25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Ken Niles

October 25, 2019

Ken Niles was a radio announcer. He was married to Nadia Niles, and had two children named Kenneth Niles and Denise Niles.

Niles played an important role in the development of radio drama throughout the 1920s. During the 1930s, he produced and assisted with the hosting of actress-cum-gossip columnist Louella Parsons’ talent and interview program “Hollywood Hotel.” Parsons and Niles later appeared in a 1937 feature film based on the show. Niles subsequently narrated, or served as announcer, in several other feature films. He served as commercial announcer and foil on several series sponsored by Camel Cigarettes, notably that starring Abbott and Costello. Niles was frequently paired in comedy skits opposite Elvia Allman as his fictitious wife Mrs. Niles.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Kenny Baker

October 25, 2019

Kenneth Laurence “Kenny” Baker was an American singer/actor who first gained notice as the featured singer on Jack Benny’s radio shows during the 1930s.

At the height of his radio fame, and after leaving the Benny show in 1939, he appeared in seventeen film musicals including: and later co-starred with Mary Martin in the original Broadway production of Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s One Touch of Venus. He returned to radio as a regular performer on Fred Allen’s Texaco Star Theater program of 1940-1942. Baker also recorded a number of hymn albums for his church. After retiring from performing in the early 1950s, he became a Christian Science practitioner and motivational speaker.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Kenny G

October 25, 2019

Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, better known by his stage name Kenny G, is a Grammy winning American, adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist. His fourth album, Duotones, brought him breakthrough success in 1986. Kenny G is the biggest-selling instrumental musician of the modern era, with global sales totaling more than 75 million albums.

Kenny G was born in Seattle, Washington to a Jewish family and first came into contact with a saxophone when he heard someone performing with one on The Ed Sullivan Show. He started playing the saxophone in 1966 when he was 10 years old. He learned how to play under the direction of local trumpeter Gerald Pfister and by practicing along with records, trying to emulate the sounds that he was hearing. His first saxophone was a Buffet Crampon alto.

Kenny G attended Whitworth Elementary School, Sharples-Jr High School, Franklin High School, and the University of Washington, all in his home town of Seattle, Washington. When he entered high school, he failed on his first try to get into the jazz band, but tried again the following year and earned first chair. In addition to his studies while in high school, he took private lessons on the saxophone and clarinet from Johnny Jessen, once a week for a year.

He was also on his high school golf team. He had loved the sport ever since his older brother, Brian Gorelick, introduced it to him when he was ten years old, which is the same age when he started playing the saxophone.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

KC and the Sunshine Band

October 25, 2019

KC and the Sunshine Band is an American musical group. Founded in 1973 in Miami, Florida, their style has included funk, R&B, and disco. Their most well known songs include the disco hits “That’s the Way “, ” Shake Your Booty”, “I’m Your Boogie Man”, “Keep It Comin’ Love”, “Get Down Tonight”, “Give It Up”, and “Please Don’t Go”. They took their name from lead vocalist Harry Wayne Casey’s last name and the “Sunshine Band” from KC’s home state of Florida. The group was formed in 1973 by Harry Wayne Casey, a record store employee and part-timer at TK Records in Miami. KC originally called the band KC & The Sunshine Junkanoo Band, as he used studio musicians from TK and a local Junkanoo band called the Miami Junkanoo Band. He was then introduced to Richard Finch, who was doing engineering work on records for TK. This was the beginning of the Casey-Finch musical collaboration. The initial members were just Casey and Finch, but they soon added guitarist Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson, both TK studio musicians.

The first few songs, “Blow Your Whistle” and “Sound Your Funky Horn”, were released as singles, and did well enough on the U.S. R&B chart and overseas that TK wanted a follow up single and album. However, while working on demos for KC & the Sunshine Band the song, “Rock Your Baby” was created featuring Smith on guitar, and became a number one hit in 51 countries in mid 1974. The band’s “Queen of Clubs”, which featured uncredited vocals by McCrae, was a hit in the UK, peaking at #7, and they went on tour there in 1975.

With the release of the self titled triple platinum second album KC and the Sunshine Band in 1975 came the group’s first major U.S. hit with “Get Down Tonight”. It topped the R&B chart in April and the Billboard Hot 100 in August. “That’s the Way ” also became a number one hit in November 1975 and the group did well at the 1976 Grammy Awards. The 1976 album Part 3 yielded two number one singles: “I’m Your Boogie Man”, ” Shake Your Booty” and “Keep It Comin’ Love” peaked at number two. Their success lasted until the fifth album; their last chart topping hit was “Please Don’t Go” in December 1979, hitting #1 for one week in January 1980, and becoming the first #1 hit of the 1980s. With the declining popularity of disco, the group explored other styles and changed labels, joining Epic Records in 1980 after TK Records went bankrupt.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Keanu Reeves

October 25, 2019

Keanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. Reeves is perhaps best known for his roles in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Speed, and the science fiction-action trilogy The Matrix. He has worked under major directors, such as Stephen Frears ; Gus Van Sant ; and Bernardo Bertolucci. His role as a rookie FBI agent in the 1991 surf drama Point Break was praised by The New York Times critic Janet Maslin, who stated that Reeves “.displays considerable discipline and range.”

