Leon H. "Bud" Carson ((1930-04-28)April 28, 1930 – December 7, 2005(2005-12-07)) was an American football coach best known for his role on the Pittsburgh Steelers' championship teams of the 1970s.

Player[link]

This section requires expansion.

Carson played defensive back for North Carolina from 1949 to 1951, then entered the Marines.

Coach[link]

Georgia Tech[link]

After his discharge from the Marines, he went into coaching, working at Georgia Tech under head coach Bobby Dodd. Carson took over as head coach in 1967. Under Carson, the Yellow Jackets endured three straight 4-6 seasons before going 9-3 and winning the Sun Bowl in 1970. In 1971, Tech finished 6-6 after a Peach Bowl loss. His dismissal as Head Coach of the Yellow Jackets by James E. Boyd was reported in the Atlanta Constitution under the headline "Bitter Bud Carson Is Ousted at Tech".^{[citation needed]}

In 1970 the GT Band began playing the Budweiser tune after the end of the 3rd quarter. In tribute to the then head coach the words were actually sung as, "When you say Bud Carson, you've said it all!"^{[citation needed]}

While at Georgia Tech, he designed and implemented the "Cover 2" defensive scheme that has been adapted and widely used by the NFL.^{[citation needed]}

NFL[link]

Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Chuck Noll hired Carson as defensive backs coach in 1972. He was elevated to defensive coordinator in 1973^[1]. Under Carson, the "Steel Curtain" developed as one of the best defenses in National Football League history. The unit, led by Jack Lambert, Mel Blount, Jack Ham and Mean Joe Greene, gave up fewer points than any other American Football Conference team in Pittsburgh's Super Bowl seasons of 1974 and 1975. In 1976, the Curtain gave up fewer than 10 points a game.

After the 1977 season, Carson took over the defensive-coordinator job with the Los Angeles Rams, who lost to the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV. He later served on the coaching staffs of the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Colts before running the New York Jets' defense from 1985 to 1988. He finally landed a head-coaching job with the Cleveland Browns for the 1989 season after Marty Schottenheimer was fired after a wild card playoff loss to the Houston Oilers in 1988.

Cleveland won the AFC Central Division in 1989; however, for the third time in four years, the Browns losing to John Elway's Denver Broncos in the conference championship game 37-21. Browns owner Art Modell fired Carson halfway through the 1990 season, following a 42-0 home loss to the eventual 1990 AFC Champion Buffalo Bills. Browns' offensive coordinator Jim Shofner became head coach and the demoralized Browns finished the season with a franchise worst 3-13 record. Save for a 13-10 win over the Atlanta Falcons, the Browns were outscored 217-87, including being shutout 35-0 by bitter rival Pittsburgh Steelers and being crushed in a humiliating 58-14 loss to the rival Houston Oilers. In the AFC Central Division rival games, the Browns won on opening day in a defensive gem over the Steelers 13-3, but then the Browns lost their remaining five AFC Central games outscored by combined totals of 183-64. Ironically, the immediate predecessor to Coach Carson and former head coach of the Cleveland Browns Marty Schottenheimer led his Kansas City Chiefs to an 11-5 won-loss record and a wild card playoff appearance in the 1990 NFL season. Adding more insult to injury, the Chiefs defeated the Browns 34-0 in Week Four. Carson returned for successful stints as an assistant coach with the Philadelphia Eagles (his 1991 crew pulled the rare feat of being ranked #1 versus the pass, #1 versus the rush, and #1 overall) and Rams — by then in St. Louis — before retiring in 1997 due to health concerns.

Family[link]

Carson, a long-time smoker, died in 2005 of emphysema.^[2] He was married to Linda Carson, an anchorwoman at Sarasota television station WWSB. His daughter Cathi Carson is the sports reporter at two Jacksonville stations in Jacksonville WTEV and WAWS and was formerly a reporter at WWSB. He also had a son, Cliff, and a daughter, Dana, as well as a stepson, Gary Ford.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Grossi, Tony (2004). Tales from the Browns Sideline. (Champaign, Ill.): Sports Publishing LLC. ISBN 1-58261-713-9
• Carroll, Bob, et al. (1999). Total Football II. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-270174-6.

