Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. He is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style.

As a traveling performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He participated in only two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs (with 13 surviving alternate takes) recorded by famed Country Music Hall of Fame producer Don Law. These songs, recorded at low fidelity in improvised studios, were the totality of his recorded output. Most were released as 10-inch,  rpm singles from 1937–1938, with a few released after his death. Other than these recordings, very little was known of him during his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his life; much of his story has been reconstructed after his death by researchers. Johnson’s poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend. The one most closely a*sociated with his life is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads to achieve musical success.

His music had a small, but influential, following during his life and in the two decades after his death. In late 1938 John Hammond sought him out for a concert at Carnegie Hall, From Spirituals to Swing, only to discover that Johnson had died. Brunswick Records, which owned the original recordings, was bought by Columbia Records, where Hammond was employed. Musicologist Alan Lomax went to Mississippi in 1941 to record Johnson, also not knowing of his death. Law, who by then worked for Columbia Records, a*sembled a collection of Johnson’s recordings titled King of the Delta Blues Singers that was released by Columbia in 1961. It is widely credited with finally bringing Johnson’s work to a wider audience. The album would become influential, especially on the nascent British blues movement; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” Musicians such as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson’s lyrics and musicianship as key influences on their own work. Many of Johnson’s songs have been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar licks and lyrics have been borrowed by many later musicians.

Renewed interest in Johnson’s work and life led to a burst of scholarship starting in the 1960s. Much of what is known about him was reconstructed by researchers such as Gayle Dean Wardlow and Bruce Conforth, especially in their 2019 award-winning biography of Johnson: Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson (Chicago Review Press). Two films, the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson by John Hammond Jr., and a 1997 documentary, Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl, the Life and Music of Robert Johnson, which included reconstructed scenes with Keb’ Mo’ as Johnson, were attempts to document his life, and demonstrated the difficulties arising from the scant historical record and conflicting oral accounts. Over the years, the significance of Johnson and his music has been recognized by numerous organizations and publications, including the Rock and Roll, Grammy, and Blues Halls of Fame; and the National Recording Preservation Board.

Life and career

Early life

Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911,[3] to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker, with whom she had ten children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert, but in less than two years she brought the boy to Memphis to live with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.[4] Robert spent the next 8–9 years growing up in Memphis and attending the Carnes Avenue Colored School where he received lessons in arithmetic, reading, language, music, geography, and physical exercise.[5] It was in Memphis that he acquired his love for, and knowledge of, the blues and popular music. His education and urban context placed him apart from most of his contemporary blues musicians.

Robert rejoined his mother around 1919–1920 after she married an illiterate sharecropper named Will “Dusty” Willis. They originally settled on a plantation in Lucas Township in Crittenden County, Arkansas, but soon moved across the Mississippi River to Commerce in the Mississippi Delta, near Tunica and Robinsonville. They lived on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation.[6] Julia’s new husband was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as “Little Robert Dusty”,[7] but he was registered at Tunica’s Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census, he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas, with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927.[8] The quality of his signature on his marriage certificate[9] suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. A school friend, Willie Coffee, who was interviewed and filmed in later life, recalled that as a youth Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp.[10] Coffee recalled that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.[11]

Once Julia informed Robert about his biological father, Robert adopted the surname Johnson, using it on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after.[12] Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert “Mack” McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert’s decision to sing secular songs, known as “selling your soul to the Devil”. McCormick believed that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.[13]

Around this time, the blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville, where his musical partner Willie Brown lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a “little boy” who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of House and learned other styles from Isaiah “Ike” Zimmerman.[14] Zimmerman was rumored to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.[15] When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he seemed to have miraculously acquired a guitar technique.[16] House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson’s pact with the devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson’s technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.[17]

While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple settled for a while in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the Delta, but Johnson soon left for a career as a “walking” or itinerant musician, and Caletta died in early 1933.

Itinerant musician

From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between the cities of Memphis and Helena, and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.[19][20] On occasion, he traveled much further. The blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana.[21] Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him in St. Louis.[22] In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family or with female friends.[23] He did not marry again but formed some long-term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. In other places he stayed with whatever woman he was able to seduce at his performance.[24][25] In each location, Johnson’s hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.[26]

Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who traveled extensively with him; Robert Lockwood, Jr., who knew him as his mother’s partner; David “Honeyboy” Edwards, whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson.[27] From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eyewitness accounts,[28] biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson’s character. “He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable”.[29] “As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way”.[30] “Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road.”[31]

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical a*sociates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day[32] – and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, he had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on his interest in jazz and country music. He also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, he would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Shines was 20 when he met Johnson in 1936. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself (Johnson was actually four years older). Shines is quoted describing Johnson in Samuel Charters’s Robert Johnson:

Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert’d be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody’s business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money’d be coming from all directions. But Robert’d just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn’t see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks. … So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along.

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about 15 years his senior and the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. He reputedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases, he was accepted, until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the area around Clarksdale, Mississippi.[34] By 1959, the historian Samuel Charters could add only that Will Shade, of the Memphis Jug Band, remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas.[35] In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City.[36] In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson’s records, directed record producer Don Law to seek out Johnson to book him for the first “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson’s death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but he played two of Johnson’s records from the stage.

Recording sessions

In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and also acted as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who, as a salesman for the ARC group of labels, introduced Johnson to Don Law to record his first sessions in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23–25, 1936, in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.[37] In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections and recorded alternate takes for most of them. Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom”, “Sweet Home Chicago”, and “Cross Road Blues”, which later became blues standards. The first to be released was “Terraplane Blues”, backed with “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”, which sold as many as 10,000 copies.[38]

Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session with Don Law in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Bros.) Building,[39] on June 19–20, 1937.[40] Johnson recorded almost half of the 29 songs that make up his entire discography in Dallas and eleven records from this session were released within the following year. Most of Johnson’s “somber and introspective” songs and performances come from his second recording session.[41] Johnson did two takes of most of these songs, and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his era.[42] In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78-rpm side.[43]

Death

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi, of unknown causes. His death was not reported publicly; he merely disappeared from the historical record and it was not until almost 30 years later, when Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist researching Johnson’s life, found his death certificate, which listed only the date and location, with no official cause of death. No formal autopsy was done; instead, a pro forma examination was done to file the death certificate, and no immediate cause of death was determined. It is likely he had congenital syphilis and it was suspected later by medical professionals that this may have been a contributing factor in his death. However, 30 years of local oral tradition had, like the rest of his life story, built a legend which has filled in gaps in the scant historical record.[44]

Several differing accounts have described the events preceding his death. Johnson had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. According to one theory, Johnson was murdered by the jealous husband of a woman with whom he had flirted. In an account by the blues musician Sonny Boy Williamson, Johnson had been flirting with a married woman at a dance, and she gave him a bottle of whiskey poisoned by her husband. When Johnson took the bottle, Williamson knocked it out of his hand, admonishing him to never drink from a bottle that he had not personally seen opened. Johnson replied, “Don’t ever knock a bottle out of my hand.” Soon after, he was offered another (poisoned) bottle and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days his condition steadily worsened. Witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain. The musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick claimed to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview, but he declined to reveal the man’s name.[13]

While strychnine has been suggested as the poison that killed Johnson, at least one scholar has disputed the notion. Tom Graves, in his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, relies on expert testimony from toxicologists to argue that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. Graves also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days.[45]

In their 2019 book Up Jumped the Devil, Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow suggest that the poison was naphthalene, from dissolved mothballs. This was “a common way of poisoning people in the rural South”, but was rarely fatal. However, Johnson had been diagnosed with an ulcer and with esophageal varices, and the poison was sufficient to cause them to hemorrhage. He died after two days of severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and bleeding from the mouth.[46]

The LeFlore County registrar, Cornelia Jordan, years later and after conducting an investigation into Johnson’s death for the state director of vital statistics, R. N. Whitfield, wrote a clarifying note on the back of Johnson’s death certificate:

I talked with the white man on whose place this negro died and I also talked with a negro woman on the place. The plantation owner said the negro man, seemingly about 26 years old, came from Tunica two or three weeks before he died to play banjo at a negro dance given there on the plantation. He stayed in the house with some of the negroes saying he wanted to pick cotton. The white man did not have a doctor for this negro as he had not worked for him. He was buried in a homemade coffin furnished by the county. The plantation owner said it was his opinion that the man died of syphilis.

In 2006, a medical practitioner, David Connell, suggested, on the basis of photographs showing Johnson’s “unnaturally long fingers” and “one bad eye”, that Johnson may have had Marfan syndrome, which could have both affected his guitar playing and contributed to his death due to aortic dissection.

Gravesite

The exact location of Johnson’s grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible sites in church cemeteries outside Greenwood.

• Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A one-ton cenotaph in the shape of an obelisk, listing all of Johnson’s song titles, with a central inscription by Peter Guralnick, was placed at this location in 1990, paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.
• In 1990, a small marker with the epitaph “Resting in the Blues” was placed in the cemetery of Payne Chapel, near Quito, Mississippi, by an Atlanta rock group named the Tombstones, after they saw a photograph in Living Blues magazine of an unmarked spot alleged by one of Johnson’s ex-girlfriends to be Johnson’s burial site.
• More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger, in 2000) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, north of Greenwood along Money Road. Through LaVere, Sony Music placed a marker at this site, which bears LaVere’s name as well as Johnson’s. Researchers Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow also concluded this was Johnson’s resting place in their 2019 biography.

John Hammond, Jr., in the documentary The Search for Robert Johnson (1991), suggests that owing to poverty and lack of transportation Johnson is most likely to have been buried in a pauper’s grave (or “potter’s field”) very near where he died.

Devil legend

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Johnson had a tremendous desire to become a great blues musician. One of the legends often told says that Johnson was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. (There are claims for at least a dozen other sites as the location of the crossroads.)[citation needed] There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The Devil played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This story of a deal with the Devil at the crossroads mirrors the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

Various accounts

This legend was developed over time and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,[51] Edward Komara[52] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson’s rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.[53] Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson’s astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[citation needed] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House’s observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[54] and Robert Palmer.[55] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads, by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of the blues musician Tommy Johnson.[56] This story was collected from his musical a*sociate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[17] One version of Ledell Johnson’s account was published in David Evans’s 1971 biography of Tommy Johnson,[57] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside House’s story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson, by Peter Guralnick.[58]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zimmerman of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zimmerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Johnson.

Recent research by the blues scholar Bruce Conforth, in Living Blues magazine, makes the story clearer. Johnson and Ike Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night, because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed: Zimmerman was not from Hazlehurst but nearby Beauregard, and he did not practice in one graveyard, but in several in the area.[60] Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him.

While Dockery, Hazlehurst and Beauregard have each been claimed as the locations of the mythical crossroads, there are also tourist attractions claiming to be “The Crossroads” in both Clarksdale and Memphis.[61] Residents of Rosedale, Mississippi, claim Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the intersection of Highways 1 and 8 in their town, while the 1986 movie Crossroads was filmed in Beulah, Mississippi. The blues historian Steve Cheseborough wrote that it may be impossible to discover the exact location of the mythical crossroads, because “Robert Johnson was a rambling guy”.

Interpretations

Some scholars have argued that the devil in these songs may refer not only to the Christian figure of Satan but also to the trickster god of African origin, Legba, himself a*sociated with crossroads. Folklorist Harry M. Hyatt wrote that, during his research in the South from 1935 to 1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early 20th century said they or anyone else had “sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads”, they had a different meaning in mind. Hyatt claimed there was evidence indicating African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a “deal” (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with the so-called devil at the crossroads.

The Blues and the Blues singer has really special powers over women, especially. It is said that the Blues singer could possess women and have any woman they wanted. And so when Robert Johnson came back, having left his community as an apparently mediocre musician, with a clear genius in his guitar style and lyrics, people said he must have sold his soul to the devil. And that fits in with this old African a*sociation with the crossroads where you find wisdom: you go down to the crossroads to learn, and in his case to learn in a Faustian pact, with the devil. You sell your soul to become the greatest musician in history.

This view that the devil in Johnson’s songs is derived from an African deity was disputed by the blues scholar David Evans in an essay published in 1999, “Demythologizing the Blues”:

There are … several serious problems with this crossroads myth. The devil imagery found in the blues is thoroughly familiar from western folklore, and nowhere do blues singers ever mention Legba or any other African deity in their songs or other lore. The actual African music connected with cults of Legba and similar trickster deities sounds nothing like the blues, but rather features polyrhythmic percussion and choral call-and-response singing.

The musicologist Alan Lomax dismissed the myth, stating, “In fact, every blues fiddler, banjo picker, harp blower, piano strummer and guitar framer was, in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme”.

Musical style

Johnson is considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style. Keith Richards, of the Rolling Stones, said in 1990, “You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it”.[67] But according to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in a wide range of styles, from raw country slide guitar to jazz and pop licks, and for his ability to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a song.[68] His first recorded song, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”, in contrast to the prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago or St. Louis, with “a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical arrangement”.[69] The song was part of a cycle of spin-offs and response songs that began with Leroy Carr’s “Mean Mistreater Mama” (1934). According to Wald, it was “the most musically complex in the cycle”[70] and stood apart from most rural blues as a thoroughly composed lyric, rather than an arbitrary collection of more or less unrelated verses.[71] Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. “They’re Red Hot”, from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable with an “uptown” swing or ragtime sound similar to that of the Harlem Hamfats, but as Wald remarked, “no record company was heading to Mississippi in search of a down-home Ink Spots … [H]e could undoubtedly have come up with a lot more songs in this style if the producers had wanted them.”

Voice

An important aspect of Johnson’s singing was his use of microtonality. These subtle inflections of pitch help explain why his singing conveys such powerful emotion. Eric Clapton described Johnson’s music as “the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice”. In two takes of “Me and the Devil Blues” he shows a high degree of precision in the complex vocal delivery of the last verse: “The range of tone he can pack into a few lines is astonishing.”[74] The song’s “hip humor and sophistication” is often overlooked. “[G]enerations of blues writers in search of wild Delta primitivism”, wrote Wald, have been inclined to overlook or undervalue aspects that show Johnson as a polished professional performer.[75]

Johnson is also known for using the guitar as “the other vocalist in the song”, a technique later perfected by B.B. King and his personified guitar named Lucille: “In Africa and in Afro-American tradition, there is the tradition of the talking instrument, beginning with the drums … the one-strand and then the six-strings with bottleneck-style performance; it becomes a competing voice … or a complementary voice … in the performance.”

