to solo careers of their own.

Elite Hotel, released in December 1975, established that the buzz created by Pieces of the Sky was well-founded. Unusual for country albums at the time, which largely revolved around a hit single, Harris's albums borrowed their approach from the album-oriented rock market; in terms of quality and artistic merit, tracks like "Sin City", "Wheels", and "Till I Gain Control Again", which weren't singles, easily stood against tracks like "Together Again", "Sweet Dreams", and "One of These Days", which were. While Elite Hotel was a #1 country album, the album did sufficiently well as a crossover success with the rock audience. Harris appealed to those who normally disapproved of the country market's pull toward crossover pop singles ("Together Again" and "Sweet Dreams" both topped the country charts). Elite Hotel won a Grammy in 1976 for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female.

Harris's reputation for guest work continued. Aside from contributing to albums by Linda Ronstadt, Guy Clark and Neil Young, Harris was tapped by Bob Dylan to perform on his Desire album. Harris also filmed one of the studio sequences, owing to her touring schedule, in The Band's The Last Waltz, singing "Evangeline."

Burton left the Hot Band in 1976, choosing to remain with Elvis Presley's band, and was replaced by English guitarist Albert Lee. Harris's commercial apex was Luxury Liner, released in 1977, which remains one of her definitive records. On Luxury Liner, Harris's mix of songs from Chuck Berry ("(You Never Can Tell) C'est La Vie"), Gram Parsons (the title track and "She"), The Carter Family ("Hello Stranger") and Kitty Wells ("Making Believe") illustrate a continuity and artistic merit to country music often overlooked at the time. Despite Top Ten singles with "C'est La Vie" and "Making Believe," the album's best known track is the first recorded cover of Townes Van Zandt's classic "Pancho & Lefty", which would be a #1 hit for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in 1983. At the end of 1977, Crowell left the Hot Band to pursue a solo career; his replacement was bluegrass multi-instrumentalist and singer Ricky Skaggs.

Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town signalled a slight change of direction from Harris's previous three albums. Rather than mixing classic and contemporary, the album is made up largely of recently written songs, though from a wide variety of writers. "Two More Bottles of Wine", written by Delbert McClinton, became Harris's third #1 single, "To Daddy", written by Dolly Parton, went to #3, and a third single, "Easy From Now On", went Top Twenty. The album included two songs apiece from Crowell ("I Ain't Living Long Like This" and "Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight") and Canadian songwriter Jesse Winchester ("Defying Gravity" and "My Songbird"), and Utah Phillips' "Green Rolling Hills."

The Roots Records

In 1977 (January), Harris married Brian Ahern. Their (Harris's second) daughter, Meghann, was born in 1979. During this time, Harris cut three studio albums that reflected a shift toward traditional country (the industry, on the other hand, was about to embrace Urban Cowboy). The first key to the change in direction was her Grammy Award-winning 1979 album Blue Kentucky Girl. Apart from a cover of The Drifters' "Save The Last Dance For Me", the album was largely made up of classic-styled country material in the vein of Loretta Lynn and Kitty Wells. One of her best-loved albums, the record includes songs ranging from The Louvin Brothers' "Everytime You Leave" to Willie Nelson's "Sister's Coming Home" to Gram Parson's signature "Hickory Wind". Wesley Rose took special interest in Harris's recording of "Beneath Still Waters", which became a #1 smash.

A Christmas album, Light of the Stable, was released in 1979; its title track featured backing vocals by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young, all three of whom Harris had been working with sporadically since the mid-1970s, and would continue to collaborate with through the 2000s. (Harris, Parton and Ronstadt began working on a planned trio album during this time, though it would remain unfinished for nearly a decade; a few of the tracks recorded for the project surfaced on the women's' respective solo albums in the interim.) The album is largely acoustic, featuring readings of traditional fare such as "Silent Night," "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "The First Noel."

In the 1980s, Harris pursued country music's history even further with the bluegrass-oriented recording of Roses in the Snow, featuring Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Albert Lee, Emory Gordy Jr. and Jerry Douglas. Harris's versions of the traditional "Wayfaring Stranger" and Paul Simon's "The Boxer" were strong singles.

In 1980, Harris recorded "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again" with Roy Orbison. The duet was a Top 10 hit on both the Country and Adult Contemporary charts. They would win the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. She would also be featured on Paul Kennerley's concept album The Legend of Jesse James, which also featured Levon Helm of The Band and Johnny Cash.