Andre Waters (March 10, 1962 – November 20, 2006) was an NFL defensive back who played for the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals from 1984 to 1995. Waters was regarded as one of the NFL's hardest-hitting defenders, serving as an integral part of one of the league's top defenses. On November 20, 2006, Waters committed suicide in his Tampa, Florida home.

Early years[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Waters was born in Belle Glade, Florida and grew up in extreme poverty in rural Florida, and attended Pahokee High School. As a senior at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania he was recognized as a football small college All-American.

NFL career[link]

In 1984, Waters married Shakiyra Slocum and was signed as an undrafted free agent by Philadelphia Eagles head coach Marion Campbell. He returned a kickoff for an 89-yard game-winning touchdown against the Washington Redskins as a rookie in 1984. When Buddy Ryan took over for Campbell in 1986, he welcomed Waters' aggressive style as a fierce tackler and ferocious hitter, earning Waters a position in the starting lineup for the next eight years. He blossomed under defensive coordinator Bud Carson. His tackle of Los Angeles Rams quarterback Jim Everett in 1988 led to a rule prohibiting defensive players from hitting quarterbacks below the waist while they are still in the pocket; for a while, it was unofficially termed the "Andre Waters Rule". NFL broadcaster Dan Dierdorf notoriously nicknamed the Eagles defender "Dirty Waters". He scored a touchdown in 1989 when he took a lateral from William Frizzell after Reggie White caused a fumble by New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms.

Waters served as part of the Eagles' defensive unit that was regarded as one of the league's best, in 1991 ranking first statistically in both run and pass defense, as well as total defense. His hard-hitting style translated into leading the team in tackles for four seasons and endeared him with Philadelphia fans but often led to penalties and fines for some of his tackles. He led the Eagles in tackles in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1991. He recorded 15 interceptions in 156 games. In 1994, he was replaced by Mike Zordich.

Retirement and death[link]

After retiring as a player, Waters went on to enjoy success as a college coach at Morgan State University, the University of South Florida, Alabama State University, St. Augustine's College, and Fort Valley State University. He tried unsuccessfully to get a job in the NFL and described his disappointment to a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter in April 2006.^[1] He remained very close to his former Eagles coach Buddy Ryan, who said he tried to emulate in his own coaching career.

Waters committed suicide shortly after 1 a.m. on November 20, 2006, according to the Hillsborough County (Fla.) Sheriff's Office, dying of a gunshot to the head. He was at his home in Tampa, Florida^[2] where he was found by his girlfriend. No suicide note was found.

Shortly after Waters' death, former Harvard defensive tackle and WWE wrestler Christopher Nowinski, whose wrestling career was ended by post-concussion syndrome and has since written a book about the dangers of concussions in contact sports, approached Waters' family and asked permission to have his brain tissue examined. After receiving permission, Nowinski had samples of Waters' brain tissue sent to neuropathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu at the University of Pittsburgh. Omalu believed, having examined the tissue, that Waters sustained brain damage from playing football: he went on to state that this led to Waters' depression.^[3]

Omalu determined that Waters' brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics to those of early-stage Alzheimer's victims. Omalu said he believed that the damage was caused and/or hastened by the numerous concussions Waters sustained playing football. Additionally, Omalu said that Waters would have been fully incapacitated within ten years.

The NFL declined to comment on Waters' case specifically. A member of the league's mild traumatic brain injury committee, Dr. Andrew Tucker, said that the NFL was beginning a study of retired players in 2006 to examine the more general issue of football concussions and subsequent depression.^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

Mark Angelo

Mark Angelo, CM OBC hails from Burnaby, British Columbia and is an internationally-celebrated river conservationist, writer, speaker, teacher and paddler. He is the founder and chair of both BC Rivers Day and World Rivers Day, an event now embraced by millions of people in more than 60 countries. In 2009, Mark was appointed as the inaugural chair of the Rivers Institute at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). Prior to that, he was the long-time head of the Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Program at BCIT.