Instrument

Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was complex and musically advanced. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson’s music by his bandmate Brian Jones, he asked, “Who is the other guy playing with him?”, not realizing it was Johnson playing one guitar. “I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself”,[77] said Richards, who later stated that “Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself”.[73] “As for his guitar technique, it’s politely reedy but ambitiously eclectic—moving effortlessly from hen-picking and bottleneck slides to a full deck of chucka-chucka rhythm figures.”

Lyrics

In The Story with Dick Gordon, Bill Ferris, of American Public Media, said, “Robert Johnson I think of in the same way I think of the British Romantic poets, Keats and Shelley, who burned out early, who were geniuses at wordsmithing poetry … The Blues, if anything, are deeply sexual. You know, ‘my car doesn’t run, I’m gonna check my oil … ‘if you don’t like my apples, don’t shake my tree’. Every verse has sexuality a*sociated with it.”

Influences

Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world. The slide guitar work on “Ramblin’ on My Mind” is pure Delta and Johnson’s vocal there has “a touch of … Son House rawness”, but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical of Delta blues—it is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville.[78] Johnson did record versions of “Preaching the Blues” and “Walking Blues” in the older bluesman’s vocal and guitar style (House’s chronology has been questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of “Come On in My Kitchen”, the influence of Skip James is evident in James’s “Devil Got My Woman”, but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in his recorded output.[79]

The sad, romantic “Love in Vain” successfully blends several of Johnson’s disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last verse, follows Leroy Carr’s last hit “When the Sun Goes Down”; the words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926.[80] Johnson’s last recording, “Milkcow’s Calf Blues” is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote “Milkcow Blues” and influenced Johnson’s vocal style.[81]

“From Four Until Late” shows Johnson’s mastery of a blues style not usually a*sociated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in a manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.[82] Lonnie Johnson’s influence is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: “Malted Milk” and “Drunken Hearted Man”. Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson’s “Life Saver Blues”.[83] The two takes of “Me and the Devil Blues” show the influence of Peetie Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as “the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist”.

Legacy

Early recognition and reviews

Famed producer John Hammond was an early advocate of Johnson’s music.[84] Using the pen-name Henry Johnson, he wrote his first article on Robert Johnson for the New Masses magazine in March 1937, around the time of the release of Johnson’s first record. In it, he described Johnson as “the greatest Negro blues singer who has cropped up in recent years … Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur.”[85] The following year, Hammond hoped to get Johnson to perform at a December 1938 From Spirituals to Swing concert in New York City, as he was unaware that Johnson had died in August.[86] Instead, Hammond played two of his recordings, “Walkin’ Blues” and “Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)”, for the audience and “praised Johnson lavishly from the stage”.[86] Music historian Ted Gioia noted “Here, if only through the medium of recordings, Hammond used his considerable influence at this historic event to advocate a position of preeminence for the late Delta bluesman”.[86] Music educator James Perone also saw that the event “underscored Robert Johnson’s specific importance as a recording artist”.[84] In 1939, Columbia issued a final single, pairing “Preachin’ Blues” with “Love in Vain”.[87]

In 1942, commentary on Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues” and “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” was included in The Jazz Record Book, edited by Charles Edward Smith.[88] The authors described Johnson’s vocals as “imaginative” and “thrilling” and his guitar playing as “exciting as almost anything in the folk blues field”.[88] Music writer Rudi Blesh included a review of Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail” in his 1946 book Shining Trumpets: a History of Jazz. He noted the “personal and creative way” Johnson approached the song’s harmony.[89] Jim Wilson, then a writer for the Detroit Free Press, also mentioned his unconventional use of harmony. In a 1949 review, he compared elements of John Lee Hooker’s recent debut “Boogie Chillen”: “His [Hooker’s] dynamic rhythms and subtle nuances on the guitar and his startling disregard for familiar scale and harmony patterns show similarity to the work of Robert Johnson, who made many fine records in this vein.”[90]

Samuel Charters drew further attention to Johnson in a five-page section in his 1959 book, The Country Blues. He focused on the two Johnson recordings that referred to images of the devil or hell – “Hellhound on My Trail” and “Me and the Devil Blues” – to suggest that Johnson was a deeply troubled individual. Charters also included Johnson’s “Preachin’ Blues” on the album published alongside his book.[91] Columbia Records’ first album of Johnson’s recordings, King of the Delta Blues Singers, was issued two years later.

Musicianship

Johnson is mentioned as one of the Delta artists who was a strong influence on blues singers in post-war styles.[92] However, it is Johnson’s guitar technique that is often identified as his greatest contribution.[93] Blues historian Edward Komara wrote:

The execution of a driving bass beat on a plectrum instrument like the guitar (instead of the piano) is Johnson’s most influential accomplishment … This is the aspect of his music that most changed the Delta blues practice and is most retained in the blues guitar tradition.

This technique has been called a “boogie bass pattern” or “boogie shuffle” and is described as a “fifth–sixth [degrees of a major scale] oscillation above the root chord”.[94] Sometimes, it has been attributed to Johnnie Temple, because he was the first to record a song in 1935 using it.[95] However, Temple confirmed that he had learned the technique from Johnson: “He was the first one I ever heard use it … It was similar to a piano boogie bass [which] I learned from R. L. [Johnson] in ’32 or ’33.”[95] Johnny Shines added: “Some of the things that Robert did with the guitar affected the way everybody played. In the early thirties, boogie was rare on the guitar, something to be heard.”[96] Conforth and Wardlow call it “one of the most important riffs in blues music”[95] and music historian Peter Guralnick believes Johnson “popularized a mode [walking bass style on guitar] which would rapidly become the accepted pattern”.[96] Although author Elijah Wald recognizes Johnson’s contribution in popularizing the innovation, he discounts its importance[97] and adds, “As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note”.

Contemporaries

Johnson’s contemporaries, including Johnny Shines, Johnnie Temple, Henry Townsend, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Calvin Frazier, and David “Honeyboy” Edwards were among those who kept his music alive through performing his songs and using his guitar techniques.[99] Fellow Mississippi native Elmore James is the best known and is responsible for popularizing Johnson’s “Dust My Broom”.[100] In 1951, he recast the song as a Chicago-style blues, with electric slide guitar and a backing band.[101] According to blues historian Gerard Herhaft:

Johnson’s influence upon Elmore James’s music always remained powerful: his falsetto voice, almost shrill, and the intensive use of the “walking” bass notes of the boogie-woogie, several pieces of James’ repertoire were borrowed from Johnson (e.g, “Dust My Broom”, “Rambling on My Mind”, and “Crossroads”).

James’ version is identified as “one of the first recorded examples of what was to become the classic Chicago shuffle beat”.The style often a*sociated with Chicago blues was used extensively by Jimmy Reed beginning with his first record “High and Lonesome” in 1953.[104] Sometimes called “the trademark Reed shuffle” (although also a*sociated his second guitarist, Eddie Taylor),[105] it is the figure Johnson used updated for electric guitar.

Blues standards

Several of Johnson’s songs became blues standards, which is used to describe blues songs that have been widely performed and recorded over a period of time and are seen as having a lasting quality.[107][108] Perone notes “That such a relatively high percentage of the songs attributed to him became blues standards also keeps the legacy of Robert Johnson alive.”[94] Those most often identified are “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Dust My Broom”, but also include “Crossroads” and “Stop Breaking Down”.[96][109][110][111][112][113] As with many blues songs, there are melodic and lyrical precedents.[111] While “Sweet Home Chicago” borrows from Kokomo Arnold’s 1933 “Old Original Kokomo Blues”, “Johnson’s lyrics made the song a natural for Chicago bluesmen, and it’s his version that survived in the repertoires of performers like Magic Sam, Robert Lockwood, and Junior Parker”.[114]

In the first decades after Johnsons’ death, these songs, with some variations in the titles and lyrics, were recorded by Tommy McClennan (1939),[115] Walter Davis (1941),[115] Sonny Boy Williamson I (1945),[116] Arthur Crudup (1949),[117] Elmore James (1951–1959), Baby Boy Warren (1954),[118] Roosevelt Sykes (1955),[119] Junior Parker (1958), and Forest City Joe (1959).[120] Pearson and McCulloch believe that “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Dust My Broom” in particular connect Johnson to “the rightful inheritors of his musical ideas—big-city African American artists whose high-powered, electrically amplified blues remain solidly in touch with Johnson’s musical legacy” at the time of Columbia’s first release of a full album of his songs in 1961.[121]

In Jim O’Neal’s statement when Johnson was inducted into the Blues Foundation Blues Hall of Fame, he identified “Hell Hound on My Trail”, “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Dust My Broom”, “Love in Vain”, and “Crossroads” as Johnson’s classic recordings.[122] Over the years, these songs have been individually inducted into the Blues Hall’s “Classic of Blues Recording – Single or Album Track” category.

Rock music

In the mid-1950s, rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry adapted the boogie pattern on guitar for his songs “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Johnny B. Goode”.[100] Author Dave Rubin commented:

his [Berry’s] utilization of the bass-string cut-boogie patterns popularized by Robert Johnson on songs like “Sweet Home Chicago” … subtly altered the swing feel of the boogie blues into a more driving, straight 4/4 meter while still maintaining a limber lilt that is often missing in the countless imitations that followed.

The pattern “became one of the signature figures in early electric guitar-based rock and roll,

such as that of Chuck Berry and the numerous rock musicians of the 1960s who were influenced by Berry”, according to Perone.[124] Although music historian Larry Birnbaum also sees the connection, he wrote that Johnson’s “contributions to the origins of rock ‘n’ roll are negligible”.[125] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Johnson as an early influence in its first induction ceremony, in 1986, almost a half century after his death. It also included four of his songs it deemed to have shaped the genre: “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Cross Road Blues”, “Hellhound on My Trail”, and “Love in Vain”.[126] Marc Meyers, of the Wall Street Journal, commented, “His ‘Stop Breakin’ Down Blues’ from 1937 is so far ahead of its time that the song could easily have been a rock demo cut in 1954.”[73]

Several rock artists describe Johnson as an influence:

• Eric Clapton – “Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived”.He recorded several of Johnson’s songs as well as an entire tribute album, Me and Mr. Johnson (2004).Clapton feels that rather than trying to recreate Johnson’s originals, “I was trying to extract as much emotional content from it as I could, while respecting the form at the same time.”
• Bob Dylan – “In about 1964 and ’65, I probably used about five or six of Robert Johnson’s blues song forms, too, unconsciously, but more on the lyrical imagery side of things. If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down—that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write. [His] code of language was like nothing I’d heard before or since.”
• Robert Plant – “A lot of English musicians were very fired up by Robert Johnson [to] whom we all owe more or less our existence, I guess, in some way”.^[130] Led Zeppelin recorded “Traveling Riverside Blues” and quoted some of Johnson’s lyrics in “The Lemon Song“.
• Keith Richards – “I’ve never heard anybody before or since use the [blues] form and bend it so much to make it work for himself … he came out with such compelling themes [and] just the way they were treated, apart from the music and the performance, [was appealing].”The Rolling Stones recorded “Love in Vain” and “Stop Breaking Down”.
• Johnny Winter – “Robert Johnson knocked me out—he was a genius. [He and Son House] both were big influences on my acoustic slide playing.”He recorded “Dust My Broom” with additional guitar by Derek Trucks.

Problems of biography

Until the 2019 publication of Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow’s biography, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, little of Johnson’s early life was known. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have been located in county records offices. The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, but Conforth and Wardlow suggest that Johnson lied about his age in order to obtain a marriage license.[136] Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was also Robert’s mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911. He was not listed among his mother’s children in the 1910 census giving further credence to a 1911 birthdate. Although the 1920 census gives his age as 7, suggesting he was born in 1912 or 1913, the entry showing his attendance at Indian Creek School, in Tunica, Mississippi[when?] listed him as being 14 years old.[citation needed]

Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936, at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas; and Saturday and Sunday, June 19 and 20, 1937, at a recording session in Dallas. His death certificate, discovered in 1968, lists the date and location of his death.[137]

Johnson’s records were admired by record collectors from the time of their first release, and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success. A relatively full account of Johnson’s brief musical career emerged in the 1960s, largely from accounts by Son House, Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Lockwood. In 1961, the sleeve notes to the album King of the Delta Blues Singers included reminiscences of Don Law who had recorded Johnson in 1936. Law added to the mystique surrounding Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

The blues researcher Mack McCormick began researching his family background in 1972, but died in 2015 without ever publishing his findings. McCormick’s research eventually became as much a legend as Johnson himself. In 1982, McCormick permitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson.[58] Later research has sought to confirm this account or to add minor details. A revised summary acknowledging major informants was written by Stephen LaVere for the booklet accompanying Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings box set (1990). The documentary film The Search for Robert Johnson contains accounts by McCormick and Wardlow of what informants have told them: long interviews of David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Johnny Shines and short interviews of surviving friends and family. Another film, Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl: The Life and Music of Robert Johnson,[138] combines documentary segments with recreated scenes featuring Keb’ Mo’ as Johnson with narration by Danny Glover. Shines, Edwards and Robert Lockwood contribute interviews. These published biographical sketches achieve coherent narratives, partly by ignoring reminiscences and hearsay accounts which contradict or conflict with other accounts.

Photographs

Until the 1980s, it was believed that no images of Johnson had survived. However, three images of Johnson were located in 1972 and 1973, in the possession of his half-sister Carrie Thompson. Two of these, known as the “dime-store photo” (December 1937 or January 1938) and the “studio portrait” (summer 1936), were copyrighted by Stephen LaVere (who had obtained them from the Thompson family) in 1986 and 1989, respectively, with an agreement to share any ensuing royalties 50% with the Johnson estate, at that time administered by Thompson. The “dime-store photo” was first published, almost in passing, in an issue of Rolling Stone magazine in 1986, and the studio portrait in a 1989 article by Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow in 78 Quarterly.[139] Both were subsequently featured prominently in the printed materials a*sociated with the 1990 CBS box set of the “complete” Johnson recordings, as well as being widely republished since that time. Because Mississippi courts in 1998 determined that Robert Johnson’s heir was Claud Johnson, a son born out of wedlock, the “estate share” of all monies paid to LaVere by CBS and others ended up going to Claud Johnson, and attempts by the heirs of Carrie Thompson to obtain a ruling that the photographs were her personal property and not part of the estate were dismissed.[140][141] In his book Searching for Robert Johnson, Peter Guralnick stated that the blues archivist Mack McCormick showed him a photograph of Johnson with his nephew Louis, taken at the same time as the famous “pinstripe suit” photograph, showing Louis dressed in his United States Navy uniform; this picture, along with the “studio portrait”, were both lent by Carrie Thompson to McCormick in 1972.[140] This photograph has never been made public.