Pop-chart success, songwriting

In 1981, Harris reached the Top 40 on the Billboard pop chart with a cover of "Mister Sandman"—again Top 10 Country as well as Adult Contemporary—from her Evangeline album. (The album version of the song was a track from the ill-fated Trio sessions with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt, but neither Parton's nor Ronstadt's record companies would allow their artists' vocals to be used on the single, so Harris re-recorded the song, singing all three parts.)

White Shoes in 1983 included an eclectic pairing of the rockish reading of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" with a remake of the Donna Summer hit "On the Radio", as well as tracks from a diverse group of songwriters such as Hot Band member Crowell, Sandy Denny and T-Bone Burnett.

Harris's major-label releases thus far had included few self-penned songs, but in 1985 her songwriting skills were much in evidence with the release of The Ballad of Sally Rose, for which she co-wrote all of the songs. The album was semi-autobiographical in theme, based loosely on her relationship with Parsons. Harris described it as a "country opera". Her co-writer and producer on the album was English songwriter and musician Paul Kennerley, writer of the hit singles "Born to Run" (on Harris's 1981 Cimarron album) and "In My Dreams" (on White Shoes). Kennerley also produced her next album, Thirteen. They were married in 1985 and divorced in 1993.

In 1987, nearly a full decade after they'd first attempted to do so, Harris teamed up with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt for their long-promised and much-anticipated Trio disc. The album proved to be the biggest commercial success of Harris's long and varied career, spending five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Country Albums chart (also quickly reaching the Top 10 on the Pop Albums chart), sold several million copies and produced four Top 10 Country hits, including "To Know Him Is To Love Him", which hit #1. The disc was nominated for the coveted Album Of The Year Grammy award (given to U2 that year for The Joshua Tree) and the three women won the statuette for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal; the album's Linda Thompson-penned track "Telling Me Lies" reached #3 Country, #25 Adult Contemporary, and was also nominated for a Grammy as 1987's Best Country Song.

Harris also found time in 1987 to release a solo album, Angel Band, featuring traditional gospel songs, on which she worked with, among others, rising country star Vince Gill.

In 1989, she recorded two songs with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their album, . In a snippet of studio chatter included on one of the tracks, she talked during the recording session about her beginnings and how music had changed:

Years ago I had the experience of sitting around in a living room with a bunch of people and singing and playing, and it was like a spiritual experience, it was wonderful. And I decided then that was what I was going to do with my life was play music, do music. In the making of records, I think over the years we've all gotten a little too technical, a little too hung up on getting things perfect. We've lost the living room. The living room has gone out of the music, but today I feel like we got it back.

Around 1991, she dissolved The Hot Band and formed a new band of acoustic musicians—Sam Bush on fiddle, mandolin and vocals, Roy Huskey, Jr. on bass and vocals, Larry Atamanuik on drums, Al Perkins on banjo, guitar, Dobro guitar and vocals, and Jon Randall on guitar, mandolin and vocals—which she named The Nash Ramblers. They recorded a Grammy Award-winning live album in 1992 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, which led to the $8 million restoration of the facility into a premium concert and event venue. It was her last album with Reprise Records.

New directions

By the 1990s, Harris started receiving less airplay as mainstream country stations began shifting their focus to the youth-oriented "new country" format. Harris's albums Bluebird and Brand New Dance (1989 and 1990, respectively) received ample critical acclaim and sold reasonably well, yet her chart success was on the wane. 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer—the first album since her switch to Elektra Records—was critically praised but received very little airplay, and its lead single, "High Powered Love" charted very low, peaking at #63, prompting her to shift her career in a new direction.

In 1995, Harris released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade, Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois, best known for his work with U2, Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan. An experimental album for Harris, the record included Harris's rendition of the Neil Young-penned title track (Young himself provided guest vocals on two of the album's songs), Steve Earle's "Goodbye", Julie Miller's "All My Tears", Jimi Hendrix's "May This Be Love", Kate and Anna McGarrigle's "Goin' Back to Harlan" and Gillian Welch's "Orphan Girl". U2's Larry Mullen, Jr. showed up to play drums for the project. The album received virtually no country airplay whatsoever, but did bring Harris to the attention of alternative rock listeners, many of whom had never listened to her music before.