Mark has received the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada (his country's highest honour) in recognition of his river conservation efforts over the past four decades. Among his many other awards are the inaugural United Nations Stewardship Award and the National River Conservation Award. In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Simon Fraser University for his river conservation work both locally and globally.

Upon graduating from the University of Montana, Mark moved to Vancouver, BC as a young man. Over the next several decades, Mark played a leadership role in numerous river conservation and restoration initiatives. Such projects, which number in the hundreds, have ranged from successful efforts to restore damaged urban streams, such as Guichon Creek in Burnaby - to effective campaigns that helped clean up severely polluted streams, such as Britannia Creek(a once toxic site that, in 2011, saw salmon return for the first time in a century) - to broad-based initiatives to protect the "Heart of the Fraser", one of the most productive stretches of river anywhere in the world. Mark has also worked on, and profiled, numerous international river issues. His efforts have been honored by an array of governments, community groups, professional bodies and indigenous communities, both in Canada and abroad.

As an avid kayaker, canoeist and rafter, Mark has traveled on or along close to a thousand rivers spanning well over one hundred countries; perhaps more than any other individual. From 2003 to 2007, his acclaimed program, "Riverworld; a personal journey to the world's wildest rivers", launched in conjunction with National Geographic on-line, played to sold-out audiences across North America and the program's website had more than 40 million visits. In 2007, his follow-up program, Wild Water, Wild Earth, a sequel to Riverworld, enjoyed similar success. Mark continues to work on conservation issues, both across Canada and elsewhere in the world. He has written over 300 articles and essays about his experiences and related conservation issues for an array of publications and is a regular contributor to the Vancouver Sun and other newspapers.

Mark served as a past Chair and inaugural member of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. In addition, Mark also served as the first non-government provincial representative and Chair of the Canadian Heritage Rivers Board. He was also the inaugural Chair of the BC Heritage River System from 1997 to 2001, the first provincial initiative of its kind. From 1998 to 2000, Mark was appointed by the Province to chair the BC Park Legacy Panel, a public consultation exercise that engaged almost one hundred thousand British Columbians. Among many key findings, the panel outlined the need to strengthen BC Park's commitment to ecological integrity while also advocating the need for increased funding for a park system that had recently doubled in size. As long time Rivers Chair for the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC, Mark also coordinated the compilation of BC's annual "most endangered rivers" list from its inception in 1993 to 2011. The compilation of this list is one of the most in depth initiatives of its kind and has provided much needed profile for river issues around the province.

In September, 1980, Mark organized a major cleanup of the Thompson River in the southern interior of British Columbia. In the months leading up to this event, he approached the Province and local governments about proclaiming the last Sunday in September as BC Rivers Day, an event intended to celebrate the many values of our rivers. After a very successful inaugural event, Mark, in conjunction with the Outdoor Recreation Council, helped organize additional festivities in the years that followed. Eventually, BC Rivers Day grew to become the biggest event of its kind in North America involving up to 75,000 people in activities ranging from stream clean-ups and fish enhancement activities to educational outings and community riverside celebrations. In 1994, following the International Year of Fresh Water, Mark approached various agencies of the United Nations about establishing World Rivers Day based on the BC model. The response was enthusiastically positive and the establishment of World Rivers Day was seen to be very complimentary to the UN Water for Life Decade initiative launched in 2005. Under Mark's leadership, a massive grassroots effort was undertaken to encourage the participation of international river-related groups and by 2011, on the final Sunday in September, literally thousands of World Rivers Day events were celebrated by millions people in more than 60 countries (See recent television story).