Another photograph, purporting to show Johnson posing with the blues musician Johnny Shines, was published in the November 2008 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.[142] Its authenticity was claimed by the forensic artist Lois Gibson and by Johnson’s estate in 2013,[143] but has been disputed by some music historians, including Elijah Wald, Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow, who considered that the clothing suggests a date after Johnson’s death and that the photograph may have been reversed and retouched. Further, both David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Robert Lockwood failed to identify either man in the photo. Facial recognition software concluded that neither man was Johnson or Shines. Finally, Gibson claimed the photo was from 1933 to 1934 while it is now known that Johnson did not meet Shines until early 1937.[144] In December 2015, a fourth photograph was published, purportedly showing Johnson, his wife Calletta Craft, Estella Coleman, and Robert Lockwood Jr.[145] This photograph was also declared authentic by Lois Gibson, but her identification of Johnson has been dismissed by other facial recognition experts and blues historians. There are a number of glaring errors in this photo: it has been proven that Craft died before Johnson met Coleman, the clothing could not be prior to the late 1940s, the furniture is from the 1950s, the Coca-Cola bottle cannot be from prior to 1950, etc.[146]

A third photograph of Johnson, this time smiling, was published in 2020. It is believed to have been taken in Memphis on the same occasion as the verified photograph of him with a guitar and cigarette (part of the “dime-store” set), and is in the possession of Annye Anderson, Johnson’s step-sister (Anderson is the daughter of Charles Dodds, later Spencer, who was married to Robert’s mother but was not his father). As a child, Anderson grew up in the same family as Johnson and has claimed to have been present, aged 10 or 11, on the occasion the photograph was taken. This photograph was published in Vanity Fair in May 2020, as the cover image for a book, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, written by Anderson in collaboration with author Preston Lauterbach,[147] and is considered to be authentic by Johnson scholar Elijah Wald.

Descendants

Johnson left no will. In 1998, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that Claud Johnson, a retired truck driver living in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, was the son of Robert Johnson and his only heir. The court heard that he had been born to Virgie Jane Smith (later Virgie Jane Cain), who had a relationship with Robert Johnson in 1931. The relationship was attested to by a friend, Eula Mae Williams, but other relatives descended from Robert Johnson’s half-sister, Carrie Harris Thompson, contested Claud Johnson’s claim. The effect of the judgment was to allow Claud Johnson to receive over $1 million in royalties.[148] Claud Johnson died, aged 83, on June 30, 2015, leaving six children.

Discography

Eleven 78-rpm records by Johnson were released by Vocalion Records in 1937 and 1938, with additional pressings by ARC budget labels. In 1939, a twelfth was issued posthumously.[150] Johnson’s estate holds the copyrights to his songs.[151] In 1961, Columbia Records released King of the Delta Blues Singers, an album representing the first modern-era release of Johnson’s performances, which started the “re-discovery” of Johnson as blues artist. In 1970, Columbia issued a second volume, King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II.

The Complete Recordings, a two-disc set, released on August 28, 1990, contains almost everything Johnson recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes. Another alternate take of “Traveling Riverside Blues” was released by Sony on the CD reissue of King of the Delta Blues Singers. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Johnson’s birth, May 8, 2011, Sony Legacy released Robert Johnson: The Centennial Collection, a re-mastered 2-CD set of all 42 of his recordings[152] and two brief fragments, one of Johnson practicing a guitar figure and the other of Johnson saying, presumably to engineer Don Law, “I wanna go on with our next one myself.”[152] Reviewers commented that the sound quality of the 2011 release was a substantial improvement on the 1990 release.

Awards and recognition

• 1980 – Blues Hall of Fame: performer
• 1986 – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: early influence
• 1990 – Spin magazine: first in its list of “35 Guitar Gods” on the 52nd anniversary of his death
• 1991 – Grammy Award: best historical album (The Complete Recordings)
• 1991 – Blues Music Award: reissue album (The Complete Recordings)
• 1994 – U.S. Postal Service: commemorative stamp
• 1995 – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll”: “Sweet Home Chicago“, “Cross Road Blues“, “Hellhound on My Trail“, “Love in Vain“
• 1998 – Grammy Hall of Fame: “Cross Road Blues”
• 2000 – Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame: Blues pioneer
• 2003 – National Recording Registry: The Complete Recordings
• 2003 – Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke: fifth on his list of “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”
• 2006 – Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award: performer
• 2008 – Marker No. 29 on the Mississippi Blues Trail at his birthplace in Hazlehurst; also, at his presumed gravesite in Greenwood
• 2010 – Gibson.com: ninth on its list of “Top 50 Guitarists of All Time”
• 2014 – Grammy Hall of Fame: “Sweet Home Chicago
• 2015 – Rolling Stone No. 71 on its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” (down from No. 5 on its 2003 list chosen by David Fricke)

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film.

Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather’s wishes and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate. It won the first Tony Award for Best Musical.

Porter’s other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes, Can-Can and Silk Stockings. His numerous hit songs include “Night and Day”, “Begin the Beguine”, “I Get a Kick Out of You”, “Well, Did You Evah!”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” and “You’re the Top”. He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s, including Born to Dance (1936), which featured the song “You’d Be So Easy to Love”; Rosalie (1937), which featured “In the Still of the Night”; High Society (1956), which included “True Love”; and Les Girls (1957).

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Life and career

Early years

Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, the only surviving child of a wealthy family. His father, Samuel Fenwick Porter, was a druggist by trade. His mother, Kate, was the indulged daughter of James Omar “J. O.” Cole, “the richest man in Indiana”, a coal and timber speculator who dominated the family.   J. O. Cole built the couple a house on his Peru-area property, known as Westleigh Farms. After high school, Porter returned to his childhood home only for occasional visits.

Porter’s strong-willed mother doted on him and began his musical training at an early age. He learned the violin at age six, the piano at eight, and wrote his first operetta (with help from his mother) at ten. She falsified his recorded birth year, changing it from 1891 to 1893 to make him appear more precocious. His father, a shy and unassertive man, played a lesser role in Porter’s upbringing, although as an amateur poet, he may have influenced his son’s gifts for rhyme and meter. Porter’s father was also a talented singer and pianist, but the father-son relationship was not close.

J. O. Cole wanted his grandson to become a lawyer, and with that in mind, sent him to Worcester Academy in Massachusetts in 1905. Porter brought an upright piano with him to school and found that music, and his ability to entertain, made it easy for him to make friends. Porter did well in school and rarely came home to visit. He became class valedictorian and was rewarded by his grandfather with a tour of France, Switzerland and Germany. Entering Yale College in 1909, Porter majored in English, minored in music, and also studied French. He was a member of Scroll and Key and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and contributed to campus humor magazine The Yale Record. He was an early member of the Whiffenpoofs a cappella singing group and participated in several other music clubs; in his senior year, he was elected president of the Yale Glee Club and was its principal soloist.

Porter wrote 300 songs while at Yale,[ including student songs such as the football fight songs “Bulldog”  and “Bingo Eli Yale” (aka “Bingo, That’s The Lingo!”) that are still played at Yale. During college, Porter became acquainted with New York City’s vibrant nightlife, taking the train there for dinner, theater, and nights on the town with his classmates, before returning to New Haven, Connecticut, early in the morning. He also wrote musical comedy scores for his fraternity, the Yale Dramatic Association, and as a student at Harvard – Cora (1911), And the Villain Still Pursued Her (1912), The Pot of Gold (1912), The Kaleidoscope (1913) and Paranoia (1914) – which helped prepare him for a career as a Broadway and Hollywood composer and lyricist. After graduating from Yale, Porter enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1913. He soon felt that he was not destined to be a lawyer, and, at the suggestion of the dean of the law school, switched to Harvard’s music department, where he studied harmony and counterpoint with Pietro Yon. His mother did not object to this move, but it was kept secret from J. O. Cole.

In 1915, Porter’s first song on Broadway, “Esmeralda”, appeared in the revue Hands Up. The quick success was immediately followed by failure: his first Broadway production, in 1916, See America First, a “patriotic comic opera” modeled on Gilbert and Sullivan, with a book by T. Lawrason Riggs, was a flop, closing after two weeks. Porter spent the next year in New York City before going overseas during World War I.

Paris and marriage

In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Porter moved to Paris to work with the Duryea Relief organization. Some writers have been skeptical about Porter’s claim to have served in the French Foreign Legion, but the Legion lists Porter as one of its soldiers and displays his portrait at its museum in Aubagne. By some accounts, he served in North Africa and was transferred to the French Officers School at Fontainebleau, teaching gunnery to American soldiers. An obituary notice in The New York Times stated that, while in the Legion, “he had a specially constructed portable piano made for him so that he could carry it on his back and entertain the troops in their bivouacs.” Another account, given by Porter, is that he joined the recruiting department of the American Aviation Headquarters, but, according to his biographer Stephen Citron, there is no record of his joining this or any other branch of the forces.

Porter maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with “much gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians and a large surplus of recreational drugs”. In 1918, he met Linda Lee Thomas, a rich, Louisville, Kentucky-born divorcée eight years his senior. She was beautiful and well-connected socially; the couple shared mutual interests, including a love of travel, and she became Porter’s confidante and companion. The couple married the following year. She was in no doubt about Porter’s homosexuality, but it was mutually advantageous for them to marry. For Linda, it offered continued social status and a partner who was the antithesis of her abusive first husband. For Porter, it brought a respectable heterosexual front in an era when homosexuality was not publicly acknowledged. They were, moreover, genuinely devoted to each other and remained married from December 19, 1919, until her death in 1954. Linda remained protective of her social position and, believing that classical music might be a more prestigious outlet than Broadway for her husband’s talents, tried to use her connections to find him suitable teachers, including Igor Stravinsky, but was unsuccessful. Finally, Porter enrolled at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he studied orchestration and counterpoint with Vincent d’Indy. Meanwhile, Porter’s first big hit was the song “Old-Fashioned Garden” from the revue Hitchy-Koo in 1919. In 1920, he contributed the music of several songs to the musical A Night Out.

Marriage did not diminish Porter’s taste for extravagant luxury. The Porter home on the rue Monsieur near Les Invalides was a palatial house with platinum wallpaper and chairs upholstered in zebra skin. In 1923, Porter came into an inheritance from his grandfather, and the Porters began living in rented palaces in Venice. He once hired the entire Ballets Russes to entertain his guests, and for a party at Ca’ Rezzonico, which he rented for $4,000 a month ($60,000 in current value), he hired 50 gondoliers to act as footmen and had a troupe of tightrope walkers perform in a blaze of lights. In the midst of this extravagant lifestyle, Porter continued to write songs with his wife’s encouragement.

Porter received few commissions for songs in the years immediately after his marriage. He had the occasional number interpolated into other writers’ revues in Britain and the U.S. For a C. B. Cochran show in 1921, he had two successes with the comedy numbers “The Blue Boy Blues” and “Olga, Come Back to the Volga”. In 1923, in collaboration with Gerald Murphy, he composed a short ballet, originally titled Landed and then Within the Quota, satirically depicting the adventures of an immigrant to America who becomes a film star. The work, written for the Ballets suédois, lasts about 16 minutes. It was orchestrated by Charles Koechlin and shared the same opening night as Milhaud’s La création du monde. Porter’s work was one of the earliest symphonic jazz-based compositions, predating George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue by four months, and was well received by both French and American reviewers after its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in October 1923.

After a successful New York performance the following month, the Ballets suédois toured the work in the U.S., performing it 69 times. A year later the company disbanded, and the score was lost until it was reconstructed from Porter’s and Koechlin’s manuscripts between 1966 and 1990, with help from Milhaud and others. Porter had less success with his work on The Greenwich Village Follies (1924). He wrote most of the original score, but his songs were gradually dropped during the Broadway run, and by the time of the post-Broadway tour in 1925, all his numbers had been deleted. Frustrated by the public response to most of his work, Porter nearly gave up songwriting as a career, although he continued to compose songs for friends and perform at private parties.

Broadway and West End success

At the age of 36, Porter reintroduced himself to Broadway in 1928 with the musical Paris, his first hit. It was commissioned by E. Ray Goetz at the instigation of Goetz’s wife and the show’s star, Irène Bordoni. She had wanted Rodgers and Hart to write the songs, but they were unavailable, and Porter’s agent persuaded Goetz to hire Porter instead. In August 1928, Porter’s work on the show was interrupted by the death of his father. He hurried back to Indiana to comfort his mother before returning to work. The songs for the show included “Let’s Misbehave” and one of his best-known list songs, “Let’s Do It”, which was introduced by Bordoni and Arthur Margetson. The show opened on Broadway on October 8, 1928. The Porters did not attend the first night because Porter was in Paris supervising another show for which he had been commissioned, La Revue, at a nightclub. This was also a success, and, in Citron’s phrase, Porter was finally “accepted into the upper echelon of Broadway songwriters”. Cochran now wanted more from Porter than isolated extra songs; he planned a West End extravaganza similar to Ziegfeld’s shows, with a Porter score and a large international cast led by Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale and Tilly Losch. The revue, Wake Up and Dream, ran for 263 performances in London, after which Cochran transferred it to New York in 1929. On Broadway, business was badly affected by the 1929 Wall Street crash, and the production ran for only 136 performances. From Porter’s point of view, it was nonetheless a success, as his song “What Is This Thing Called Love?” became immensely popular.

Porter’s new fame brought him offers from Hollywood, but because his score for Paramount’s The Battle of Paris was undistinguished, and its star, Gertrude Lawrence, was miscast, the film was not a success. Citron expresses the view that Porter was not interested in cinema and “noticeably wrote down for the movies.” Still on a Gallic theme, Porter’s last Broadway show of the 1920s was Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), for which he wrote 28 numbers, including “You Do Something to Me”, “You’ve Got That Thing” and “The Tale of the Oyster”. The show received mixed notices. One critic wrote, “the lyrics alone are enough to drive anyone but P. G. Wodehouse into retirement”, but others dismissed the songs as “pleasant” and “not an outstanding hit song in the show”. As it was a lavish and expensive production, nothing less than full houses would suffice, and after only three weeks, the producers announced that they would close it. Irving Berlin, who admired and championed Porter, took out a paid press advertisement calling the show “The best musical comedy I’ve heard in years. … One of the best collections of song numbers I have ever listened to”. This saved the show, which ran for 254 performances, considered a successful run at the time.