Harris then took her Wrecking Ball material on the road, releasing the live Spyboy in 1998, backed with a power trio comprising Nashville producer, songwriter and guitarist Buddy Miller and New Orleans musicians, drummer Brady Blade and bassist-vocalist-percussionist Daryl Johnson. In addition to performing songs from Wrecking Ball, the album updated many of Harris's career hits, including "Boulder to Birmingham".

Also in 1998, she appeared prominently on Willie Nelson's moody, instrumentally sparse Teatro album, produced by Wrecking Ball producer Lanois.

During the summer of 1997 and 1998, Harris joined Sarah McLachlan's all-woman musical touring festival, the Lilith Fair, where new artists like Patty Griffin could share new experiences and ideas with seasoned musicians like Harris and Bonnie Raitt.

In January 1999, Harris released Trio 2 with Parton and Ronstadt. Much of the album had actually been recorded in 1994, but remained unreleased for nearly five years because of record label and personnel disputes, conflicting schedules, and career priorities of the three artists. Trio 2 was much more contemporary-sounding than its predecessor and was certified Gold. It included their version of Neil Young's classic "After The Gold Rush", which became a popular music video and won another Grammy—this one for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. Harris and Ronstadt then released a duet album, , later the same year. The two superstars toured together during the fall months in support of the disc. Both albums made the Top 10 of Billboard's Country Albums chart and did well on the pop side as well.

Also in 1999, Harris paid tribute to her former singing partner Gram Parsons by co-executive producing , an album that gathered together more than a dozen artists. Harris performed duets with Beck, Sheryl Crow and The Pretenders on this album's tracks.

In 2000, Harris released her solo follow-up to Wrecking Ball, Red Dirt Girl, produced by Lanois protege Malcolm Burn. For the first time since The Ballad of Sally Rose, the album contained a number of Harris's own compositions. Like Wrecking Ball, the album's sound leaned more toward alternative rock than country. Nevertheless it reached #5 on Billboard's Country Albums chart as well as a healthy #54 on the pop side. It also won Harris another of her 12 Grammy awards, in the category of Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Harris also accompanied on alternative country singer Ryan Adams' solo debut Heartbreaker.

Also in 2000, Harris joined an all-star group of traditional country, folk and blues artists for the T-Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? The soundtrack won multiple CMA, ACM and Grammy awards. A documentary/concert film, Down from the Mountain, featured the artists performing music from the film and other songs at the Ryman Auditorium. Harris and many of the same artists took their show on the road for the Down from the Mountain Tour in 2002. In 2003, Harris supplied the finishing touches in harmonizing with the Dixie Chicks on a song they were recording in the studio, "Godspeed".

On September 9, 2005, Harris participated in "", a series of concerts simulcast by most American television stations to raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. She performed with Beth Neilsen Chapman and the Dixie Chicks, harmonizing on Patty Griffin's song, "Mary."

Recent work

Harris released Stumble into Grace, her follow-up to Red Dirt Girl, in 2003. Like its predecessor, it contained mostly self-penned material. In 2004, Harris led the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue tour with Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin. They performed singly and together and swapped instruments.

, Netherlands (2006)]] In 2005, Harris worked with Conor Oberst on Bright Eyes' release, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, performing backup vocals on three tracks. In July, she joined Elvis Costello on several dates of his U.S. tour, performing alongside Costello and his band on several numbers each night. Harris and Costello recorded a version of Costello's song, "The Scarlet Tide", from the soundtrack of the movie Cold Mountain. July also saw the release of The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches and Highways, a single-disc retrospective of Harris's career, on the Rhino Entertainment label. This same year, Harris appeared as a guest vocalist on Neil Young's widely acclaimed Prairie Wind. She also appeared in the Jonathan Demme documentary-concert film , released in 2006. All the Roadrunning, an album of collaborations with former Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler, was released in April 2006 and supported by a tour of Europe and the USA. The album was a commercial success, reaching #8 in the UK and #17 in the USA. Selections recorded during the All the Roadrunning tour performance at the Gibson Amphitheatre were released as a CD/DVD package titled Real Live Roadrunning in November 2006. In addition to several of the compositions that Harris and Knopfler recorded together in the studio, Real Live Roadrunning features solo hits from both members of the duo, as well as a few classic tracks from Knopfler's days with Dire Straits.