In 2011, Mark coordinated a major Water for Life benefit concert in Burnaby, BC which was also filmed by Global TV to air in June as a major television special. The event focused on the importance of all waterways and the need to be good water stewards wherever we might live. The genesis of this event stemmed from Mark's experiences in Ethiopia's Omo River Valley in 2010. All proceeds from the Water for Life concert benefitted international water relief efforts. The Water for Life TV program was also widely acclaimed and very successful, handily winning the ratings in its time slot.

Mark is a Fellow International member of the New York based Explorers Club. On October 27, 2011, Mark was awarded a special lifetime achievement award by the BCIT Alumni and Foundation at a gala Vancouver dinner. On November 3rd, 2011, Mark was also presented with the prestigious 'Land Champion Award' by the Real Estate Foundation of BC in recognition of his decades-long advocacy for the wise stewardship of land and water resources. In late November 2011, Mark announced his retirement from full time work and was honored with the title, Chair Emeritus of the Rivers Institute.

On April 30th, 2012, MLA Kathy Corrigan rose in the British Columbia Legislature to make a very special tribute (link to video of speech) on behalf of the Province honouring Mark upon his retirement.

Mark continues to support and mentor both fledgling and established river conservation groups, as well as young people with an interest in river conservation. Mark is a Canadian and lives in Burnaby, British Columbia with his wife, Kathie. They have 2 adult daughters, Kelly and Lindsay. In August 2011, Mark and Kathy also celebrated the arrival of their first grandson, Tucker.^[1]

Mark is the son of distinguished Australian born actress Shirley Ann Richards, and Edmund Angelo.^[2][3]

External links[link]

• Mark Angelo is awarded the United Nations Stewardship Award
• Riverworld
• Water for Life Benefit Concert 2011
• Rivers Institute
• BCIT Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Program
• Honorary Doctorate from SFU
• Wild Water, Wild Earth

References[link]

1. ^ "International river stewardship advocate earns United Nations recognition". BCIT News. September 20, 2004. http://www.bcit.ca/news/releases/newsrelease092004894.shtml. Retrieved 2008-07-07. 
2. ^ "GOLDEN AGE'S FILM STAR DIES". Sydney Morning Herald. 27 August 2006. http://www.smh.com.au/news/film/golden-ages-star-dies/2006/08/26/1156012790776.html. Retrieved 20 May 2012. 
3. ^ "A B.C. MAN'S LIFELONG MISSION TO PRESERVE RIVERS: Mark Angelo was the inspiration behind the annual Rivers Day.". The Vancouver Sun. 22 September 2006. http://commons.bcit.ca/riversday/vancouversun.pdf. Retrieved 20 May 2012. 

Carson Jay Robison ((1890-08-04)August 4, 1890 - March 24, 1957(1957-03-24)) was an American country music singer and songwriter. Although his impact is generally forgotten today, he played a major role in promoting country music in its early years through numerous recordings and radio appearances. He was also known as Charles Robison and sometimes composed under the pseudonym Carlos B. McAfee.

Early life[link]

Carson Jay Robison was born in Oswego, Kansas. The son of a champion fiddler, he became a professional musician in the American Midwest at the age of 15, primarily as a whistler working with Wendell Hall, "The Red-Headed Music Maker", on the early 1920s music hall circuit. He worked as a singer and whistler at radio station WDAF (Kansas City, Missouri).

Recording career[link]

In 1924 he moved to New York City and was signed to his first recording contract with Victor Records. Also that year, Robison started a professional collaboration with Vernon Dalhart, one of the era's most notable singers. Through this relationship, Robison realized huge success, mainly as a songwriter but also as a musician, accompanying Dalhart on guitar, harmonica, whistling, and harmony vocals. In one of their first collaborations, Robison accompanied Dalhart on the landmark recording of "Wreck of the Old '97" b/w "The Prisoner's Song" (1924), widely regarded as country music's first million-seller. During this period, Robison also became a successful composer of "event" songs, which recounted current events or tragedies in a predictable fashion, usually concluding in a moral lesson. Some popular examples of his topical compositions include "The Wreck of the Number 9" and "The John T. Scopes Trial", about the famous Scopes Monkey Trial.

