Hearts

Hearts is an "evasion-type" trick-taking playing card game for four players, although variations can accommodate 3–6 players. The game is also known as Black Lady,The Dirty, Dark Lady, Slippery Anne, Chase the Lady, Crubs, Black Queen and Black Maria, though any of these may refer to the similar but differently-scored game Black Lady. The game is a member of the Whist family of trick-taking games (which also includes Bridge and Spades), but the game is unique among Whist variants in that it is an evasion-type game; players avoid winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding winning tricks altogether.

History

The game of Hearts as currently known originated with a family of related games called Reversis, which became popular around 1750 in Spain. In this game, a penalty point was awarded for trick won, plus additional points for capturing the Jack of Hearts or the Queen of Hearts. A similar game called "Four Jacks" centered around avoiding any trick containing a Jack, which were worth one penalty point, and the Jack of Spades worth two.

Marty Balin

Marty Balin (born Martyn Jerel Buchwald; January 30, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter and musician best known as the founder and one of the lead singers of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship.

Early life

Balin was born Martyn Jerel Buchwald in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Catherine Eugenia "Jean" (née Talbot) and Joseph Buchwald. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Eastern Europe. His father was Jewish and his mother was Episcopalian. Marty attended Washington High School in San Francisco, California.

Career

In 1962, Buchwald changed his name to Marty Balin and began recording with Challenge Records, releasing the singles "Nobody But You" and "I Specialize in Love". By 1964, Balin was leading a folk music quartet called The Town Criers.

Balin was a founder and one of the lead vocalists for Jefferson Airplane from 1965 to 1971. In the group's famous 1966-1971 iteration, Balin served as co-lead vocalist alongside Grace Slick and rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner. While his output diminished after Surrealistic Pillow (1967) as Slick, Kantner, and lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen matured as songwriters (a process compounded by Balin's eschewal of the group's burgeoning "ego trips"), his most enduring songwriting contributions—often imbued with a romantic, pop-oriented lilt atypical of the band's characteristic forays into psychedelic rock—include "Comin' Back to Me" (a folk rock ballad later covered by Ritchie Havens and Rickie Lee Jones), "Today" (a collaboration with Kantner initially written on spec for Tony Bennett that was prominently covered by Tom Scott), and, again with Kantner, the topical 1969 Top 100 hit "Volunteers". Although uncharacteristic of his oeuvre, the uptempo "3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds" and "Plastic Fantastic Lover" (both written for Surrealistic Pillow) remained integral components of the Airplane's live set throughout the late 1960s.

Christina Perri

Christina Judith Perri (born August 19, 1986) is an American singer and songwriter from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her debut single "Jar of Hearts" charted after it was featured on the Fox television show So You Think You Can Dance in 2010. The single went on to sell over 3 million copies in the United States and was a hit around the world. In the UK, it reached number three on the charts and spent over three months in the UK Top 40. A few months later, Perri released her first extended play, The Ocean Way Sessions.

After "Jar of Hearts" began to gather a large amount of attention, Perri signed a record deal with Atlantic Records. Her debut album, Lovestrong, was released on May 10, 2011. In 2012, she wrote and recorded "A Thousand Years" for the film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011) and it appears on the accompanying soundtrack. The song went on to sell over 4 million copies in the United States, being certified 4× platinum. Her second EP, A Very Merry Perri Christmas, was released in October 2012. Her second studio album, Head or Heart, was released on April 1, 2014. Its lead single, "Human", was released on November 18, 2013.