Harris is featured on A Tribute To Joni Mitchell, released on April 24, 2007. Harris covered the song "The Magdalene Laundries" (originally on Mitchell's 1994 album, Turbulent Indigo). She sang "Another Pot O' Tea" with Anne Murray on Murray's album , released November 13, 2007, in Canada and January 15, 2008, in the U.S.

Harris wrote a song called "In Rodanthe" for the 2008 film Nights In Rodanthe.

A new solo album, All I Intended to Be, was released on June 10, 2008, to critical acclaim. Contributors include Buddy Miller, the McGarrigle sisters, Vince Gill, Phil Madeira, and Dolly Parton. She toured with an ensemble she dubbed the Red Dirt Boys, featuring Phil Madeira on accordion, guitar, and keyboards, Colin Linden on guitar and banjo, Rickie Simpkins on mandolin and fiddle, Chris Donohoe on bass, and Bryan Owings on drums. It did not include Miller, who was touring with Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett at the time. In 2009, Harris toured with Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Miller as "Three Girls and Their Buddy". Madeira, Simpkins, and Donohue performed with her in late 2008, and in 2009, appearing on "A Prairie Home Companion" and at MerleFest and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. In September 2009, Owings rejoined the Red Dirt Boys with Miller for the remainder of 2009.

In April 2009 Harris became a grandmother. Her daughter gave birth to a daughter, Prudence.

In 2010, Harris regrouped with the latest version of the Red Dirt Boys: Madeira, Owings, Donohue, and Simpkins for Lilith Fair summer dates and a scheduled US autumn tour.

According to an interview with Bonnie Tyler by Digital Spy, Emmylou Harris will be teaming up with her on Tyler's upcoming album. Harris will do backing vocals on a song, written and produced by Wayne Warner.

Activism

In 1997 and 1998, Harris performed in Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair, promoting feminism in music. Since 1999, Harris has been organizing an annual benefit tour called Concerts for a Landmine Free World. All proceeds from the tours support the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's (VVAF) efforts to assist innocent victims of conflicts around the world. The tour also benefits the VVAF's work to raise America's awareness of the global landmine problem. Artists that have joined Harris on the road for these dates include Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bruce Cockburn, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Joan Baez, Patty Griffin, Nanci Griffith, Willie Nelson, and Lucinda Williams. Harris is a supporter of animal rights and an active member of PETA. She founded, and in her spare time assists at, an animal shelter in Nashville.

Awards and other honours

Grammy Awards

2005 Best Female Country Vocal Performance ("The Connection")

2001 Album of the Year (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

2000 Best Contemporary Folk Album (Red Dirt Girl)

1999 Best Country Collaboration with Vocals ("After The Gold Rush", with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt)

1998 Best Country Collaboration with Vocals ("Same Old Train", with Alison Krauss, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Earl Scruggs, Joe Diffie, Marty Stuart, Merle Haggard, Pam Tillis, Patty Loveless, Randy Travis, Ricky Skaggs & Travis Tritt)

1995 Best Contemporary Folk Album (Wrecking Ball)

1992 Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (Emmylou Harris & The Nash Ramblers At the Ryman, as Emmylou Harris & The Nash Ramblers)

1987 Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (Trio, with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt)

1984 Best Country Vocal Performance, Female ("In My Dreams")

1980 Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group ("That Lovin' You Feelin' Again", with Roy Orbison)

1979 Best Country Vocal Performance, Female (Blue Kentucky Girl)

1976 Best Country Vocal Performance, Female (Elite Hotel)

Country Music Association Awards

2001 Album of the Year (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

1980 Female Vocalist Of The Year

1988 Vocal Event of the Year (Trio, with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt)

Other honors

VH1's 100 Most Influential Women in Rock and Roll (1998) - Number 22 out of 100

Billboard's Century Award recipient (1999) - inducted by Sarah McLachlann

CMT's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music - #5 ranking (2002)

Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on February 12, 2008]

Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.

Awarded an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music in 2009.

Discography

Collaborations and other appearances

References

Sources

In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music, Nicholas Dawidoff, Vintage Books, 1998. ISBN 0-679-41567-X

Emmylou Harris: Angel in Disguise, Jim Brown, Fox Music Books, 2004. ISBN 1-894997-03-4

Fong-Torres, Ben. (1998). "Emmylou Harris". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 230.