In 1928, after Dalhart made a personnel change without consulting Robison, their relationship ended. Although the breakup did not prove lucrative for either artist, Robison continued to record for decades to come. From 1928 to 1931 he teamed with Frank Luther, recording songs for various labels and appearing on WOR radio in New York City. In 1932, he started his own band, Carl Robison's Pioneers (later renamed The Buckaroos), and continued touring and recording through the 1930s and 1940s. It was during this period that Robison made some of the earliest tours of a country musician in the British Isles, appearing there in 1932, 1936, and 1938. According to Billboard, his 1942 recording of the standard "Turkey in the Straw" was that year's top selling country recording. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry. His most famous recording was 1948's "Life Gets Tee-Jus Don't It", a worldwide hit for MGM Records.

Although he played country music for most of his career, he is also remembered for writing the lyrics for "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" with music composed by Frank Luther. Also, in 1956, he recorded the novelty rock & roll song "Rockin' and Rollin' With Grandmaw."^[1]

Robison's daughter Patricia was married in October,1950 to Daniel Murphy at Carson's farm/recording studio near Millbrook, N.Y. Robison died in 1957 in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Albums[link]

• 2005 – Going Back to Texas
• 2002 – A Real Hillbilly Legend
• 1996 – Home, Sweet Home on the Prairie
• 1996 – Home, Sweet Home on the Prairie: 25 Cowboy Classics
• 1988 – A Hillbilly Mixture
• 1987 – The Kansas Jayhawk
• 1981 – Just a Melody
• 1958 – Life Gets Tee-Jus, Don't It
• 1956 – Square Dances
• Immortal Carson Robison
• Blue Ridge Mountain Blues

Songs[link]

• "The Little Green Valley"
• "Left My Gal in the Mountains"
• "Sleepy Rio Grande"
• "Goin' Back to Texas"
• "Utah Trail"
• "Red River Valley"
• "Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie"
• "Slap the Jap"
• "The Runaway Train"

Notes[link]

See also[link]

• Grand Ole Opry
• List of country music performers
• Inductees of the Country Music Hall of Fame

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Nashville Songwriters Foundation
• WMA Hall of Fame
• Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942
• Photograph and Discography of Carson Robison on Victor Records from the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2010)

Frank Luther (August 4, 1899^[1] - November 16, 1980) was an American country music singer, dance band vocalist, playwright, songwriter and pianist.

Early life[link]

Born Francis Luther Crow on a farm near Lakin, Kansas, forty miles from the Colorado line, he was raised on a farm near Hutchinson, Kansas, where his father, William R. Crow, and mother, Gertrude Phillips Crow, dealt in livestock and trotting horses. He began to study piano at age 6, improvising his own music when repetitious exercises bored him, and began vocal instruction at 13.

Three years later, he toured the Midwest as tenor with a quartet called The Meistersingers. He began studying at the University of Kansas, but attended a revival meeting conducted by Jesse Kellems and was so deeply impressed that he accepted an offer from the evangelist to become his musical director. During a subsequent stop in Iola, Kansas, young Crow himself was ordained, despite his never having studied for the ministry.^[2]

By 1921, the Reverend Francis Luther Crow was in the pulpit of the First Christian Church in Bakersfield, California. There, he organized a 30-voice children's choir, an 80-voice adult choir, and two church orchestras. Writing and delivering his weekly sermons proved more problematic, and the Boy Preacher, as he was known locally, resigned to devote his creative energies to the world of music.

Returning to Kansas, he married vocalist/musician Zora Layman on May 8, 1920, and the young couple eventually worked their way to New York City. In 1926, he was seriously pursuing further vocal training when he was invited to join the DeReszke Singers, as tenor/accompanist. They declared his surname, Crow, to be un-musical, and so he dropped it and became Frank Luther from that day on. The quartet toured with humorist Will Rogers, with whom Frank spent considerable time while on the road.^[3]

Luther joined a popular quartet, The Revelers, as tenor in 1927. They toured the British Isles, where Frank met the future Queen of the United Kingdom and did a set accompanied on the drums by the Prince of Wales. His career seemed to be at its zenith, but he contracted a severe cold on the way back to New York. A long-lasting sinus infection and infected throat robbed his ability to sing for nearly a year. His voice returned in a painfully slow manner.

