25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Earth, Wind & Fire

October 25, 2019

Earth, Wind & Fire is an American R&B and disco band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1969 by Verdine and Maurice White. Also known as EWF, the band has won six Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards. They have been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone has described them as “innovative, precise yet sensual, calculated yet galvanizing” and has also declared that the band “changed the sound of black pop”. In 1998, they were ranked at number 60 on VH1’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Rock N’ Roll.

The band’s music contains elements of African, Latin American, funk, soul, pop and rock music, jazz and other genres. The band is known for the dynamic sound of their horn section, and the interplay between the contrasting vocals of Philip Bailey’s falsetto and Maurice White’s tenor. The kalimba is played on all of the band’s albums.

In 1969, Maurice White, a former session drummer for Chess Records and member of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, joined two friends in Chicago, Wade Flemons and Wayne T, Don Whitehead, as a songwriting team composing songs and commercials in the Chicago area. The three friends got a recording contract with Capitol, and called themselves the “Salty Peppers,” and had a marginal hit in the Midwestern area called “La La Time.”

The Salty Peppers’ second single, “Uh Huh Yeah,” did not fare as well, and Maurice left Ramsey Lewis Trio and moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. White added to the band singer and percussionist Yackov Ben Israel both from Chicago, and then asked his younger brother Verdine how he would feel about heading out to the west coast. June 6, 1970, Verdine left Chicago later joining the band as their new bassist. Maurice began shopping demo tapes of the band, featuring Donny Hathaway, around to different record labels and was then signed to Warner Bros. Records.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Eartha Kitt

October 25, 2019

Eartha Mae Kitt was an American actress, singer, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit Christmas song “Santa Baby”. Orson Welles once called her the “most exciting woman in the world.” She took over the role of Catwoman for the third season of the 1960s Batman television series, replacing Julie Newmar, who was unavailable for the final season.

Kitt was born Eartha Mae Keith on a cotton plantation in the town of North, South Carolina, a small town in Orangeburg County near Columbia, South Carolina. Kitt’s mother was of Cherokee and African-American descent and her father of German or Dutch descent. Kitt claimed she was conceived by rape.

Kitt was raised by Anna Mae Riley, an African-American woman whom she believed to be her mother. Anna Mae went to live with a black man when Eartha was 8. He refused to accept Kitt because of her relatively pale complexion.

Kitt lived with another family until Riley’s death. She was then sent to live in New York City with Mamie Kitt, who she learned was her biological mother; she had no knowledge of her father, except that his surname was Kitt and that he was supposedly a son of the owner of the farm where she had been born. Newspaper obituaries state that her white father was “a poor cotton farmer.”

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Ed Gardner

October 25, 2019

Edward Francis 'Ed' Gardner was an American comic actor, writer and director, best remembered as the creator and star of the radio hit Duffy's Tavern.

Born in Astoria, New York, Gardner was a representative for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency before going into show business. He began producing for the stage in the early 1930s. He produced the drama play Coastwise on Broadway and wrote and directed the Broadway comedy After Such Pleasures. But he found his fame with Duffy's Tavern, playing the wisecracking, malaprop-prone barkeep Archie on the radio hit. It aired on CBS from 1941 to 1942, on NBC Blue Network from 1942 to 1944 and NBC from 1944 to 1952. Speaking in a nasal Brooklyn accent, and sounding like just about every working class New Yorker his creator had ever known, Gardner as Archie invariably began each week's show by answering the telephone and saying, "Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat, Archie the manager speaking, Duffy ain't here—oh, hello, Duffy."

Duffy the owner never appeared, but Archie did, with Gardner assuming the role himself after he couldn't find the right actor to play the role. Regulars in the tavern included Duffy's airheaded, man-crazy daughter, Eddie the droll waiter, and Finnegan the barfly, not to mention Clancy the cop. The daughter was played by several actresses but began with Shirley Booth, Gardner's first wife, with whom he remained friends even after their 1942 divorce.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Drew Carey

October 25, 2019

Drew Allison Carey is an American actor, comedian, photographer, and game show host. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and making a name for himself in stand-up comedy, Carey eventually gained popularity starring on his own sitcom, The Drew Carey Show, and serving as host on the U.S. version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, both of which aired on ABC.

Carey has appeared in several films, television series, music videos, a made-for-television film, and a computer game. He currently hosts the game show The Price Is Right. He is interested in a variety of sports, has worked as a photographer at U.S. National Team soccer games, and is a minority owner of the Major League Soccer team Seattle Sounders FC. Carey is engaged and has written an autobiography detailing his early life and television career.

Drew Carey was the youngest of Lewis and Beulah Carey’s three sons and raised in Parma, Ohio. When he was eight years old his father died from a brain tumor. According to his autobiography, he was born with six toes on his right foot and he played the cornet and trumpet in the marching band of James Ford Rhodes High School, from which he graduated in 1975.

He continued on to college at Kent State University and was expelled twice for poor academic performance. He left KSU after three years, but not before becoming a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity. After leaving the university, Carey joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1980 and served for six years. He relocated to Las Vegas for a few months in 1982, and for a short time worked as a bank teller and a waiter at Denny’s.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Drew Pearson

October 25, 2019

Andrew Russell Pearson, known professionally as Drew Pearson, and born in Evanston, Illinois, was one of the most well-known American journalists of his day. He was best known for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” in which he attacked various public persons with little or no objective proof for his allegations. He also had a program on NBC Radio entitled Drew Pearson Comments.