External links

Official Site (requires Flash player)

Emmylou Harris Comprehensive former official site

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Emmylou Harris Questionnaire (June 2008)

Pitchfork article

Gibson interview

Interview

Category:American country singers Category:American female singers Category:American female guitarists Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American vegetarians Category:Grand Ole Opry members Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Country Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:Jubilee Records artists Category:Musicians from Alabama Category:People from Birmingham, Alabama Category:People from North Carolina Category:People from Woodbridge, Virginia Category:1947 births Category:Living people

Name	Diane Sawyer
Caption	Diane in December 2009
Birthname	Lila Diane Sawyer
Birth date	December 22, 1945
Birth place	Glasgow, Kentucky
Education	Wellesley College, B.A., 1967
Occupation	Television journalist
Title	Anchor, World News
Spouse	Mike Nichols (1988-present)
Religion	Roman Catholic
Years active	1962–present
Url	http://abcnews.go.com/WN/DianeSawyer/diane-sawyers-biography/story?id=9380180

Lila Diane Sawyer (born December 22, 1945) is the current anchor of ABC News' flagship program, ABC World News. Previously, Sawyer had been co-anchor of ABC News's morning news program, Good Morning America (GMA).

Early life and education

Born in Glasgow, Kentucky, Diane Sawyer is the daughter of Jean W. Sawyer – an elementary school teacher – and Erbon Powers "Tom" Sawyer, a judge. Soon after her birth, her family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where her father rose to local prominence as a Republican politician and community leader; he was Kentucky's Jefferson County Judge/Executive when he was killed in a car accident on Louisville's Interstate 64 in 1969. E. P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park, located in the Frey's Hill area of Louisville, is named in his honor.

Sawyer attended Seneca High School in the Buechel area of Louisville. In 1963, she won the "America's Junior Miss" scholarship pageant as a representative from the State of Kentucky.

During the period from 1962–1965, Sawyer was "America's Junior Miss" touring the country to promote the Coca-Cola Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.

In 1967, she received a bachelor of arts degree with a major in English from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. There, she was a member of the Wellesley College Blue Notes, an a capella group. She attended one semester of law school at the University of Louisville before turning to journalism.

Career

Sawyer began her professional career in Republican Party politics. In 1970, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler hired her to serve in the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon. Sawyer continued through Nixon's resignation from the presidency in 1974 and worked on the Nixon-Ford transition team in 1974–1975, after which she decamped with Nixon to California and helped him write his memoirs, published in 1978. She also helped prepare Nixon for his famous set of television interviews with journalist David Frost in 1977.

Years later, Sawyer would be suspected to be Deep Throat, the source of leaks of classified information to journalist Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal. In 2005 Deep Throat was identified as W. Mark Felt, but prior to that, Rabbi Baruch Korff – a longtime Nixon confidant and defender known as "Nixon's rabbi" – said on his deathbed that he believed Sawyer was Deep Throat. Sawyer laughed it off, and she was one of six people to request and receive a public denial from Woodward.

In 1978, Sawyer joined CBS News as a political correspondent and became a co-anchor, with Bill Kurtis, of the CBS Morning News in 1981. In 1984, she became a correspondent for 60 Minutes, a CBS News investigative television newsmagazine; she remained for five years.

In 1989, she moved to ABC News to co-anchor newsmagazine Primetime Live, with Sam Donaldson. From 1998 to 2000, she would become a co-anchor for ABC's 20/20, also a newsmagazine, co-anchoring on Wednesdays with Donaldson and on Sundays with Barbara Walters.

In 1999, Sawyer returned to morning news (GMA), under a lucrative contract, as the co-anchor of GMA with Charles Gibson. The assignment was putatively temporary, but her success in the position, measured by a close in the gap with front-runner Today, NBC News's morning program, sustained her in the position far longer than anticipated.

On September 2, 2009, she was announced as the successor to Gibson, who retired as ABC World News anchor on Friday, December 18, 2009. She left GMA on December 11, 2009, and was scheduled to become the ABC World News anchor in January 2010. However, on December 1, 2009, The New York Times reported that instead of moving to ABC World News in January 2010, Sawyer will start on December 21, 2009, three days after Gibson's departure . Along with Katie Couric of CBS News, two of the three network news anchors on broadcast television will be women. Ratings jumped 8% for 60 days after her first four weeks, averaging 8.8 million viewers. She signs off at the end of her nightly broadcast with "I'll see you right back here tomorrow night." The show, like its competitor evening newscasts, ended the year with ratings below that of the preceding year.