1930s

Ray Goetz, producer of Paris and Fifty Million Frenchmen, the success of which had kept him solvent when other producers were bankrupted by the post-crash slump in Broadway business, invited Porter to write a musical show about the other city that he knew and loved: New York. Goetz offered the team with whom Porter had last worked: Herbert Fields writing the book and Porter’s old friend Monty Woolley directing. The New Yorkers (1930) acquired instant notoriety for including a song about a streetwalker, “Love for Sale”. Originally performed by Kathryn Crawford in a street setting, critical disapproval led Goetz to reassign the number to Elisabeth Welch in a nightclub scene. The lyric was considered too explicit for radio at the time, though it was recorded and aired as an instrumental and rapidly became a standard. Porter often referred to it as his favorite of his songs. The New Yorkers also included the hit “I Happen to Like New York”.

Next came Fred Astaire’s last stage show, Gay Divorce (1932). It featured a hit that became Porter’s best-known song, “Night and Day”. Despite mixed press (some critics were reluctant to accept Astaire without his previous partner, his sister Adele), the show ran for a profitable 248 performances, and the rights to the film, retitled The Gay Divorcee, were sold to RKO Pictures.[n 10] Porter followed this with a West End show for Gertrude Lawrence, Nymph Errant (1933), presented by Cochran at the Adelphi Theatre, where it ran for 154 performances. Among the hit songs Porter composed for the show were “Experiment” and “The Physician” for Lawrence, and “Solomon” for Elisabeth Welch.

In 1934, producer Vinton Freedley came up with a new approach to producing musicals. Instead of commissioning book, music and lyrics and then casting the show, Freedley sought to create an ideal musical with stars and writers all engaged from the outset. The stars he wanted were Ethel Merman, William Gaxton and comedian Victor Moore. He planned a story about a shipwreck and a desert island, and for the book he turned to P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. For the songs, he decided on Porter. By telling each of these that he had already signed the others, Freedley gathered his ideal team together.[n 11] A drastic last-minute rewrite was necessitated by a major shipping accident that dominated the news and made Bolton and Wodehouse’s book seem tasteless. Nevertheless, the show, Anything Goes, was an immediate hit. Porter wrote what many consider his greatest score of this period. The New Yorker magazine’s review said, “Mr. Porter is in class by himself”, and Porter subsequently called it one of his two perfect shows, along with the later Kiss Me, Kate. Its songs include “I Get a Kick Out of You”, “All Through the Night”, “You’re the Top” (one of his best-known list songs), and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow”, as well as the title number. The show ran for 420 performances in New York (a particularly long run in the 1930s) and 261 in London. Porter, despite his lessons in orchestration from d’Indy, did not orchestrate his musicals. Anything Goes was orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett and Hans Spialek. Now at the height of his success, Porter was able to enjoy the opening night of his musicals; he made grand entrances and sat in front, apparently relishing the show as much as any audience member. Russel Crouse commented “Cole’s opening-night behaviour is as indecent as that of a bridegroom who has a good time at his own wedding.”

Anything Goes was the first of five Porter shows featuring Merman. He loved her loud, brassy voice and wrote many numbers that displayed her strengths. Jubilee (1935), written with Moss Hart while on a cruise around the world, was not a major hit, running for only 169 performances, but it featured two songs that have since become standards, “Begin the Beguine” and “Just One of Those Things”. Red, Hot and Blue (1936), featuring Merman, Jimmy Durante and Bob Hope, ran for 183 performances and introduced “It’s De-Lovely”, “Down in the Depths (on the Ninetieth Floor)”, and “Ridin’ High”. The relative failure of these shows convinced Porter that his songs did not appeal to a broad enough audience. In an interview, he said “Sophisticated allusions are good for about six weeks … more fun, but only for myself and about eighteen other people, all of whom are first-nighters anyway. Polished, urbane and adult playwriting in the musical field is strictly a creative luxury.”

Porter also wrote for Hollywood in the mid-1930s. His scores include those for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films Born to Dance (1936), with James Stewart, featuring “You’d Be So Easy to Love” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, and Rosalie (1937), featuring “In the Still of the Night”. He wrote the score of the short film Paree, Paree, in 1935, using some of the songs from Fifty Million Frenchmen. Porter also composed the cowboy song “Don’t Fence Me In” for Adios, Argentina, an unproduced movie, in 1934, but it did not become a hit until Roy Rogers sang it in the 1944 film Hollywood Canteen. Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, and other artists also popularized it in the 1940s. The Porters moved to Hollywood in December 1935, but Porter’s wife did not like the movie environment, and Porter’s homosexual peccadillos, formerly very discreet, became less so; she retreated to their Paris house. When his film a*signment on Rosalie was finished in 1937, Porter hastened to Paris to make peace with Linda, but she remained cool. After a walking tour of Europe with his friends, Porter returned to New York in October 1937 without her. They were soon reunited by an accident Porter suffered.

On October 24, 1937, Porter was riding with Countess Edith di Zoppola and Duke Fulco di Verdura at Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, New York, when his horse rolled on him and crushed his legs, leaving him substantially crippled and in constant pain for the rest of his life. Though doctors told Porter’s wife and mother that his right leg would have to be amputated, and possibly the left one as well, he refused to have the procedure. Linda rushed from Paris to be with him, and supported him in his refusal of amputation. He remained in the hospital for seven months before being allowed to go home to his apartment at the Waldorf Towers. He resumed work as soon as he could, finding it took his mind off his perpetual pain.

Porter’s first show after his accident was not a success. You Never Know (1938), starring Clifton Webb, Lupe Vélez and Libby Holman, ran for only 78 performances. The score included the songs “From Alpha to Omega” and “At Long Last Love”.[78] He returned to success with Leave It to Me! (1938); the show introduced Mary Martin, singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”, and other numbers included “Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love” and “From Now On”. Porter’s last show of the 1930s was DuBarry Was a Lady (1939), a particularly risqué show starring Merman and Bert Lahr. After a pre-Broadway tour, during which it ran into trouble with Boston censors, it achieved 408 performances, beginning at the 46th Street Theatre. The score included “But in the Morning, No” (which was banned from the airwaves), “Do I Love You?”, “Well, Did You Evah!”, “Katie Went to Haiti” and another of Porter’s up-tempo list songs, “Friendship”. At the end of 1939, Porter contributed six songs to the film Broadway Melody of 1940 for Fred Astaire, George Murphy and Eleanor Powell.

Meanwhile, as political unrest increased in Europe, Porter’s wife closed their Paris house in 1939, and the next year bought a country home in the Berkshire mountains, near Williamstown, Massachusetts, which she decorated with elegant furnishings from their Paris home. Porter spent time in Hollywood, New York and Williamstown.

1940s and postwar

Panama Hattie (1940) was Porter’s longest-running hit so far, running in New York for 501 performances despite the absence of any enduring Porter songs. It starred Merman, Arthur Treacher and Betty Hutton. Let’s Face It! (1941), starring Danny Kaye, had an even better run, with 547 performances in New York.[87] This, too, lacked any numbers that became standards, and Porter always counted it among his lesser efforts.[88] Something for the Boys (1943), starring Merman, ran for 422 performances, and Mexican Hayride (1944), starring Bobby Clark, with June Havoc, ran for 481 performances. These shows, too, are short of Porter standards. The critics did not pull their punches, complaining about the lack of hit tunes and the generally low standard of the scores. After two flops, Seven Lively Arts (1944) (which featured the standard “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”) and Around the World (1946), many thought that Porter’s best period was over.

Between Broadway musicals, Porter continued to write for Hollywood. His film scores of this period were You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) with Astaire and Rita Hayworth, Something to Shout About (1943) with Don Ameche, Janet Blair and William Gaxton, and Mississippi Belle (1943–44), which was abandoned before filming began. He also cooperated in the making of the film Night and Day (1946), a largely fictional biography of Porter, with Cary Grant implausibly cast in the lead. The critics scoffed, but the film was a huge success, chiefly because of the wealth of vintage Porter numbers in it. The biopic’s success contrasted starkly with the failure of Vincente Minnelli’s film The Pirate (1948), with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, in which five new Porter songs received little attention.

From this low spot, Porter made a conspicuous comeback in 1948 with Kiss Me, Kate. It was by far his most successful show, running for 1,077 performances in New York and 400 in London. The production won the Tony Award for Best Musical (the first Tony awarded in that category), and Porter won for best composer and lyricist. The score includes “Another Op’nin’, Another Show”, “Wunderbar”, “So In Love”, “We Open in Venice”, “Tom, Dick or Harry”, “I’ve Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua”, “Too Darn Hot”, “Always True to You (in My Fashion)”, and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”.

Porter began the 1950s with Out of This World (1950), which had some good numbers but too much camp and vulgarity, and was not greatly successful. His next show, Can-Can (1952), featuring “C’est Magnifique” and “It’s All Right with Me”, was another hit, running for 892 performances. Porter’s last original Broadway production, Silk Stockings (1955), featuring “All of You”, was also successful, with a run of 477 performances. Porter wrote two more film scores and music for a television special before ending his Hollywood career. The film High Society (1956), starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly, included Porter’s last major hit song “True Love”. It was adapted as a stage musical of the same name. Porter also wrote numbers for the film Les Girls (1957), which starred Gene Kelly. His final score was for the CBS television special Aladdin (1958).

Last years

Porter’s mother died in 1952, and his wife died of emphysema in 1954. By 1958, Porter’s injuries caused a series of ulcers on his right leg. After 34 operations, it had to be amputated and replaced with an artificial limb. His friend Noël Coward visited him in the hospital and wrote in his diary, “The lines of ceaseless pain have been wiped from his face…I am convinced that his whole life will cheer up and that his work will profit accordingly.” In fact, Porter never wrote another song after the amputation and spent the remaining six years of his life in relative seclusion, seeing only intimate friends. He continued to live in the Waldorf Towers in New York in his memorabilia-filled apartment. On weekends, he often visited an estate in the Berkshires, and he stayed in California during the summers.

Porter died of kidney failure on October 15, 1964, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 73. He is interred in Mount Hope Cemetery in his native Peru, Indiana, between his wife and father.

Tributes and legacy

Many artists have recorded Porter songs, and dozens have released entire albums of his songs. In 1956, jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald released Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. In 1972, she released another collection, Ella Loves Cole. Among the many album collections of Porter songs are the following: Oscar Peterson Plays the Cole Porter Songbook (1959); Anita O’Day Swings Cole Porter with Billy May (1959); All Through the Night: Julie London Sings the Choicest of Cole Porter (1965); Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Cole Porter (1982); and Anything Goes: Stephane Grappelli & Yo-Yo Ma Play (Mostly) Cole Porter (1989). In 1990 Dionne Warwick released Dionne Sings Cole Porter. In that same year, Red Hot + Blue was released as a benefit CD for AIDS research and featured 20 Cole Porter songs recorded by artists such as U2 and Annie Lennox.

Additional recording collections include Frank Sinatra Sings the Select Cole Porter (1996) and John Barrowman Swings Cole Porter (2004); Barrowman played “Jack” in the 2004 film De-Lovely. Other singers who have paid tribute to Porter include the Swedish pop music group Gyllene Tider, which recorded a song called “Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång” (“That Girl from the Cole Porter Song”) in 1982. He is referenced in the merengue song “The Call of the Wild” by David Byrne on his 1989 album Rei Momo. He also is mentioned in the song “Tonite It Shows” by Mercury Rev on their 1998 album Deserter’s Songs.

In 1965, Judy Garland performed a medley of Porter’s songs at the 37th Academy Awards shortly after Porter’s death. In 1980, Porter’s music was used for the score of Happy New Year, based on the Philip Barry play Holiday. The cast of The Carol Burnett Show paid a tribute to Porter in a humorous sketch in their CBS television series. You’re the Top: The Cole Porter Story, a video of archival material and interviews, and Red, Hot and Blue, a video of artists performing Porter’s music, were released in 1990 to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Porter’s birth. In contrast to the highly embellished 1946 screen biography Night and Day, Porter’s life was chronicled more realistically in De-Lovely, a 2004 Irwin Winkler film starring Kevin Kline as Porter and Ashley Judd as Linda. The soundtrack to De-Lovely includes Porter songs sung by Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall and Natalie Cole, among others. Porter also appears as a character in Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris.

Many events commemorated the centenary of Porter’s birth, including the halftime show of the 1991 Orange Bowl. Joel Grey and a large cast of singers, dancers and marching bands, performed a tribute to Porter in Miami, Florida during the 57th King Orange Jamboree parade, whose theme was “Anything Goes”. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra performed a program of Cole Porter music at the Circle Theatre in Indianapolis, which also featured clips of Porter’s Hollywood films. “A Gala Birthday Concert” was held at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, with more than 40 entertainers and friends paying tribute to Porter’s long career in theater and film. In addition, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring Porter’s birth. The Indiana University Opera performed Porter’s musical, Jubilee, in Bloomington, Indiana.

In May 2007, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated to Cole Porter. In December 2010, his portrait was added to the Hoosier Heritage Gallery in the office of the Governor of Indiana. Numerous symphony orchestras have paid tribute to Porter in the years since his death including Seattle Symphony Orchestra, with Marvin Hamlisch as conductor and the Boston Pops, both in 2011. In 2012, Marvin Hamlisch, Michael Feinstein, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra honored Porter with a concert that included his familiar classics. The Cole Porter Festival is held every year in June in his hometown of Peru, Indiana, to foster music and art appreciation. Costumed singers in the cabaret-style Cole Porter Room at the Indiana Historical Society’s Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center in Indianapolis take requests from visitors and perform Porter’s hit songs. After Porter’s death, his 1908 Steinway grand piano, which he had used when composing since the mid-1930s, was displayed and played in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel until 2017. As of late 2018, it was being rebuilt, after which it will reside, temporarily, at the New-York Historical Society. Porter is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame  and Great American Songbook Hall of Fame, which recognized his “musically complex [songs] with witty, urbane lyrics”. In 2014, Porter was honored with a plaque on the Legacy Walk in Chicago, which celebrates LGBT achievers.

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single “Fire and Rain” and had his first No. 1 hit in 1971 with his recording of “You’ve Got a Friend”, written by Carole King in the same year. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies. Following his 1977 album, JT he has retained a large audience over the decades. Every album that he released from 1977 to 2007 sold over 1 million copies. He enjoyed a resurgence in chart performance during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work (including Hourglass, October Road, and Covers). He achieved his first number-one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World.

He is known for his covers, such as “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” and “Handy Man”, as well as originals such as “Sweet Baby James”.

Early years

James Vernon Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where his father, Isaac M. Taylor, worked as a resident physician. His father came from a wealthy family from the South. Aside from having ancestry in Scotland, part of Taylor’s roots are deep in Massachusetts Bay Colony and include Edmund Rice, one of the founders of Sudbury, Massachusetts. His mother, the former Gertrude Woodard (1921–2015), studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music and was an aspiring opera singer before the couple’s marriage in 1946. James was the second of five children, the others being Alex (1947–1993), Kate (born 1949), Livingston (born 1950), and Hugh (born 1952).