Country music hits[link]

In 1928, with his singing only gradually returning to top form, Frank met and became acquainted with fellow Kansan Carson J. Robison, who had teamed with tenor Vernon Dalhart to make many dozens of top-selling recordings of rural American favorites, shortly to be known in the trade as hillbilly music. Robison and Dalhart were severing their recording partnership, and it was suggested that Luther listen to some Dalhart records and seek to approximate his style. From 1928 to 1932, Frank Luther recorded country music with Carson Robison. Their recordings, made for several record companies and issued on a variety of labels, were extremely popular. "Barnacle Bill the Sailor," "When Your Hair Has Turned to Silver," "When It's Springtime in the Rockies," "When the Bloom is On The Sage," "Little Green Valley," "Down on the Old Plantation," "I'm Alone Because I Love You," "The Utah Trail," "Goin' Back to Texas," "Left My Gal in the Mountains," "In the Cumberland Mountains," "An Old Man's Story, "Little Cabin in the Cascade Mountains," and "The Birmingham Jail" sold a great many copies and influenced future generations of country singers.

When Robison formed his own cowboy singing group for a British tour in 1932, Frank Luther assembled a new trio with his wife, Zora Layman, and baritone Leonard Stokes. They recorded some sides for Victor, but 75-cent country records were not selling very well in the Depression which was just getting underway. Art Satherley, legendary producer for the American Record Corporation, began to record the Luther Trio on 25-cent chain store discs. Coincidental with their first ARC releases came the group's debut on the NBC radio series, Hillbilly Heart-throbs in 1933. Created and written by folklorist/writer/performer Ethel Park Richardson, the network series dramatized old Appalachian ballads as well as newer country music narrative songs. Well-known radio actors played the dramatic roles, with the musical bridges between scenes furnished by the Frank Luther Trio. Richardson, whom Luther would refer to forty years later as a wonderful woman, introduced him to many mountain songs and influenced his repertoire. While on her show, Zora Layman became the first country female singer to have a major hit record with Bob Miller's "Seven Years With the Wrong Man." Her debut performance caused the NBC switchboard to light up for two hours. Frank scored hits with "Rocking Alone in An Old Rocking Chair," "When the White Azaleas Start Blooming," "The Old Spinning Wheel," "Home on the Range," "New Twenty-One Years," and "Seven Years With the Wrong Woman." ^[4]

Dance band vocalist[link]

While Frank Luther's role in the early development of country & western music is significant, he regularly performed many other types of music. From 1928 until the outbreak of World War II, he recorded hundreds of vocal choruses with popular dance bands of the day. The High Hatters, Victor Arden and Phil Ohman, Leo Reisman, Russell Wooding's Red Caps, Joe Venuti, and many other recording bands featured Frank's jazzy tenor vocals. He was also tenor with a number of pop trios and quartets, performing not only on records but on radio broadcasts - often as many as five different programs per day. He also made a series of movie shorts in New York, several of which were released by Educational Pictures. In 1936, he starred in his only full-length Hollywood feature, a story about radio entertainers called High Hat.