Career timeline

1967-1970: WLKY-TV news reporter and weather girl

1970-1974: White House press aide

1974-1978: Literary assistant to former President Richard Nixon

1981-1984: CBS Morning News anchor

1984-1989: 60 Minutes correspondent 1989-1998, since 2000: Primetime Live co-anchor

Notable interviews (selected)

Sawyer has interviewed many political figures including U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. She conducted the first interview with U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after his first election to the presidency in 1992.

Nancy Reagan, First Lady

Hyman G. Rickover, U.S. Admiral

Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice

She was allowed to take a special tour of North Korea.

From the entertainment world, Sawyer has interviewed, especially as a host of GMA:

Clay Aiken, singer (interviewed twice)

Bobby Brown, singer

Ellen DeGeneres, comedian

Dixie Chicks, country-music group

Michael J. Fox, actor

Mel Gibson, actor

Whitney Houston, singer

Winona Ryder, actress

Michael Jackson, singer

Madonna, singer

Roman Polanski, film director

Lisa Marie Presley, singer-songwriter

Rihanna, singer

Britney Spears, singer

Brian Wilson, musician (The Beach Boys)

Meryl Streep, actress

Sawyer also interviewed drug kingpin Rayful Edmond III of Washington, D.C., in 1989 and once again in 1997 on 60 Minutes.

Personal life

On April 29, 1988, she and Mike Nichols, a film director, were married; they have no children. Nichols fathered Daisy (born 1974), Max (born 1964), and Jenny (born 1977) in three previous marriages. Sawyer had previously had relationships with Frank Gannon, a Nixon aide; and Richard Holbrooke, a U.S diplomat. Forbes reported that she made $12 million in 2005.

References

External links

"Diane Sawyer Biography — Anchor, Good Morning America", at ABC News, dated December 19, 2009. (Accessed December 21, 2009).

}}

Category:1945 births Category:60 Minutes correspondents Category:ABC News personalities Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American television news anchors Category:American television reporters and correspondents Category:CBS News Category:Living people Category:People from Glasgow, Kentucky Category:People from Louisville, Kentucky Category:People from Manhattan Category:People from Washington, D.C. Category:University of Louisville alumni Category:Wellesley College alumni

Name	David Rawlings
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Origin	North Smithfield, Rhode Island, United States
Instrument	Singing, guitar
Genre	Bluegrass, neotraditional country, Americana, old time, folk, American Primitivism
Associated acts	Dave Rawlings Machine, Gillian Welch
Url	http://www.daverawlingsmachine.com/
Notable instruments	1935 Epiphone Olympic Guitar

David Todd Rawlings is a professional guitarist and singer. He is best known as the longtime musical partner of bluegrass singer-songwriter Gillian Welch.

David attended the Berklee College of Music and studied with guitar professor Lauren Passarelli.

He is known in his own right as a producer, having produced Welch and bands such as Old Crow Medicine Show. He has recently performed under the billing of "Dave Rawlings Machine". He has also contributed to the Bright Eyes album Cassadaga, the Ryan Adams album Heartbreaker (which opens with "Argument with David Rawlings Concerning Morrissey"), and the Robyn Hitchcock album Spooked.

Rawlings co-wrote the tracks "To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)" and "Touch, Feel and Lose", with Ryan Adams.

David Rawlings achieves his signature guitar sound flatpicking a small archtop guitar. The 1935 Epiphone Olympic that has been his primary instrument was a mid-priced guitar for its time, with a carved arched solid sprucewood top, carved arched solid mahogany back and mahogany sides. It sold for about $35 in 1935. The guitars lower bout measures 13 5/8 inches wide, and it has three piece f-holes.

Discography

Dave Rawlings Machine - A Friend of a Friend ('November 2009 · Acony Records)

Album appearances

Also see Gillian Welch Discography

Bright Eyes - Four Winds (2007 · Saddle Creek)

Bright Eyes - Cassadaga (2007 · Saddle Creek)

Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker (2000)

Trivia

Rawlings makes a cameo appearance along with Gillian Welch at the beginning of the Wagon Wheel music video performed by Old Crow Medicine Show. Rawlings appears as a carnival worker collecting money for the musical performance portrayed in the video.