In 1951, his family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina[10] when Isaac took a job as an a*sistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They built a house in the Morgan Creek area off the present Morgan Creek Road, which was sparsely populated. James would later say, “Chapel Hill, the Piedmont, the outlying hills, were tranquil, rural, beautiful, but quiet. Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape and climate than people.” James attended a public primary school in Chapel Hill. Isaac’s career prospered, but he was frequently away from home on military service at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, or as part of Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica in 1955 and 1956. Isaac Taylor later rose to become dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. Beginning in 1953, the Taylors spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard.

James took cello lessons as a child in North Carolina, before learning the guitar in 1960. His guitar style evolved, influenced by hymns, carols, and the music of Woody Guthrie, and his technique derived from his bass clef-oriented cello training and from experimenting on his sister Kate’s keyboards: “My style was a finger-picking style that was meant to be like a piano, as if my thumb were my left hand, and my first, second, and third fingers were my right hand.” Spending summer holidays with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, he met Danny Kortchmar, an aspiring teenage guitarist from Larchmont, New York. The two began listening to and playing blues and folk music together, and Kortchmar felt that Taylor’s singing had a “natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time. I knew James had that thing.”[19] Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at 14, and he continued to learn the instrument effortlessly. By the summer of 1963, he and Kortchmar were playing coffeehouses around the Vineyard, billed as “Jamie & Kootch”.

James went to Milton Academy, a preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts in 1961. He faltered during his junior year, feeling uneasy in the high-pressure college prep environment despite having a good scholastic performance. The Milton headmaster would later say, “James was more sensitive and less goal-oriented than most students of his day.” He returned home to North Carolina to finish out the semester at Chapel Hill High School.  There he joined a band formed by his brother Alex called The Corsayers (later The Fabulous Corsairs), playing electric guitar; in 1964, they cut a single in Raleigh that featured James’s song “Cha Cha Blues” on the B-side. Having lost touch with his former school friends in North Carolina, Taylor returned to Milton for his senior year, where he started applying to colleges to complete his education. But he felt part of a “life that [he was] unable to lead”, and he became depressed; he slept 20 hours each day, and his grades collapsed. n late 1965 he committed himself to McLean, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he was treated with chlorpromazine, and where the organized days began to give him a sense of time and structure. As the Vietnam War escalated, Taylor received a psychological rejection from Selective Service System when he appeared before them with two white-suited McLean a*sistants and was uncommunicative. Taylor earned a high school diploma in 1966 from the hospital’s a*sociated Arlington School. He would later view his nine-month stay at McLean as “a lifesaver… like a pardon or like a reprieve,” and both his brother Livingston and sister Kate would later be patients and students there as well. As for his mental health struggles, Taylor would think of them as innate and say: “It’s an inseparable part of my personality that I have these feelings.”

Career

1966–1969: Early career

At Kortchmar’s urging, Taylor checked himself out of McLean and moved to New York City to form a band. They recruited Joel O’Brien, formerly of Kortchmar’s old band King Bees to play drums, and Taylor’s childhood friend Zachary Wiesner (son of noted academic Jerome Wiesner) to play bass. After Taylor rejected the notion of naming the group after him, they called themselves the Flying Machine. They played songs that Taylor had written at and about McLean, such as “Knocking ‘Round the Zoo”, “Don’t Talk Now”, and “The Blues Is Just a Bad Dream”. In some other songs, Taylor romanticized his life, but he was plagued by self-doubt. By summer 1966, they were performing regularly at the high-visibility Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village, alongside acts such as the Turtles and Lothar and the Hand People.

Taylor a*sociated with a motley group of people and began using heroin, to Kortchmar’s dismay, and wrote the “Paint It Black”–influenced “Rainy Day Man” to depict his drug experience. In a late 1966 hasty recording session, the group cut a single, Taylor’s “Night Owl”, backed with his “Brighten Your Night with My Day”. Released on Jay Gee Records, a subsidiary of Jubilee Records, it received some radio airplay in the Northeast, but only charted at No. 102 nationally. Other songs had been recorded during the same session, but Jubilee declined to go forward with an album. After a series of poorly-chosen appearances outside New York, culminating with a three-week stay at a failing nightspot in Freeport, Bahamas for which they were never paid, the Flying Machine broke up. (A UK band with the same name emerged in 1969 with the hit song “Smile a Little Smile for Me”. The New York band’s recordings were later released in 1971 as James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine.)

Taylor would later say of this New York period, “I learned a lot about music and too much about drugs.” Indeed, his drug use had developed into full-blown heroin addiction during the final Flying Machine period: “I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get a drink.” He hung out in Washington Square Park, playing guitar to ward off depression and then passing out, letting runaways and criminals stay at his apartment. Finally out of money and abandoned by his manager, he made a desperate call one night to his father. Isaac Taylor flew to New York and staged a rescue, renting a car and driving all night back to North Carolina with James and his possessions. Taylor spent six months getting treatment and making a tentative recovery; he also required a throat operation to fix vocal cords damaged from singing too harshly.

Taylor decided to try being a solo act with a change of scenery. In late 1967, funded by a small family inheritance, he moved to London, living in various areas: Notting Hill, Belgravia, and Chelsea. After recording some demos in Soho, his friend Kortchmar gave him his next big break. Kortchmar used his a*sociation with the King Bees (who once opened for Peter and Gordon), to connect Taylor to Peter Asher. Asher was A&R head for the Beatles’ newly formed label Apple Records. Taylor gave a demo tape of songs, including “Something in the Way She Moves”, to Asher, who then played the demo for Beatles Paul McCartney and George Harrison. McCartney remembers his first impression: “I just heard his voice and his guitar and I thought he was great … and he came and played live, so it was just like, ‘Wow, he’s great.’” Taylor became the first non-British act signed to Apple, and he credits Asher for “opening the door” to his singing career. Taylor said of Asher, who later became his manager, “I knew from the first time that we met that he was the right person to steer my career. He had this determination in his eye that I had never seen in anybody before.” Living chaotically in various places with various women, Taylor wrote additional material, including “Carolina in My Mind”, and rehearsed with a new backing band. Taylor recorded what would become his first album from July to October 1968, at Trident Studios, at the same time the Beatles were recording The White Album. McCartney and an uncredited George Harrison guested on “Carolina in My Mind”, whose lyric “holy host of others standing around me” referred to the Beatles, and the title phrase of Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves” provided the lyrical starting point for Harrison’s classic “Something”.[ McCartney and Asher brought in arranger Richard Anthony Hewson to add both orchestrations to several of the songs and unusual “link” passages between them; they would receive a mixed reception, at best.

During the recording sessions, Taylor fell back into his drug habit by using heroin and methedrine. He underwent physeptone treatment in a British program, returned to New York and was hospitalized there, and then finally committed himself to the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which emphasized cultural and historical factors in trying to treat difficult psychiatric disorders. Meanwhile, Apple released his debut album, James Taylor, in December 1968 in the UK and February 1969 in the US. Critical reception was generally positive, including a complimentary review in Rolling Stone by Jon Landau, who said that “this album is the coolest breath of fresh air I’ve inhaled in a good long while. It knocks me out.” The record’s commercial potential suffered from Taylor’s inability to promote it because of his hospitalization, and it sold poorly; “Carolina in My Mind” was released as a single but failed to chart in the UK and only reached No. 118 on the U.S. charts.

In July 1969, Taylor headlined a six-night stand at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. On July 20, he performed at the Newport Folk Festival as the last act and was cheered by thousands of fans who stayed in the rain to hear him. Shortly thereafter, he broke both hands and both feet in a motorcycle accident on Martha’s Vineyard and was forced to stop playing for several months. However, while recovering, he continued to write songs and in October 1969 signed a new deal with Warner Bros. Records.

1970–1972: Fame and commercial succes

Once he had recovered, Taylor moved to California, keeping Asher as his manager and record producer. In December 1969, he held the recording sessions for his second album there. Titled Sweet Baby James, and featuring the participation of Carole King, the album was released in February 1970 and was Taylor’s critical and popular triumph, buoyed by the single “Fire and Rain”, a song about both Taylor’s experiences attempting to break his drug habit by undergoing treatment in psychiatric institutions and the suicide of his friend, Suzanne Schnerr. Both the album and the single reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts, with Sweet Baby James selling more than 1.5 million copies in its first year[22] and eventually more than 3 million in the United States alone. Sweet Baby James was received at its time as a folk-rock masterpiece, an album that effectively showcased Taylor’s talents to the mainstream public, marking a direction he would take in following years. It earned several Grammy Award nominations including one for Album of the Year. It went on to be listed at No. 103 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003, with “Fire and Rain” listed as No. 227 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.

During the time that Sweet Baby James was released, Taylor appeared with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys in a Monte Hellman film, Two-Lane Blacktop. In October 1970, he performed with Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, and the Canadian band Chilliwack at a Vancouver benefit concert that funded Greenpeace’s protests of 1971 nuclear weapons tests by the US Atomic Energy Commission at Amchitka, Alaska; this performance was released in album format in 2009 as Amchitka, The 1970 Concert That Launched Greenpeace. In January 1971, sessions for Taylor’s next album began.

He appeared on The Johnny Cash Show, singing “Sweet Baby James”, “Fire and Rain”, and “Country Road”, on February 17, 1971. His career success at this point and appeal to female fans of various ages piqued tremendous interest in him, prompting a March 1, 1971, Time magazine cover story of him as “the face of new rock”. It compared his strong-but-brooding persona to that of Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff and to The Sorrows of Young Werther, and said, “Taylor’s use of elemental imagery—darkness and sunlight, references to roads traveled and untraveled, to fears spoken and left unsaid—reaches a level both of intimacy and controlled emotion rarely achieved in purely pop music.” One of the writers described his look as “a cowboy Jesus”, to which Taylor later replied, “I thought I was trying to look like George Harrison.” Released in April, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon also gained critical acclaim and contained Taylor’s biggest hit single in the US, a version of Carole King’s new “You’ve Got a Friend” (featuring backing vocals by Joni Mitchell), which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late July. The follow-up single, “Long Ago and Far Away”, also made the Top 40 and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The album itself reached No. 2 on the album charts, which would be Taylor’s highest position ever until the release of his 2015 album, Before This World, which went to No. 1 superseding Taylor Swift.

In early 1972, Taylor won his first Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, for “You’ve Got a Friend”; King also won Song of the Year for the same song in that ceremony. The album went on to sell 2.5 million copies in the United States.

November 1972 heralded the release of Taylor’s fourth album, One Man Dog. A concept album primarily recorded in his home recording studio, it featured a cameo by Linda Ronstadt along with Carole King, Carly Simon, and John McLaughlin. The album consisted of eighteen short pieces of music put together. Reception was generally lukewarm and, despite making the Top 10 of the Billboard Album Charts, its overall sales were disappointing. The lead single, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”, peaked at No. 14 on the Hot 100, and the follow-up, “One Man Parade”, barely reached the Top 75. Almost simultaneously, Taylor married fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon on November 3, in a small ceremony at her Murray Hill, Manhattan apartment. A post-concert party following a Taylor performance at Radio City Music Hall turned into a large-scale wedding party, and the Simon-Taylor marriage would find much public attention over the following years. They had two children, Sarah Maria “Sally” Taylor, born January 7, 1974, and Benjamin Simon “Ben” Taylor, born January 22, 1977. During their marriage, the couple would guest on each other’s albums and have two hit singles as duet partners: a cover of Inez & Charlie Foxx’s “Mockingbird” and a cover of The Everly Brothers’ “Devoted to You”.

1973–1976: Career ups and downs

Taylor spent most of 1973 enjoying his new life as a married man and did not return to the recording studio until January 1974, when sessions for his fifth album began. Walking Man was released in June and featured appearances of Paul and Linda McCartney and guitarist David Spinozza. The album was a critical and commercial disaster and was his first album to miss the Top 5 since his contract with Warner. It received poor reviews and sold only 300,000 copies in the United States. The title track failed to appear on the Top 100.

However, James Taylor’s artistic fortunes spiked again in 1975 when the Gold album Gorilla reached No. 6 and provided one of his biggest hit singles, a cover version of Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)”, featuring wife Carly on backing vocals and reached No. 5 in America and No. 1 in Canada. On the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, the track also reached the top, and the follow-up single, the feelgood “Mexico”, featuring a guest appearance by Crosby & Nash, also reached the Top 5 of that list. A well-received album, Gorilla showcased Taylor’s electric, lighter side that was evident on Walking Man. However, it was arguably a more consistent and fresher-sounding Taylor, with classics such as “Mexico”, “Wandering” and “Angry Blues”. It also featured a song about his daughter Sally, “Sarah Maria”.

Gorilla was followed in 1976 by In the Pocket, Taylor’s last studio album to be released under Warner Bros. Records. The album found him with many colleagues and friends, including Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder (who co-wrote a song with Taylor and contributed a harmonica solo). A melodic album, it was highlighted with the single “Shower the People”, an enduring classic that hit No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and almost hit the Top 20 of the Pop Charts. However, the album was not well received, reaching No. 16 and being criticized, particularly by Rolling Stone. Still, In The Pocket went on to be certified gold.

With the close of Taylor’s contract with Warner, in November, the label released Greatest Hits, the album that comprised most of his best work between 1970 and 1976. With time, it became his best-selling album ever. It was certified 11× Platinum in the US, earned a Diamond certification by the RIAA, and eventually sold close to 20 million copies worldwide.

1977–1981: Move to Columbia and continued success

In 1977 Taylor signed with Columbia Records. Between March and April, he quickly recorded his first album for the label. JT, released that June, gave Taylor his best reviews since Sweet Baby James, earning a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1978. Peter Herbst of Rolling Stone was particularly favorable to the album, of which he wrote in its August 11, 1977 issue, “JT is the least stiff and by far the most various album Taylor has done. That’s not meant to criticize Taylor’s earlier efforts. … But it’s nice to hear him sounding so healthy.” JT reached No. 4 on the Billboard charts and sold more than 3 million copies in the United States alone. The album’s Triple Platinum status ties it with Sweet Baby James as Taylor’s all-time biggest selling studio album. It was propelled by the successful cover of Jimmy Jones’s and Otis Blackwell’s “Handy Man”, which hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart and reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, earning Taylor another Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his cover version. The song also topped the Canadian charts. The success of the album propelled the release of two further singles; the up-tempo pop “Your Smiling Face”, an enduring live favorite, reached the American Top 20; however, “Honey Don’t Leave L.A.”, which Danny Kortchmar wrote and composed for Taylor, did not enjoy much success, reaching only No. 61.