His parents were Paul Martin Pearson, an English professor at Northwestern University, and Edna Wolfe. When Pearson was six years of age, his father joined the faculty of Swarthmore College as Professor of Public Speaking, and the family moved to Pennsylvania, joining the Society of Friends, with which the college was then affiliated. After being educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Pearson attended Swarthmore, where he edited its student newspaper, The Phoenix.

From 1919 to 1921, Pearson served with the American Friends Service Committee, directing post-war rebuilding operations in Pe?, which at that time was part of Serbia. From 1921 to 1922, he lectured in Geography at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1923, Pearson travelled to Japan, China, New Zealand, Australia, India and Serbia, and persuaded several newspapers to buy articles about his travels. He was also commissioned by the American “Around the World Syndicate” to produce a set of interviews entitled, “Europe’s Twelve Greatest Men.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Dudley Moore

October 25, 2019

Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.

Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s and became famous as half of the popular television double-act he formed with Peter Cook. His fame as a comedic actor was later heightened by his success in Hollywood movies such as 10 with Bo Derek and Arthur in the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively. He was often known as “Cuddly Dudley” or “The Sex Thimble”, a reference to his short stature and reputation as a ladies’ man.

Moore was born the son of a railway electrician in Charing Cross Hospital, London and brought up in Dagenham. His working class parents showed little affection to their son. He was notably short: and was born with a club foot that required extensive hospital treatment and which, coupled with his diminutive stature, made him the butt of jokes from other children. Seeking refuge from his problems he became a choirboy at the age of six and took up piano and violin. He rapidly developed into a talented pianist and organist and was playing the pipe organ at church weddings by the age of 14. He attended Dagenham County High School where he received musical tuition from a dedicated teacher, Peter Cork. Cork became a friend and confidant to Moore, corresponding with him until 1994.

Moore’s musical talent won him an organ scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. While studying music and composition there, he also performed with Alan Bennett in the Oxford Revue. Bennett then recommended him to the producer putting together Beyond the Fringe, a comedy revue, where he was to first meet Peter Cook. Beyond the Fringe was at the forefront of the 1960s satire boom and after success in Britain, it transferred to the United States where it was also a hit.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Duke Ellington

October 25, 2019

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader.

A prominent figure in the history of jazz, Ellington’s music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, and world tours. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death, the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowing a special posthumous honor in 1999.

Ellington called his music “American Music” rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as “beyond category”. These included many of the musicians who were members of his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most well-known jazz orchestral units in the history of jazz. He often composed specifically for the style and skills of these individuals, such as “Jeep’s Blues” for Johnny Hodges, “Concerto for Cootie” for Cootie Williams, which later became “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me” with Bob Russell’s lyrics, and “The Mooche” for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol’s “Caravan” and “Perdido” which brought the ‘Spanish Tinge’ to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained there for several decades. After 1941, he frequently collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his “writing and arranging companion.” Ellington recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films.

Ellington led his band from 1923 until his death in 1974. His son Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father’s business for several decades, led the band until his own death from cancer in 1996. At that point, the original band dissolved. Paul Ellington, Mercer’s youngest son and executor of the Duke Ellington estate, kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going from Mercer’s death onwards.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Duncan Renaldo

October 25, 2019

Renault Renaldo Duncan, better known as Duncan Renaldo, was an American actor who portrayed The Cisco Kid in films and on the 1950-1956 American TV series, The Cisco Kid.

An orphan, Renaldo apparently never knew his biological parents and was raised in several European countries. He claimed not to know where he had been born. He emigrated to America in the 1920s. Failing to support himself as a portrait painter, he tried producing short films. He eventually took up acting and signed with MGM in 1928. In 1934 he was arrested for illegal entry into the United States, but eventually was pardoned by President Franklin Roosevelt and returned to acting.

Though he starred mostly in B-films, for example Tiger Fangs, Renaldo played roles in mainstream films as well, including in Spawn of the North with George Raft, Henry Fonda and John Barrymore; and For Whom the Bell Tolls with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. He was also a producer, writer and director.

In the late 1940s, Renaldo starred in several Hollywood Westerns as The Cisco Kid, and in 1950, he began playing the role in a popular television series that ran until 1956. In the age of black-and-white television, the show was filmed in color. As Cisco, Renaldo roamed the Old West on a black-and-white horse named Diablo, accompanied by his constant companion, Pancho, played by Leo Carrillo, who was 24 years Renaldo’s senior. The Cisco Kid always helped where needed, and unlike most Western heroes, rarely killed anyone.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Duran Duran

October 25, 2019

Duran Duran are an English pop rock band that formed in Birmingham, England in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven “Second British Invasion” of the United States. Since the 1980s, they have placed 14 singles in the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart and 21 in the Billboard Hot 100 and have, according to the Sunday Mercury, sold more than 100

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Dustin Farnum

October 25, 2019

Dustin Lancy Farnum was an American singer, dancer and an actor in silent movies during the early days of motion pictures. After a great success in a number of stage roles, in 1914 he landed his first film role in the movie ‘Soldiers of Fortune’, and later in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man. Although he played a wide variety of roles, he tended toward Westerns and became one of the biggest stars of the genre. He was married to actress Winifred Kingston. He was the older brother of actor William Farnum and the lesser known silent film director Marshall Farnum. He also was the father of late radio actress Estelle “Dustine” Runyon.