- published: 23 Nov 2008
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Alexis (Ancient Greek: Ἄλεξις, c.394 BC – c.288 BC) was a Greek comic poet of the Middle Comedy period. He was born at Thurii (in present day Calabria, Italy) in Magna Graecia and taken early to Athens, where he became a citizen, being enrolled in the deme Oion (Οἶον) and the tribe Leontides. It is thought he lived to the age of 106 and died on the stage while being crowned. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia, Alexis was the paternal uncle of the dramatist Menander and wrote 245 comedies, of which only fragments now survive, including some 130 preserved titles.
It was said he had a son, called Stephanus, who also wrote comedies. He appears to have been rather addicted to the pleasures of the table, according to Athenaeus.
He won his first Lenaean victory in the 350s BC, most likely, where he was sixth after Eubulus, and fourth after Antiphanes. While being a Middle Comic poet, Alexis was contemporary with several leading figures of New Comedy, such as Philippides, Philemon, Diphilus, and even Menander. There is also some evidence that, during his old age, he wrote plays in the style of New Comedy.
Alexis Korner (19 April 1928 — 1 January 1984) was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, Korner was instrumental in bringing together various English blues musicians.
Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner was born in Paris to an Austrian Jewish father and a half-Turkish half-Greek mother, and spent his childhood in France, Switzerland, and North Africa. He arrived in London in 1940 at the start of World War II. One memory of his youth was listening to a record by black pianist Jimmy Yancey during a German air raid. Korner said, "From then on all I wanted to do was play the blues."
After the war, he played piano and guitar (his first guitar was built by friend and author Sydney Hopkins, who wrote Mister God, This Is Anna), and in 1949 joined Chris Barber's Jazz Band where he met blues harmonica player Cyril Davies. They started playing together as a duo, formed the influential London Blues and Barrelhouse Club in 1955, and made their first record together in 1957. Korner made his first official record on Decca Records DFE 6286 in the company of Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group. His talent extended to playing mandolin on one of the tracks of this rare British EP, recorded in London on 28 July 1955. Korner brought many American blues artists, previously unknown in England, to perform.
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, (born 30 March 1945) is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in Gibson's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.
In the mid 1960s, Clapton departed from the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. In his one-year stay with Mayall, Clapton gained the nickname "Slowhand". Immediately after leaving Mayall, Clapton formed Cream, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop." For most of the 1970s, Clapton's output bore the influence of the mellow style of J.J. Cale and the reggae of Bob Marley. His version of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" helped reggae reach a mass market. Two of his most popular recordings were "Layla", recorded by Derek and the Dominos, another band he formed and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", recorded by Cream. A recipient of seventeen Grammy Awards, in 2004 Clapton was awarded a CBE for services to music. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers.