Jay and the Americans

Jay and the Americans were a pop music group popular in the 1960s. Their initial line-up consisted of John "Jay" Traynor, Howard Kane (né Kirschenbaum), Kenny Vance (né Rosenberg) and Sandy Deanne (né Yaguda), though their greatest success on the charts came after Traynor had been replaced as lead singer by Jay Black.

Biography

Early years

They were discovered while performing in student venues at New York University in the late 1950s. They auditioned for Leiber and Stoller, who gave the group its name.

Career pinnacle

With Jay Traynor singing lead, they first hit the Billboard charts in 1962 with the tune "She Cried," which reached #5 (later covered by The Shangri-Las, Aerosmith, and others). The next two singles didn't fare nearly as well, and Traynor left the group. Jay's solo singles made little impression, but one, "Up And Over" issued on ABC in 1966 became a Northern Soul classic. Empires' guitarist Marty Sanders (né Kupersmith) joined the group. He brought David Black (né Blatt) of "The Empires" in to take Traynor's place (after David first agreed to adopt the name Jay Black), and Black sang lead for the rest of the group's major hits.

The Americans (2013 TV series)

The Americans is an American television period drama series created and produced by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg. The series premiered in the United States on January 30, 2013, on the cable network FX, and concluded its third season on April 22, 2015.

Set in the early 1980s during the Cold War, The Americans is the story of Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple living in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. with their unsuspecting children (Holly Taylor and Keidrich Sellati) and their neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI agent working in counterintelligence.

On March 31, 2015, FX renewed the series for a fourth season consisting of 13 episodes to premiere on March 16, 2016.

Production

Conception

The Americans was created by Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer. Despite its spy setting, Weisberg aimed to tell the story of a marriage. The series focuses on the personal and professional lives of the Jennings, sometimes incorporating real-life events into the narrative. The show's creator has described the series as being ultimately about a marriage. "The Americans is at its core a marriage story. International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. Sometimes, when you're struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is." Executive producer Joel Fields described the series as working different levels of reality: the fictional world of the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth, and the real world involving the characters' experiences during the Cold War.

The Americans

The Americans may refer to:

See also

Americans

Americans are citizens of the United States of America. The country is home to people of many different national origins. As a result, most Americans do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship and allegiance. Although citizens make up the majority of Americans, non-citizen residents, dual citizens, and expatriates may also claim an American identity.

Overview

The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century, and American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.

Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can also be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists, settlers, and immigrants. It also includes influences of African-American culture. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America has also had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics.

Cara Mia

"Cara Mia" is a popular song published in 1954 that became a UK number 1 and US number 10 hit and Gold record for English singer David Whitfield in 1954 and a #4 hit for the American pop group Jay and the Americans in 1965. Jay & The Americans' version went into the charts in the Netherlands when it was re-released in 1980. The title means "my beloved" in Italian.

Background

The English singer David Whitfield first recorded the song with the Mantovani Orchestra in 1954. This recording made the charts in the United States, and in the UK it was the first record to spend ten consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart. Whitfield's version was one of the biggest selling British records in the pre-rock days. It sold more than three and a half million copies worldwide and was a Top 10 hit in America.

Writers

Authorship of the song was credited to Tulio Trapani (the nom de plume of the song's co-writer and arranger Mantovani) and Lee Lange (Bunny Lewis, Whitfield's producer).

Notable cover versions