In addition to his film roles, Reeves has also performed in theatre. His performance in the title role in a Manitoba Theatre Centre production of Hamlet was praised by Roger Lewis, the Sunday Times, who called Reeves “.one of the top three Hamlets I have seen, for a simple reason: he is Hamlet.” On January 31, 2005, Reeves received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In an ET online survey in 2006, he was included in the “Top Ten of America’s Favorite Stars”.

Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon, the son of Patricia Bond, a costume designer/performer, and Samuel Nowlin Reeves, Jr., a geologist. Reeves’s mother is English, and his father is an American of English, Hawaiian, Chinese, and Portuguese descent. Reeves’s mother was working in Beirut when she met his father. Reeves’ father worked as an unskilled laborer and earned his GED while imprisoned in Hawaii for selling heroin at Hilo International Airport. He abandoned his wife and family when Reeves was three years old, and Reeves does not currently have any relationship with him. Reeves was named for an uncle, Henry Keanu Reeves. “Keanu” in Hawaiian means the coldness. When Reeves first arrived in Hollywood, his agent thought his first name was too exotic, so during the early days of his film career he was sometimes credited as K.C. Reeves. Reeves has one full sister named Kim who was diagnosed with leukemia in the early 1990s. Additionally, through his mother he has a half-sister, Karina Miller and through his father another half-sister named Emma Rose Reeves. Reeves moved around the world frequently as a child and he lived with various stepfathers. After his parents divorced in 1966, his mother became a costume designer and moved the family to Australia and then to New York City. There she met and married Paul Aaron, a Broadway and Hollywood director. The couple moved to Toronto but divorced in 1971. Reeves’s mother married Robert Miller, a rock promoter, in 1976, but the couple divorced in 1980. She subsequently married her fourth husband, Jack Bond, a hairdresser, a marriage that broke up in 1994. Grandparents and nannies babysat Reeves and his sisters, and Reeves grew up primarily in Toronto. Within a span of five years, he attended four different high schools, including the Etobicoke School of the Arts, from which he was later expelled. Reeves stated he was expelled “.because I was greasy and running around a lot. I was just a little too rambunctious and shot my mouth off once too often. I was not generally the most well-oiled machine in the school. I was just getting in their way, I guess.”

25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Keely Smith

October 25, 2019

Keely Smith, is an American jazz and popular music singer who enjoyed popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. She collaborated with, among other, Louis Prima and Frank Sinatra.

Smith showed a natural aptitude for singing at a young age. At 14, she started singing with a naval air station band led by Saxie Dowell. At 15, she got her first paying job with the Earl Bennett band.

Smith made her professional debut with Louis Prima in 1949 ; Smith played the “straight guy” in the duo to Prima’s wild antics and they recorded many duets. These include Johnny Mercer’s and Harold Arlen’s “That Ol’ Black Magic”, which was a Top 20 hit in the US in 1958. In 1959, Smith and Prima were awarded the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus for “That Ol’ Black Magic”. Her “dead-pan” act was a hit with fans. The duo followed up with the minor successes “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”, a revival of the 1937 Andrews Sisters hit. Smith and Prima’s act was a mainstay of the Las Vegas lounge scene for much of the 1950s.

Smith appeared with Prima in the 1959 film, Hey Boy! Hey Girl!, singing “Fever”, and also appeared in and sang on the soundtrack of the previous year’s Thunder Road. Her song in Thunder Road was “Whippoorwill”. Her first big solo hit was “I Wish You Love”. In 1961, Smith divorced Prima. She then signed with Reprise Records, where her musical director was Nelson Riddle. In 1965, she had Top 20 hits in the UK with an album of Beatles compositions, and a single, “You’re Breaking My Heart”. Sadly, her Reprise recordings have never been made available on CD.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Keenan Wynn

October 25, 2019

Keenan Wynn was an American character actor and member of a well-known show business family. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he very rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his many movie and TV parts.

He was born in New York City, New York as Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn, the son of Jewish American vaudeville comedian Ed Wynn, and his Irish-American Catholic wife, the former Hilda Keenan, but took his stage name from his maternal grandfather, Frank Keenan, one of the first Broadway actors to star in Hollywood.