Back in the forefront of popular music, Taylor guested with Paul Simon on Art Garfunkel’s recording of a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World”, which reached the Top 20 in the U.S. and topped the AC charts in early 1978. After briefly working on Broadway, he took a one-year break, reappearing in the summer of 1979, with the cover-studded Platinum album titled Flag, featuring a Top 30 version of Gerry Goffin’s and Carole King’s “Up on the Roof”. (Two selections from Flag, “Millworker” and “Brother Trucker” were featured on the PBS production of the Broadway musical based on Studs Terkel’s non-fiction book Working, which Terkel himself hosted. Taylor himself appeared in that production as a trucker; he performed “Brother Trucker” in character.) Taylor also appeared on the No Nukes concert in Madison Square Garden, where he made a memorable live performance of “Mockingbird” with his wife Carly. The concert appeared on both the No Nukes album and film.

On December 7, 1980, Taylor had an encounter with Mark David Chapman who would a*sassinate John Lennon just one day later. Taylor told the BBC in 2010: “The guy had sort of pinned me to the wall and was glistening with maniacal sweat and talking some freak speak about what he was going to do and his stuff with how John was interested, and he was going to get in touch with John Lennon. And it was surreal to actually have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John.” The next night, Taylor, who lived in a building next-door to Lennon heard the a*sassination occur. Taylor commented: “I heard him shoot—five, just as quick as you could pull the trigger, about five explosions.”

In March 1981, Taylor released the album Dad Loves His Work whose themes concerned his relationship with his father, the course his ancestors had taken, and the effect that he and Simon had on each other. The album was another Platinum success, reaching No. 10 and providing Taylor’s final real hit single in a duet with J. D. Souther, “Her Town Too”, which reached No. 5 on the Adult Contemporary chart and No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1981–1996: Troubled times and new beginnings

Simon announced her separation from Taylor in September 1981 saying, “Our needs are different; it seem impossible to stay together” and their divorce finalized in 1983. Their breakup was highly publicized. At the time, Taylor was living on West End Avenue in Manhattan and on a methadone maintenance program to cure him of his drug addiction.  Over the course of four months starting in September 1983, spurred on in part by the deaths of his friends John Belushi and Dennis Wilson and in part by the desire to be a better father to his children Sally and Ben, he discontinued methadone and overcame his heroin habit.

Taylor had thoughts of retiring by the time he played the Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985. He was encouraged by the nascent democracy in Brazil at the time, buoyed by the positive reception he got from the large crowd and other musicians, and musically energized by the sounds and nature of Brazilian music. “I had … sort of bottomed-out in a drug habit, my marriage with Carly had dissolved, and I had basically been depressed and lost for a while”, he recalled in 1995:

I sort of hit a low spot. I was asked to go down to Rio de Janeiro to play in this festival down there. We put the band together and went down and it was just an amazing response. I played to 300,000 people. They not only knew my music, they knew things about it and were interested in aspects of it that to that point had only interested me. To have that kind of validation right about then was really what I needed. It helped get me back on track.

The song “Only a Dream in Rio” was written in tribute to that night, with lines like I was there that very day and my heart came back alive. The October 1985 album, That’s Why I’m Here, from which that song came, started a series of studio recordings that, while spaced further apart than his previous records, showed a more consistent level of quality and fewer covers, most notably the Buddy Holly song “Everyday”, released as a single reached No. 61. On the album track “Only One”, the backing vocals were performed by an all star duo of Joni Mitchell and Don Henley.

Taylor’s next albums were partially successful; in 1988, he released Never Die Young, highlighted with the charting title track, and in 1991, the platinum New Moon Shine provided Taylor some popular songs with the melancholic “Copperline” and the upbeat “(I’ve Got to) Stop Thinkin’ About That”, both hit singles on Adult Contemporary radio. In the late 1980s, he began touring regularly, especially on the summer amphitheater circuit. His later concerts feature songs spanning his career and are marked by the musicianship of his band and backup singers. The 1993 two-disc Live album captures this, with a highlight being Arnold McCuller’s descants in the codas of “Shower the People” and “I Will Follow”. He provided a guest voice to The Simpsons episode “Deep Space Homer”, and also appeared later on in the series when the family put together a jigsaw puzzle with his face as the missing final piece. In 1995, Taylor performed the role of the Lord in Randy Newman’s Faust.

1997–present: Comeback

In 1997, after six years since his last studio album, Taylor released Hourglass, an introspective album that gave him the best critical reviews in almost twenty years. The album had much of its focus on Taylor’s troubled past and family. “Jump Up Behind Me” paid tribute to his father’s rescue of him after The Flying Machine days, and the long drive from New York City back to his home in Chapel Hill. “Enough To Be on Your Way” was inspired by the alcoholism-related death of his brother Alex earlier in the decade. The themes were also inspired by Taylor and Walker’s divorce, which took place in 1996. Rolling Stone Magazine found that “one of the themes of this record is disbelief”, while Taylor told the magazine that it was “spirituals for agnostics”. Critics embraced the dark themes on the album, and Hourglass was a commercial success, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard 200 (Taylor’s first Top 10 album in sixteen years) and also provided a big adult contemporary hit on “Little More Time With You”. The album also gave Taylor his first Grammy since JT, when he was honored with Best Pop Album in 1998.

Flanked by two greatest hit releases, Taylor’s Platinum-certified October Road appeared in 2002 to a receptive audience. It featured a number of quiet instrumental accompaniments and passages. Overall, it found Taylor in a more peaceful frame of mind; rather than facing a crisis now, Taylor said in an interview that “I thought I’d passed the midpoint of my life when I was 17.” The album appeared in two versions, a single-disc version and a “limited edition” two-disc version which contained three extra songs including a duet with Mark Knopfler, “Sailing to Philadelphia”, which also appeared on Knopfler’s album by the same name. Also in 2002, Taylor teamed with bluegrass musician Alison Krauss in singing “The Boxer” at the Kennedy Center Honors Tribute to Paul Simon. They later recorded the Louvin Brothers duet, “How’s the World Treating You?” In 2004, after he chose not to renew his record contract with Columbia/Sony, he released James Taylor: A Christmas Album with distribution through Hallmark Cards.

Always visibly active in environmental and liberal causes, in October 2004, Taylor joined the Vote for Change tour playing a series of concerts in American swing states. These concerts were organized by MoveOn.org with the goal of mobilizing people to vote for John Kerry and against George W. Bush in that year’s presidential campaign. Taylor’s appearances were joint performances with the Dixie Chicks.

Taylor performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Game 2 of the World Series in Boston on October 24, 2004, on October 25, 2007, both the anthem and “America” for the game on October 24, 2013, and Game 1 on October 23, 2018. He also performed at Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals in Boston on June 5, 2008, and at the NHL’s Winter Classic game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Boston Bruins.

In December 2004, he appeared as himself in an episode of The West Wing entitled “A Change Is Gonna Come”. He sang Sam Cooke’s classic “A Change Is Gonna Come” at an event honoring an artist played by Taylor’s wife Caroline. Later on, he appeared on CMT’s Crossroads alongside the Dixie Chicks. In early 2006, MusiCares honored Taylor with performances of his songs by an array of notable musicians. Before a performance by the Dixie Chicks, lead singer Natalie Maines acknowledged that he had always been one of their musical heroes and had, for them, lived up to their once-imagined reputation of him.[64] They performed his song, “Shower the People”, with a surprise appearance by Arnold McCuller, who has sung backing vocals on Taylor’s live tours and albums for many years.

In the fall of 2006, Taylor released a repackaged and slightly different version of his Hallmark Christmas album, now entitled James Taylor at Christmas, and distributed by Columbia/Sony. In 2006, Taylor performed Randy Newman’s song “Our Town” for the Disney animated film Cars. The song was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for the Best Original Song. On January 1, 2007, Taylor headlined the inaugural concert at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York honoring newly sworn in Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer.

Taylor’s next album, One Man Band was released on CD and DVD in November 2007 on Starbucks’ Hear Music Label, where he joined with Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell. The introspective album grew out of a three-year tour of the United States and Europe called the One Man Band Tour, featuring some of Taylor’s most beloved songs and anecdotes about their creative origins—accompanied solely by the “one man band” of his longtime pianist/keyboardist, Larry Goldings. The digital discrete 5.1 surround sound mix of One Man Band won a TEC Award for best surround sound recording in 2008.

On November 28–30, 2007, Taylor accompanied by his original band and Carole King, headlined a series of six shows at the Troubadour. The appearances marked the 50th anniversary of the venue, where Taylor, King and many others, such as Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, and Elton John, performed early in their music careers. Proceeds from the concert went to benefit the Natural Resources Defense Council, MusiCares, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, a member of America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s Food Bank Network. Parts of the performance shown on CBS Sunday Morning in the December 23, 2007, broadcast showed Taylor alluding to his early drug problems by saying, “I played here a number of times in the 70s, allegedly”. Taylor has used versions of this joke on other occasions, and it appears as part of his One Man Band DVD and tour performances.

In December 2007, James Taylor at Christmas was nominated for a Grammy Award. In January 2008, Taylor recorded approximately 20 songs by others for a new album with a band including Luis Conte, Michael Landau, Lou Marini, Arnold McCuller, Jimmy Johnson, David Lasley, Walt Fowler, Andrea Zonn, Kate Markowitz, Steve Gadd and Larry Goldings. The resulting live-in-studio album, named Covers, was released in September 2008. The album forays into country and soul while being the latest proof that Taylor is a more versatile singer than his best known hits might suggest. The Covers sessions stretched to include “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”, from the musical Oklahoma!, a song that his grandmother had caught him singing over and over at the top of his lungs when he was seven years old. Meanwhile, in summer 2008, Taylor and this band toured 34 North American cities with a tour entitled James Taylor and His Band of Legends. An additional album, called Other Covers, came out in April 2009, containing songs that were recorded during the same sessions as the original Covers but had not been put out to the full public yet.

During October 19–21, 2008, Taylor performed a series of free concerts in five North Carolina cities in support of Barack Obama’s presidential bid.  On Sunday, January 18, 2009, he performed at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, singing “Shower the People” with John Legend and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.  On May 29, 2009, Taylor performed on the final episode of the original 17-year run of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

On September 8, 2009, Taylor made an appearance at the 24th-season premiere block party of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.

Taylor appeared briefly in the 2009 movie Funny People, where he played “Carolina in My Mind” for a MySpace corporate event as the opening act for the main character.

On January 1, 2010, Taylor sang the American national anthem at the NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park, while Daniel Powter sang the Canadian national anthem.

On March 7, 2010, Taylor sang the Beatles’ “In My Life” in tribute to deceased artists at the 82nd Academy Awards.

In March 2010, he commenced the Troubadour Reunion Tour with Carole King and members of his original band, including Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and Danny Kortchmar. They played shows in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and North America with the final night being at the Honda Center, in Anaheim, California. The tour was a major commercial success and in some locations found Taylor playing arenas instead of his usual theaters or amphitheaters. Ticket sales amounted to over 700,000 and the tour grossed over $59 million. It was one of the most successful tours of the year.

He appeared in 2011 in the ABC comedy Mr. Sunshine as the ex-husband of the character played by Allison Janney, and he performs a duet of sorts on Leon Russell’s 1970 classic “A Song for You”.

On September 11, 2011, Taylor performed “You Can Close Your Eyes” in New York City at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

On November 22, 2011, Taylor performed “Fire and Rain” with Taylor Swift who was named after him,  at the last concert of her Speak Now World Tour in Madison Square Garden. They also sang Swift’s song, “Fifteen”. Then, on July 2, 2012 Swift appeared as Taylor’s special guest in a concert at Tanglewood.

He was active in support of Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and opened the 2012 Democratic National Convention singing three songs. He performed “America the Beautiful” at the President’s second inauguration.

He appeared on the final of Star Académie, the Quebec version of American Idol, on April 13, 2009.

On April 24, 2013, Taylor performed at the memorial service for slain MIT police officer Sean Collier who was killed by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the men responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing. Taylor was accompanied by the MIT Symphony Orchestra and three MIT a cappella groups while performing his songs “The Water is Wide” and “Shower the People”.

On September 6 and 7, 2013, he performed with the Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the Thirtieth Anniversary O.C. Tanner Gift of Music Gala Concert at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. He called the choir “a national treasure” In addition to the symphony and choir he was backed by some of his touring band pianist Charles Floyd, bassist Jimmy Johnson and percussionist Nick Halley.

After a 45-year wait, James earned his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart with Before This World. The album which was released on June 16 through Concord Records, arrived on top the chart of July 4, 2015, more than 45 years after Taylor arrived on the list with Sweet Baby James (on the March 14, 1970 list). The album launched atop the Billboard 200 with 97,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending June 21, 2015 according to Nielsen Music. Of its start, pure album sales were 96,000 copies sold, Taylor’s best debut week for an album since 2002’s October Road.

Taylor cancelled his 2016 concert in Manila as a protest to the extrajudicial killings of suspects in the Philippine Drug War.

Taylor’s album American Standard was released on February 28, 2020. American Standard debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, making Taylor the first act to earn a top 10 album in each of the last six decades. In May 2020, James Taylor and Jackson Browne cancelled their 2020 tour dates due to the COVID-19 crisis, and rescheduled them to 2021. On November 24, 2020, the album was nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album”.

Family and personal life

Taylor’s four siblings (Alex, Livingston, Hugh, and Kate) have also been musicians with recorded albums. Livingston is still an active musician; Kate was active in the 1970s but did not record another album until 2003; Hugh operates a bed-and-breakfast with his wife, The Outermost Inn in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard; and Alex died in 1993 on James’s birthday.

Taylor and Carly Simon were married in November 1972. His children with Simon, Sally and Ben, are also musicians. After Taylor and Simon divorced in 1983, he married actress Kathryn Walker on December 14, 1985, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. She had helped him get off heroin, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1996.

On February 18, 2001, at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston, Taylor wed for the third time marrying Caroline (“Kim”) Smedvig, the director of public relations and marketing for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They had begun dating in 1995 when they met as he appeared with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Part of their relationship was worked into the album October Road, on the songs “On The 4th Of July” and “Caroline I See You”.[90] Following the birth of their twin boys, Rufus and Henry in April 2001, Taylor moved with his family to Lenox, Massachusetts.