Children's records[link]

Frank Luther's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame represents what was to become his chief claim to fame. Early in his recording career, he made some 7" shellac records for children. Several sets were made for Victor in 1933. In 1934, however, Jack Kapp signed Frank to record for the new 35-cent blue label Decca company. He began by making a series of hillbilly records, but did two 78rpm albums of songs for children a few months later. "Mother Goose Songs" and "Nursery Rhymes," the first two albums, featured Frank's tenor voice in brief interpretations of traditional children's tunes, tied together with gentle and pleasant narration. At one point in the Decca set, Luther introduced a lullaby by calmly saying, "Mother tucks you in, kisses you, and leaves you in the nice, friendly darkness. Mother's so wonderful, isn't she? Love her every day you live. She loves you so much." Two pediatricians told Luther that they had used his record to calm small children who feared being in the dark. Child psychologists began to endorse the Luther recordings. The first two albums sold in enormous quantity, and were pressed numerous times.^[5]

Frank Luther's country music days came to a halt, and he did fewer dance band vocal choruses. He was now in demand as Decca's performer of children's songs and stories. Selling even better were the classic "Winnie-the-Pooh" and "Babar the Elephant" sets. A Luther-composed "Alice in Wonderland" album, a true-to-the-original album of songs from Disney's "Snow White, "Tuneful Tales," "Manners Can Be Fun," "Raggedy Ann Songs," and hundreds more established Frank Luther as the dean of children's recordings. Decca claimed, in 1946, that 85% of the records for young people sold in the English speaking world were Luther's.

Stephen Foster melodies[link]

While his recordings for children remained his chief claim to fame, Luther made a number of successful 78rpm album sets for Decca in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Focusing on Americana (he wrote a book, Americans and Their Songs, published in 1942), he made albums of Civil War songs from both the North and South, songs of early New York, songs of old California, Gay Nineties songs, Irish favorites, and rare Christmas carols. Many of these he and Zora Layman performed on their own radio series. Most widely-acclaimed were two albums of compositions by Stephen Foster. Performed with a sensitivity and sentimentality stylistically consistent with the famous American composer's approach, Luther's renditions were active in the Decca catalogue for some fifteen years. His interpretations of such compositions as "Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway," "The Hour For Thee and Me," "Beautiful Dreamer," "Sweetly She Sleeps, My Alice Fair," "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Comrades, Fill No Glass For Me" were acclaimed by music critics of the day.

After World War II[link]

In 1946, Luther - by now a Decca Records executive, in charge of children's, educational, and religious recordings - returned to the studios to re-record many of his pre-war albums for children and to make many others, including "The Birthday Party Record" released on Decca in the fall of 1950. He had taken college-level courses in child psychology and was now busy as an educational lecturer, also doing hundreds of personal appearances in schools each year. Recording prolifically, his tenor voice began to mellow. By the early 1950s, he was singing baritone. Some years earlier, Luther and Zora Layman had divorced. He remarried and had two children, a daughter and son, in the late 1940s. He continued to record regularly for Decca through 1954.

While planning a record album based on Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Luther began writing songs based on the book and soon found that he had enough for a full-length play for adult audiences. The show he devised did not reach Broadway, but it was turned into a network television special on the U.S. Steel Hour in 1956. Decca released an original cast album that same year. The musical was subsequently performed around the country by little theatre groups and stock companies.

Frank Luther continued to record, forming his own label and then working for a variety of educational record companies. He did a series for United Artists Records, some albums of songs adapted from the writings of various children's authors, and some narrations of children's books. These included Babar Songs and Stories, an LP of retellings of Jean de Brunhoff's Babar the Elephant series he recorded for Vocalion Records in the early 1960s. On this album he punctuated his narrations of The Story of Babar, The Travels of Babar, Babar the King, Babar and his Children, Zephir's Holiday and Babar and Father Christmas with snatches of song at various junctures in the stories.

Luther also produced albums by others. His best-known work as a producer was the million-selling original cast album of the Off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks.

Final years[link]

Luther's last two albums, made in stereo for Pickwick International, were nostalgic re-visits to two familiar themes, A Treasury of Mother Goose Songs and American Folk Songs. He did not retire, but continued to write scores and work on recording projects in the 1970s, one being a set of songs about protecting the environment.

Frank Luther died in New York City in 1980, at age 80.

See also[link]

• Tale Spinners For Children

References[link]

External links[link]

• Luther (1900-1980) Works by Frank Luther at Project Gutenberg (Audio)
• Recording of "Three Billy Goats Gruff"