Keenan Wynn became an actor with Ed Wynn’s encouragement and the two appeared together in the original Playhouse 90 television production of Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight. The son was returning the favour: according to radio historian Elizabeth McLeod, it was Keenan who had helped his father overcome professional collapse and a harrowing divorce and nervous breakdown to return to work a decade earlier, and who now helped convince Serling and producer Martin Manulis that the elder Wynn should play the wistful trainer. as well as a subsequent TV drama detailing the problems they’d experienced while working on that show called The Man in the Funny Suit. In that show, the Wynns, Serling and much of the cast and crew played themselves. Keenan was also in another of Rod Serling’s productions, an episode of The Twilight Zone entitled “A World of His Own”.

Keenan Wynn appeared in hundreds of movies and television shows between 1934 and 1986. His credits include The Clock, Royal Wedding, Alias Smith and Jones, Emergency!, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me, Kate, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, and Herbie Rides Again.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Keith Carradine

October 25, 2019

Keith Ian Carradine is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Oscar winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting “dynasty” that began with his father, John Carradine.

Keith Carradine was born in San Mateo, California. He is the son of actress and artist Sonia Sorel and actor John Carradine. His paternal half-brothers are Bruce Carradine and the late David Carradine. His maternal half-brother is Michael Bowen, and his full brothers are Christopher and Robert Carradine.

Carradine’s childhood was difficult. He said that his father drank and his mother ?was a manic depressive paranoid schizophrenic catatonic ? she had it all.? His parents were divorced in 1957, when he was six years old. A bitter custody battle lead to his father gaining custody of him and his brothers, Christopher and Robert, after the children had spent three months in a home for abused children as wards of the court. Keith said of the experience, “It was like being in jail. There were bars on the windows, and we were only allowed to see our parents through glass doors. It was very sad. We would stand there on either side of the glass door crying”. He was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, and he rarely saw either of his parents. His mother was not permitted to see him for eight years following the custody settlement.

After high school, Carradine entertained the thought of becoming a forest ranger, but opted to study drama at Colorado State University. He dropped out after one semester and drifted back to California moving in with his older half-brother, David. David encouraged Keith to pursue an acting career, paid for his acting and vocal lessons, and helped him get an agent.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Kelsey Grammer

October 25, 2019

Allen Kelsey Grammer, best known as Kelsey Grammer, is an American actor and comedian. He is most widely known for his two-decade portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane in the NBC sitcoms Cheers and Frasier. He has been nominated for numerous Emmys, including one for playing Frasier Crane on three sitcoms, and has also worked as a television producer, director, writer, and as a voice artist. He has received many accolades for his role as Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons.

Grammer was born in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands to Sally, a singer, and Frank Allen Grammer, Jr., a musician and owner of a coffee shop and a bar & grill called Greer’s Place.

Grammer studied singing in high school, among other more academic topics.

Grammer’s family life has been plagued by tragedies. In 1968, when Grammer was thirteen years old, his father, whom he had seen only twice since his parents’ divorce, was shot and killed on the front lawn of his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1975, his younger sister, Karen, was raped and murdered after being abducted outside a Red Lobster restaurant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where her boyfriend worked. In 1980, his fraternal twin half-brothers were killed in a scuba diving accident. Grammer has sworn to prevent his sister’s murderer, Freddie Lee Glenn, from being paroled; in July 2009, Glenn was denied parole at least in part due to a letter Grammer submitted to the parole board.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Ken Carpenter

October 25, 2019

Kenneth Lee Carpenter was a longtime TV and radio announcer, who was best known for being the announcer for singer and actor Bing Crosby for 27 years.

Born in Avon, Illinois, Carpenter was the son of Barlow Carpenter, a Universalist minister, and Clara Carpenter. He graduated from Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois in 1921, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Lombard College also is where Carpenter met his future lifelong wife, Betty.

Carpenter moved to Hollywood in 1929, one year after resolving to move there after listening to radio legend Graham McNamee call the Rose Bowl. Not long afterward, he became a staff announcer for KFI radio. As part of that job, Carpenter announced USC and UCLA football games for the Pacific Coast and the NBC radio networks from 1932 until 1935. In 1935, Carpenter announced the Rose Bowl for NBC radio. Carpenter became the color man for Bill Stern for all NBC-originated radio programming from Los Angeles from 1938 until 1942, which included the Rose Bowl. “Those Rose Bowl games were a big break for me, as they made me known to clients and advertising agencies in the East, so I had a jump on other local men when the big commercial shows started originating in L.A. in the mid-1930s,” Carpenter later said.

In 1936, Carpenter became Crosby’s announcer after Crosby began hosting the Kraft Music Hall radio variety program. Carpenter continued to announce for Crosby on various programs for the next 27 years. Crosby famously once called Carpenter “the man with the golden voice.” Carpenter also was known for ringing the chimes on many of Crosby’s shows.