Awards and recognition

Grammy Awards

• 1972: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “You’ve Got a Friend“
• 1977: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “Handy Man”
• 1998: Best Pop Album, Hourglass
• 2001: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”
• 2003: Best Country Collaboration With Vocals, “How’s the World Treating You” with Alison Krauss
• 2006: Grammy Award-sponsored MusiCares Person of the Year. At a black tie ceremony held in Los Angeles, musicians from several eras paid tribute to Taylor by performing his songs, often prefacing them with remarks on his influence on their decisions to become musicians. Artists include Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Taj Mahal, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Sheryl Crow, India.Arie, the Dixie Chicks, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss, and Keith Urban. Paul Simon performed as well, although he was not included in the televised program; Taylor’s brother Livingston appeared on stage as a “backup singer” for the finale, along with Taylor’s twin boys, Rufus and Henry.

Other recognition

• 1995: Honorary doctorate of music from the Berklee College of Music, Boston, 1995.
• 2000: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2000: Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2003: The Chapel Hill Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina opened a permanent exhibit dedicated to Taylor. At the same occasion the US-15-501 highway bridge over Morgan Creek, near the site of the Taylor family home and mentioned in Taylor’s song “Copperline”, was named in honor of Taylor.
• 2004: George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.
• 2004: Ranked 84th in Rolling Stone’s list of “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.
• 2009: Honorary Doctorate of Music from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
• 2009: Inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
• 2010: Inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame
• 2012: Received the Montréal Jazz Spirit Award
• 2012: Named “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the Ministry of Culture & Communication of France.
• 2014: Emmy Award for The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Presents an Evening with James Taylor
• 2015: Presidential Medal of Freedom
• 2016: Kennedy Center Honors

Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed “Satchmo“, “Satch“, and “Pops“, was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist, and actor who was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe “King” Oliver, to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band. In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at “cutting contests”, and relocated to New York in order to join Fletcher Henderson’s band.

With his instantly recognizable rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song. He was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong is renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice as well as his trumpet playing. By the end of Armstrong’s career in the 1960s, his influence had spread to popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to “cross over” to wide popularity with white (and international) audiences. He rarely publicly politicized his race, to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He was able to access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for black men.

Armstrong appeared in films such as High Society (1956) alongside Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand. He received many accolades including three Grammy Award nominations and a win for his vocal performance of Hello, Dolly! in 1964.

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Early life

Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4, 1900. Although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date, August 4, 1901, was discovered by Tad Jones by researching baptismal records. At least three other biographies treat the July 4 birth date as a myth.

Armstrong was born in New Orleans to Mary Albert and William Armstrong. Albert was from Boutte, Louisiana, and gave birth at home when she was about sixteen. William Armstrong abandoned the family shortly after. About two years later, he had a daughter, Beatrice “Mama Lucy” Armstrong, who was raised by Albert.

Louis Armstrong was raised by his grandmother until the age of five when he was returned to his mother. He spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood known as The Battlefield. At six he attended the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated system of New Orleans. He did odd jobs for the Karnoffskys, a family of Lithuanian Jews. While selling coal in Storyville, he heard spasm bands, groups that played music out of household objects. He heard the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls such as Pete Lala’s, where King Oliver performed.

The Karnoffskys  took him in and treated him like family. Knowing he lived without a father, they fed and nurtured him. In his memoir Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907, he described his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by “other white folks” who felt that they were better than Jews: “I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.” He wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them: “how to live—real life and determination.” His first musical performance may have been at the side of the Karnoffsky’s junk wagon. To distinguish them from other hawkers, he tried playing a tin horn to attract customers. Morris Karnoffsky gave Armstrong an advance toward the purchase of a cornet from a pawn shop.

When Armstrong was eleven, he dropped out of school. His mother moved into a one-room house on Perdido Street with him, Lucy, and her common-law husband, Tom Lee, next door to her brother Ike and his two sons. Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also got into trouble. Cornetist Bunk Johnson said he taught the eleven-year-old to play by ear at Dago Tony’s honky tonk. (In his later years Armstrong credited King Oliver.) He said about his youth, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans … It has given me something to live for.”

Borrowing his stepfather’s gun without permission, he fired a blank into the air and was arrested on December 31, 1912. He spent the night at New Orleans Juvenile Court, then was sentenced the next day to detention at the Colored Waif’s Home. Life at the home was spartan. Mattresses were absent; meals were often little more than bread and molasses. Captain Joseph Jones ran the home like a military camp and used corporal punishment.

Armstrong developed his cornet skills by playing in the band. Peter Davis, who frequently appeared at the home at the request of Captain Jones, became Armstrong’s first teacher and chose him as bandleader. With this band, the thirteen year-old Armstrong attracted the attention of Kid Ory.

On June 14, 1914, Armstrong was released into the custody of his father and his new stepmother, Gertrude. He lived in this household with two stepbrothers for several months. After Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Armstrong’s father never welcomed him, so he returned to his mother, Mary Albert. In her small home, he had to share a bed with his mother and sister. His mother still lived in The Battlefield, leaving him open to old temptations, but he sought work as a musician. He found a job at a dance hall owned by Henry Ponce, who had connections to organized crime. He met the six-foot tall drummer Black Benny, who became his guide and bodyguard. Around the age of fifteen, he pimped for a prostitute named Nootsy, but that relationship failed after she stabbed Armstrong in the shoulder and his mother nearly choked her to death.

Career

Riverboat education

Armstrong played in brass bands and riverboats in New Orleans, first on an excursion boat in September 1918. He traveled with the band of Fate Marable, which toured on the steamboat Sidney with the Streckfus Steamers line up and down the Mississippi River. Marable was proud of his musical knowledge, and he insisted that Armstrong and other musicians in his band learn sight reading. Armstrong described his time with Marable as “going to the University”, since it gave him a wider experience working with written arrangements. He did return to New Orleans periodically.  In 1919, Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory’s band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band.

Chicago and recording for Gennett

Throughout his riverboat experience, Armstrong’s musicianship began to mature and expand. At twenty, he could read music. He became one of the first jazz musicians to be featured on extended trumpet solos, injecting his own personality and style. He started singing in his performances. In 1922, he moved to Chicago at the invitation of King Oliver. With Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band he could make enough money to quit his day jobs. Although race relations were poor, Chicago was booming. The city had jobs for blacks making good wages at factories with some left over for entertainment.

Oliver’s band was among the most influential jazz bands in Chicago in the early 1920s. Armstrong lived luxuriously in his own apartment with his first private bath. Excited as he was to be in Chicago, he began his career-long pastime of writing letters to friends in New Orleans. Armstrong could blow two hundred high Cs in a row. As his reputation grew, he was challenged to cutting contests by other musicians.

His first studio recordings were with Oliver for Gennett Records on April 5–6, 1923. They endured several hours on the train to remote Richmond, Indiana, and the band was paid little. The quality of the performances was affected by lack of rehearsal, crude recording equipment, bad acoustics, and a cramped studio. In addition, Richmond was a*sociated with the Ku Klux Klan.

Lil Hardin Armstrong urged him to seek more prominent billing and develop his style apart from the influence of Oliver. She encouraged him to play classical music in church concerts to broaden his skills. She prodded him into wearing more stylish attire to offset his girth. Her influence eventually undermined Armstrong’s relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional money that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong’s mother, May Ann Albert, came to visit him in Chicago during the summer of 1923 after being told that Armstrong was “out of work, out of money, hungry, and sick”; Hardin located and decorated an apartment for her to live in while she stayed.

In the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra

Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the time. He switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence on Henderson’s tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period.

Armstrong adapted to the tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing trumpet and experimenting with the trombone. The other members were affected by Armstrong’s emotional style. His act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers. The Henderson Orchestra played in prominent venues for patrons only, including the Roseland Ballroom, with arrangements by Don Redman. Duke Ellington’s orchestra went to Roseland to catch Armstrong’s performances.

During this time, Armstrong recorded with Clarence Williams (a friend from New Orleans), the Williams Blue Five, Sidney Bechet, and blues singers Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith.

The Hot Five

In 1925, Armstrong returned to Chicago largely at the insistence of Lil, who wanted to expand his career and his income. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed him as “the World’s Greatest Trumpet Player”. For a time he was a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He formed Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and recorded the hits “Potato Head Blues” and “Muggles”. The word “muggles” was a slang term for marijuana, something he used often during his life.

The Hot Five included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), Lil Armstrong on piano, and usually no drummer. Over a twelve-month period starting in November 1925, this quintet produced twenty-four records.  Armstrong’s band leading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted, “One felt so relaxed working with him, and he was very broad-minded … always did his best to feature each individual.”[45] Among the most notable of the Hot Five and Seven records were “Cornet Chop Suey”, “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue”, “Hotter Than that” and “Potato Head Blues,” all featuring highly creative solos by Armstrong. According to Thomas Brothers, recordings, such as “Struttin’ with Some Barbeque,” were so superb, “planned with density and variety, bluesyness, and showiness,” that they were probably showcased at the Sunset Café. His recordings soon after with pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines (most famously their 1928 “Weather Bird” duet) and Armstrong’s trumpet introduction to and solo in “West End Blues” remain some of the most famous and influential improvisations in jazz history. Armstrong was now free to develop his personal style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as “Whip That Thing, Miss Lil” and “Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, Do That Clarinet, Boy!”

Armstrong also played with Erskine Tate’s Little Symphony, which played mostly at the Vendome Theatre. They furnished music for silent movies and live shows, including jazz versions of classical music, such as “Madame Butterfly”, which gave Armstrong experience with longer forms of music and with hosting before a large audience. He began to scat sing (improvised vocal jazz using nonsensical words) and was among the first to record it, on the Hot Five recording “Heebie Jeebies” in 1926. The recording was so popular that the group became the most famous jazz band in the United States, even though they had not performed live to any great extent. Young musicians across the country, black or white, were turned on by Armstrong’s new type of jazz.

After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone’s a*sociate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was renamed Louis Armstrong and his Stompers, though Hines was the music director and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends and successful collaborators. It was at the Sunset Café that Armstrong accompanied singer Adelaide Hall. It was during Hall’s tenure at the venue that she experimented, developed and expanded her use and art of Scat singing with Armstrong’s guidance and encouragement.

In the first half of 1927, Armstrong a*sembled his Hot Seven group, which added drummer Al “Baby” Dodds and tuba player, Pete Briggs, while preserving most of his original Hot Five lineup. John Thomas replaced Kid Ory on trombone. Later that year he organized a series of new Hot Five sessions which resulted in nine more records. In the last half of 1928, he started recording with a new group: Zutty Singleton (drums), Earl Hines (piano), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Fred Robinson (trombone), and Mancy Carr (banjo).

Emerging as a vocalist

Armstrong returned to New York in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra for the musical Hot Chocolates, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist Fats Waller. He also made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. His version of the song became his biggest selling record to date.

Armstrong started to work at Connie’s Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong also had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of famous songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the ‘crooning’ sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong’s famous interpretation of Carmichael’s “Stardust” became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong’s unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards.

Armstrong’s radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael’s “Lazy River” (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is introduced by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong’s growling interjections at the end of each bar: “Yeah! …”Uh-huh”…”Sure”…”Way down, way down.” In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong “scat singing”.

As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong’s vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gravelly coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated. His scat singing style was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lower-register tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as “Lazy River” exerted a huge influence on younger white singers such as Bing Crosby.

Working during hard times

The Great Depression of the early 1930s was especially hard on the jazz scene. The Cotton Club closed in 1936 after a long downward spiral, and many musicians stopped playing altogether as club dates evaporated. Bix Beiderbecke died and Fletcher Henderson’s band broke up. King Oliver made a few records but otherwise struggled. Sidney Bechet became a tailor, later moving to Paris and Kid Ory returned to New Orleans and raised chickens.

Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish night life, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame and was also convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town,[  Armstrong visited New Orleans, had a hero’s welcome, and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as Armstrong’s Secret Nine and had a cigar named after him. But soon he was on the road again. After a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, he fled to Europe.

After returning to the United States, he undertook several exhausting tours. His agent Johnny Collins’s erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. He hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer, who began to straighten out his legal mess, his mob troubles, and his debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, which were aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result, he branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. He appeared in movies again, including Crosby’s 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast.

The Harlem Renaissance

During the 1920s, Louis Armstrong brought a huge impact during the Harlem Renaissance within the Jazz world. The music he created was an incredible part of his life during the Harlem Renaissance. His impact touched many, including a well-known man during that time named Langston Hughes. The admiration he had for Armstrong and acknowledging him as one of the most recognized musicians during the era. Within Hughes writings, he created many books which held the central idea of jazz and recognition to Armstrong as one of the most important person to be part of the new found love of their culture. The sound of jazz, along with many other musicians such as Armstrong, helped shape Hughes as a writer. Just as the musicians, Hughes wrote his words with jazz.

Armstrong changed the jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. Being known as “the world’s greatest trumpet player” during this time he continued his legacy and decided to continue a focus on his own vocal career. The popularity he gained brought together many black and white audiences to watch him perform.

Reviving jazz with the All Stars

After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing. He recorded Hoagy Carmichael’s “Rockin’ Chair” for Okeh Records.

During the next 30 years, Armstrong played more than 300 performances a year. Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes: ballrooms closed, and there was competition from television and from other types of music becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to finance a 16-piece touring band.

During the 1940s, a widespread revival of interest in the traditional jazz of the 1920s made it possible for Armstrong to consider a return to the small-group musical style of his youth. Armstrong was featured as a guest artist with Lionel Hampton’s band at the famed second Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. on October 12, 1946. Following a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden, Armstrong’s manager, Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947, and established a six-piece traditional jazz group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and Dixieland musicians, most of whom were previously leaders of big bands. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg’s Supper Club.

This group was called Louis Armstrong and His All Stars and included at various times Earl “Fatha” Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid “Buddy” Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems, Mort Herbert, Joe Darensbourg, Eddie Shu, Joe Muranyi and percussionist Danny Barcelona. During this period, Armstrong made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films. He was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine, on February 21, 1949. Louis Armstrong and his All Stars were featured at the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. held on June 7, 1953 along with Shorty Rogers, Roy Brown, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, and Nat “King” Cole.

A jazz ambassador

By the 1950s, Armstrong was a widely beloved American icon and cultural ambassador who commanded an international fanbase. However, a growing generation gap became apparent between him and the young jazz musicians who emerged in the postwar era such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins. The postwar generation regarded their music as abstract art and considered Armstrong’s vaudevillian style, half-musician and half-stage entertainer, outmoded and Uncle Tomism, “… he seemed a link to minstrelsy that we were ashamed of.” He called bebop “Chinese music”. While touring Australia, 1954, he was asked if he could play bebop. “Bebop?” he husked. “I just play music. Guys who invent terms like that are walking the streets with their instruments under their arms.”