Notes

External links

David Rawlings and Gillian Welch NPR Tiny Desk Concert Video

David Rawlings on PBS NewsHour

Category:American acoustic guitarists Category:American bluegrass guitarists Category:American bluegrass musicians Category:American male singers Category:American record producers Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:People from North Smithfield, Rhode Island Category:Berklee College of Music alumni

Name	Chet Atkins
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Chester Burton Atkins
Alias	Mr. GuitarThe Country Gentleman
Born	June 20, 1924Luttrell, Tennessee, U.S.
Died	June 30, 2001Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Instrument	Guitar
Genre	Country, classical, folk, jazz
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, producer
Years active	1942–2001
Label	RCA, Columbia
Url	Official Website
Notable instruments	Country GentlemanTennessean6120Gibson Chet Atkins SST

Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), better known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who created, along with Owen Bradley, the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.

Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt, George Barnes and Les Paul, brought him admirers within and outside the country scene, both in the United States and internationally. Atkins produced records for Perry Como, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Connie Smith, Waylon Jennings and others.

Among many honors, Atkins received 14 Grammy Awards as well as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, nine Country Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year awards, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Biography

Childhood and early life

Chet Atkins was born on June 20, 1924, in Luttrell, Tennessee, near Clinch Mountain, and grew up with his mother, two brothers and a sister—he was the youngest. His parents divorced when he was six. He started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle, but traded his brother Lowell an old pistol and some chores for a guitar when he was nine. He stated in his 1974 autobiography, "We were so poor and everybody around us was so poor that it was the forties before anyone even knew there had been a depression." Forced to relocate to Fortson, Georgia to live with his father due to a near-fatal asthma condition, Atkins was a sensitive youth who made music his obsession. Because of his illness, he was forced to sleep in a straight-back chair in order to breathe comfortably. On those nights, he would play his guitar until he fell asleep holding it, a habit which lasted his whole life. While living in Fortson, he attended historic Mountain Hill School. He would return in the 1990s to play a series of charity concerts to save the school from demolition.

Stories have been told about the very young Chet who, when a friend or relative would come to visit, and if that person played a guitar, would crowd in and put his ear so very close to the instrument that it became difficult for that person to play. His first guitar had a nail for a nut and was so bowed that only the first few frets could be used. He later purchased a semi-acoustic electric guitar and amp, but he had to travel many miles to find an electrical outlet since his home had no electricity.

Later in life he lightheartedly gave himself (along with John Knowles, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner and Jerry Reed) the honorary degree CGP, standing for "Certified Guitar Player". This early influence dramatically shaped his unique playing style. Whereas Travis's right hand used his index finger for the melody and thumb for bass notes, Atkins expanded his right hand style to include picking with his first three fingers, with the thumb on bass.

Chet Atkins was a Ham Radio General class licensee. Formerly using the call-sign, WA4CZD, he obtained the vanity call sign W4CGP in 1998 to reflect the C.G.P. name. He was an ARRL member.

Early musical career

After dropping out of high school in 1942, Atkins landed a job at WNOX-AM radio in Knoxville. There he played fiddle and guitar with singer Bill Carlisle and comic Archie Campbell as well as becoming a member of the station's Dixieland Swingsters, a small swing instrumental combo. After three years, he moved to WLW-AM in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Merle Travis had formerly worked.

After six months he moved to Raleigh and worked with Johnnie and Jack before heading for Richmond, Virginia, where he performed with Sunshine Sue Workman. Atkins's shy personality worked against him, as did the fact that his sophisticated style led many to doubt he was truly "country." He was fired often but was soon able to land another job at another radio station due to his unique playing ability. Atkins made his first appearance at the Opry in 1946 as a member of Foley's band. He also recorded a single for Nashville-based Bullet Records that year. That single, "Guitar Blues", was fairly progressive, including as it did, a clarinet solo by Nashville dance band musician Dutch McMillan with Owen Bradley on piano. He had a solo spot on the Opry; but when that was cut, Atkins moved on to KWTO-AM in Springfield, Missouri. Despite the support of executive Si Siman, however, he was soon was fired for not sounding "country enough." and Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" and "Blue Blue Day". The once rare phenomenon of having a country hit cross over to pop success became more common. He and Bradley had essentially put the producer in the driver's seat, guiding an artist's choice of material and the musical background.

Atkins made his own records, which usually visited pop standards and jazz, in a sophisticated home studio, often recording the rhythm tracks at RCA but adding his solo parts at home, refining it until the result satisfied him. In later years, when Bradley asked how he achieved his sound, Atkins told him "it was Porter." Porter described Atkins as respectful of musicians when recording—if someone were out of tune he would not single that person out by name. Instead, he would say something like, "we got a little tuning problem ... Everybody check and see what's going on." He took a considerable risk during the mid-1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement sparked violence throughout the South by signing country music's first African-American singer Charley Pride, who sang rawer country than the smoother music Atkins had pioneered.

Atkins's own biggest hit single came in 1965, with "Yakety Axe", an adaptation of his friend saxophonist Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax". He rarely performed in those days, and eventually had to hire other RCA producers like Bob Ferguson and Felton Jarvis to alleviate his workload.

In later years he even went back to radio, appearing on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio program, on American Public Media radio, even picking up a fiddle from time to time.

Atkins is notable for his broad influence. His love for numerous styles of music can be traced from his early recording of stride-pianist James P. Johnson's "Johnson Rag," all the way to the rock stylings of Eric Johnson, an invited guest on Atkins's recording sessions who, when Chet attempted to copy his influential rocker "Cliffs of Dover", led to Atkins's creation of a unique arrangement of "Londonderry Air (Danny Boy)."

Chet's recordings of "Malaguena" inspired a new generation of Flamenco guitarists; the classical guitar selections included on almost all his albums were, for many American artists working in the field today, the first classical guitar they ever heard. He recorded smooth jazz guitar still played on American airwaves today.

While he did more performing in the 1990s his health grew frail as he was diagnosed with cancer again in 1996. He died on June 30, 2001 at his home in Nashville.

Atkins was laid to rest at Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens in Nashville.

Atkins was quoted many times throughout his career, and of his own legacy he once said:

A stretch of Interstate 185 in southwest Georgia (between LaGrange and Columbus) is named "Chet Atkins Parkway". This stretch of interstate runs through Fortson, GA where Atkins spent much of his childhood.

In 2002, Atkins was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Atkins also inspired Drexl Jonez and Tommy Emmanuel.

Clint Black's album "Nothin' but the Taillights" includes the song "Ode to Chet," which includes the lines "'Cause I can win her over like Romeo did Juliet, if I can only show her I can almost pick that legato lick like Chet" and "It'll take more than Mel Bay 1, 2, & 3 if I'm ever gonna play like CGP." Atkins plays guitar on the track. At the end of the song Black and Atkins have a brief conversation.

Discography

Industry Awards

Country Music Association

1967 Instrumentalist of the Year

1968 Instrumentalist of the Year

1969 Instrumentalist of the Year

1981 Instrumentalist of the Year

1982 Instrumentalist of the Year

1983 Instrumentalist of the Year

1984 Instrumentalist of the Year

1985 Instrumentalist of the Year

1988 Instrumentalist of the Year

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Inducted in 1973

Grammy Awards

1971 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Jerry Reed - Me and Jerry

1972 Best Country Instrumental Performance - "Snowbird"

1975 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Merle Travis - The Atkins-Travis Traveling Show

1976 Best Country Instrumental Performance - "The Entertainer"

1977 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Les Paul - Chester and Lester

1982 Best Country Instrumental Performance - Country After All These Years

1986 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Mark Knopfler - "Cosmic Square Dance"

1991 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Mark Knopfler - "So Soft, Your Goodbye"

1991 Best Country Vocal Collaboration with Mark Knopfler - "Poor Boy Blues"

1993 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Jerry Reed - Sneakin' Around

1993 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award'

1994 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Asleep at the Wheel, Eldon Shamblin, Johnny Gimble, Marty Stuart, Reuben "Lucky Oceans" Gosfield & Vince Gill - "Red Wing"

1995 Best Country Instrumental Performance - "Young Thing"

1997 Best Country Instrumental Performance - "Jam Man"

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Posthumously inducted in 2002

Notes

References

Kienzle, Rich. (1998). "Chet Atkins". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 26–7.

External links

Chet Atkins at the Country Music Hall of Fame

[ Allmusic entry for Chet Atkins]

Chet Atkins Official Web site

Bob Moore's A-Team Musicians Website

Chet Atkins Interview - Vintage Guitar magazine, June 1996

Chet Atkins on the Pop Chronicles

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