February 28, 1948, Suzy Delair sang the French song C’est si bon at the Hotel Negresco during the first Nice Jazz Festival. Louis Armstrong was present and loved the song. June 26, 1950, he recorded the American version of the song (English lyrics by Jerry Seelen) in New York City with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra. When it was released, the disc was a worldwide success and the song was then performed by the greatest international singers.

In the 1960s, he toured Ghana and Nigeria.

After finishing his contract with Decca Records, he became a freelance artist and recorded for other labels.[71][72] He continued an intense international touring schedule, but in 1959 he suffered a heart attack in Italy and had to rest.

In 1964, after over two years without setting foot in a studio, he recorded his biggest-selling record, “Hello, Dolly!”, a song by Jerry Herman, originally sung by Carol Channing. Armstrong’s version remained on the Hot 100 for 22 weeks, longer than any other record produced that year, and went to No. 1 making him, at 62 years, 9 months and 5 days, the oldest person ever to accomplish that feat. In the process, he dislodged the Beatles from the No. 1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.
External audio
audio icon Louis Daniel Armstrong talks with Studs Terkel on WFMT; 1962/6/24, 33:43, Studs Terkel Radio Archive

Armstrong kept touring well into his 60s, even visiting part of the communist bloc in 1965. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under the sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname “Ambassador Satch” and inspiring Dave Brubeck to compose his jazz musical The Real Ambassadors. By 1968, he was approaching 70 and his health began to give out. He suffered heart and kidney ailments that forced him to stop touring. He did not perform publicly at all in 1969 and spent most of the year recuperating at home. Meanwhile, his longtime manager Joe Glaser died. By the summer of 1970, his doctors pronounced him fit enough to resume live performances. He embarked on another world tour, but a heart attack forced him to take a break for two months.

Personal life

Pronunciation of name

The Louis Armstrong House Museum website states:

Judging from home recorded tapes now in our Museum Collections, Louis pronounced his own name as “Lewis”. On his 1964 record “Hello, Dolly”, he sings, “This is Lewis, Dolly” but in 1933 he made a record called “Laughin’ Louie”. Many broadcast announcers, fans, and acquaintances called him “Louie” and in a videotaped interview from 1983 Lucille Armstrong calls her late husband “Louie” as well. Musicians and close friends usually called him “Pops”.

In a memoir written for Robert Goffin between 1943 and 1944, Armstrong states, “All white folks call me Louie,” perhaps suggesting that he himself did not or, on the other hand, that no whites addressed him by one of his nicknames such as Pops. That said, Armstrong was registered as “Lewie” for the 1920 U.S. Census. On various live records he’s called “Louie” on stage, such as on the 1952 “Can Anyone Explain?” from the live album In Scandinavia vol.1. The same applies to his 1952 studio recording of the song “Chloe”, where the choir in the background sings “Louie … Louie”, with Armstrong responding “What was that? Somebody called my name?” “Lewie” is the French pronunciation of “Louis” and is commonly used in Louisiana. In 1970, Louis and Lucille appeared on The Mike Douglas Show to demonstrate the preparation red beans and rice, a dish so enjoyed by Armstrong that he signed correspondence “Red Beans and Ricely Yours”. In the video with Armstrong standing at her side, Lucille prepares his favorite red beans recipe and refers to “Louie” several times.

Family

Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana, when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute. He started the affair as a client. He returned to Gretna on several occasions to visit her. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. It was on this occasion that he found out that she had a common-law husband. Not long after this fiasco, Parker traveled to Armstrong’s home on Perdido Street.  They checked into Kid Green’s hotel that evening. On the next day, March 19, 1919, Armstrong and Parker married at City Hall. They adopted a three-year-old boy, Clarence, whose mother, Armstrong’s cousin Flora, had died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled as the result of a head injury at an early age, and Armstrong spent the rest of his life taking care of him. His marriage to Parker ended when they separated in 1923.

On February 4, 1924, he married Lil Hardin Armstrong, King Oliver’s pianist. She had divorced her first husband a few years earlier. His second wife helped him develop his career, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong then married Alpha Smith.  His relationship with Alpha, however, began while he was playing at the Vendome during the 1920s and continued long after. His marriage to his third wife lasted four years, and they divorced in 1942. Louis then married Lucille Wilson in October 1942, a singer at the Cotton Club, to whom he was married until his death in 1971.

Armstrong’s marriages never produced any offspring. However, in December 2012, 57-year-old Sharon Preston-Folta claimed to be his daughter from a 1950s affair between Armstrong and Lucille “Sweets” Preston, a dancer at the Cotton Club. In a 1955 letter to his manager, Joe Glaser, Armstrong affirmed his belief that Preston’s newborn baby was his daughter, and ordered Glaser to pay a monthly allowance of $400 (US$4,772 in 2019 dollars ) to mother and child.

Personality

Armstrong was noted for his colorful and charismatic personality. His autobiography vexed some biographers and historians, as he had a habit of telling tales, particularly of his early childhood when he was less scrutinized, and his embellishments of his history often lack consistency.

In addition to being an entertainer, Armstrong was a leading personality of the day. He was beloved by an American public that gave even the greatest African American performers little access beyond their public celebrity, and he was able to live a private life of access and privilege afforded to few other African Americans during that era.

He generally remained politically neutral, which at times alienated him from members of the black community who looked to him to use his prominence with white America to become more of an outspoken figure during the civil rights movement. However, he did criticize President Eisenhower for not acting forcefully enough on civil rights.

Lip problems

The trumpet is a notoriously hard instrument on the lips, and Armstrong suffered from lip damage over much of his life due to his aggressive style of playing and preference for narrow mouthpieces that would stay in place easier, but which tended to dig into the soft flesh of his inner lip. During his 1930s European tour, he suffered an ulceration so severe that he had to stop playing entirely for a year. Eventually he took to using salves and creams on his lips and also cutting off scar tissue with a razor blade. By the 1950s, he was an official spokesman for Ansatz-Creme Lip Salve.

During a backstage meeting with trombonist Marshall Brown in 1959, Armstrong received the suggestion that he should go to a doctor and receive proper treatment for his lips instead of relying on home remedies, but he did not get around to doing it until the final years of his life, by which point his health was failing and doctors considered surgery too risky.

Nicknames

The nicknames “Satchmo” and “Satch” are short for “Satchelmouth”. The nickname has many possible origins. The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy in New Orleans dancing for pennies. He scooped the coins off the street and stuck them into his mouth to prevent bigger children from stealing them. Someone dubbed him “satchel mouth” for his mouth acting as a satchel. Another tale is that because of his large mouth, he was nicknamed “satchel mouth” which was shortened to “Satchmo”.

Early on he was also known as “Dipper”, short for “Dippermouth”, a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure.

The nickname “Pops” came from Armstrong’s own tendency to forget people’s names and simply call them “Pops” instead. The nickname was turned on Armstrong himself. It was used as the title of a 2010 biography of Armstrong by Terry Teachout.

After a competition at the Savoy, he was crowned and nicknamed “King Menelik,” after the Emperor of Ethiopia, for slaying “ofay jazz demons.”

Race

Armstrong was largely accepted into white society, both on stage and off, a rarity for a black person at the time. Some musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front of segregated audiences, and for not taking a strong enough stand in the American civil rights movement.  When he did speak out, it made national news, including his criticism of President Eisenhower, calling him “two-faced” and “gutless” because of his inaction during the conflict over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. As a protest, Armstrong canceled a planned tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department saying: “The way they’re treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell” and that he could not represent his government abroad when it was in conflict with its own people. The FBI kept a file on Armstrong for his outspokenness about integration.

Religion

When asked about his religion, Armstrong answered that he was raised a Baptist, always wore a Star of David, and was friends with the pope. He wore the Star of David in honor of the Karnoffsky family, who took him in as a child and lent him money to buy his first cornet. He was baptized a Catholic in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, and he met Pope Pius XII and Pope Paul VI.

Personal habits

Armstrong was concerned with his health. He used laxatives to control his weight, a practice he advocated both to acquaintances and in the diet plans he published under the title Lose Weight the Satchmo Way. Armstrong’s laxative of preference in his younger days was Pluto Water, but when he discovered the herbal remedy Swiss Kriss, he became an enthusiastic convert, extolling its virtues to anyone who would listen and passing out packets to everyone he encountered, including members of the British Royal Family. (Armstrong also appeared in humorous, albeit risqué, cards that he had printed to send out to friends; the cards bore a picture of him sitting on a toilet—as viewed through a keyhole—with the slogan “Satch says, ‘Leave it all behind ya!’”) The cards have sometimes been incorrectly described as ads for Swiss Kriss. In a live recording of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with Velma Middleton, he changes the lyric from “Put another record on while I pour” to “Take some Swiss Kriss while I pour.” His laxative use began as a child when his mother would collect dandelions and peppergrass around the railroad tracks to give to her children for their health.

Armstrong was a heavy marijuana smoker for much of his life and spent nine days in jail in 1930 after being arrested for drug possession outside a club. He described marijuana as “a thousand times better than whiskey”.

The concern with his health and weight was balanced by his love of food, reflected in such songs as “Cheesecake”, “Cornet Chop Suey”,  though “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” was written about a fine-looking companion, not about food. He kept a strong connection throughout his life to the cooking of New Orleans, always signing his letters, “Red beans and ricely yours …”

A fan of Major League Baseball, he founded a team in New Orleans that was known as Raggedy Nine and transformed the team into his Armstrong’s “Secret Nine Baseball”.

Writings

Armstrong’s gregariousness extended to writing. On the road, he wrote constantly, sharing favorite themes of his life with correspondents around the world. He avidly typed or wrote on whatever stationery was at hand, recording instant takes on music, sex, food, childhood memories, his heavy “medicinal” marijuana use—and even his bowel movements, which he gleefully described.

Social organizations

Louis Armstrong was not, as is often claimed, a Freemason. Although he is usually listed as being a member of Montgomery Lodge No. 18 (Prince Hall) in New York, no such lodge has ever existed. However, Armstrong stated in his autobiography that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, which although real is not a Masonic group.

Music

Horn playing and early jazz

In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. Along with his “clarinet-like figurations and high notes in his cornet solos”, he was also known for his “intense rhythmic ‘swing’, a complex conception involving … accented upbeats, upbeat to downbeat slurring, and complementary relations among rhythmic patterns.”  The most lauded recordings on which Armstrong plays trumpet include the Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions, as well as those of the Red Onion Jazz Babies. Armstrong’s improvisations, while unconventionally sophisticated for that era, were also subtle and highly melodic. The solo that Armstrong plays during the song “Potato Head Blues” has long been considered his best solo of that series.

Prior to Armstrong, most collective ensemble playing in jazz, along with its occasional solos, simply varied the melodies of the songs. Armstrong was virtually the first to create significant variations based on the chord harmonies of the songs instead of merely on the melodies. This opened a rich field for creation and improvisation, and significantly changed the music into a soloist’s art form.

Often, Armstrong re-composed pop-tunes he played, simply with variations that made them more compelling to jazz listeners of the era. At the same time, however, his oeuvre includes many original melodies, creative leaps, and relaxed or driving rhythms. Armstrong’s playing technique, honed by constant practice, extended the range, tone and capabilities of the trumpet. In his records, Armstrong almost single-handedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what had been essentially a collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.

Armstrong was one of the first artists to use recordings of his performances to improve himself. Armstrong was an avid audiophile. He had a large collection of recordings, including reel-to-reel tapes, which he took on the road with him in a trunk during his later career. He enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In the den of his home, he had the latest audio equipment and would sometimes rehearse and record along with his older recordings or the radio.

Vocal popularity

As his music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became very important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it with the first recording on which he scatted, “Heebie Jeebies”. At a recording session for Okeh Records, when the sheet music supposedly fell on the floor and the music began before he could pick up the pages, Armstrong simply started singing nonsense syllables while Okeh president E.A. Fearn, who was at the session, kept telling him to continue. Armstrong did, thinking the track would be discarded, but that was the version that was pressed to disc, sold, and became an unexpected hit. Although the story was thought to be apocryphal, Armstrong himself confirmed it in at least one interview as well as in his memoirs. On a later recording, Armstrong also sang out “I done forgot the words” in the middle of recording “I’m A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas”.

Such records were hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively as his trumpet. Armstrong once told Cab Calloway that his scat style was derived “from the Jews rockin”, an Orthodox Jewish style of chanting during prayer.

Composing

Armstrong was a gifted composer who wrote more than fifty songs, some of which have become jazz standards (e.g. “Gully Low Blues”, “Potato Head Blues” and “Swing That Music”).

Colleagues and followers

During his long career he played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time; among them were Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and perhaps most famously Ella Fitzgerald. His influence upon Crosby is particularly important with regard to the subsequent development of popular music: Crosby admired and copied Armstrong, as is evident on many of his early recordings, notably “Just One More Chance” (1931). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz describes Crosby’s debt to Armstrong in precise detail, although it does not acknowledge Armstrong by name:

Crosby … was important in introducing into the mainstream of popular singing an Afro-American concept of song as a lyrical extension of speech … His techniques—easing the weight of the breath on the vocal cords, passing into a head voice at a low register, using forward production to aid distinct enunciation, singing on consonants (a practice of black singers), and making discreet use of appoggiaturas, mordents, and slurs to emphasize the text—were emulated by nearly all later popular singers.

Armstrong recorded two albums with Ella Fitzgerald: Ella and Louis, and Ella and Louis Again for Verve Records, with the sessions featuring the backing musicianship of the Oscar Peterson Trio and drummers Buddy Rich (on the first album), and Louie Bellson (on the second). Norman Granz then had the vision for Ella and Louis to record Porgy and Bess.

His recordings for Columbia Records, Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954) and Satch Plays Fats (all Fats Waller tunes) (1955) were both being considered masterpieces, as well as moderately well selling. In 1961 the All Stars participated in two albums—The Great Summit and The Great Reunion (now together as a single disc) with Duke Ellington. The albums feature many of Ellington’s most famous compositions (as well as two exclusive cuts) with Duke sitting in on piano. His participation in Dave Brubeck’s high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors (1963) was critically acclaimed, and features “Summer Song”, one of Armstrong’s most popular vocal efforts.

In 1964, his recording of the song “Hello Dolly” went to number one. An album of the same title was quickly created around the song, and also shot to number one (knocking The Beatles off the top of the chart). The album sold very well for the rest of the year, quickly going “Gold” (500,000). His performance of “Hello Dolly” won for best male pop vocal performance at the 1964 Grammy Awards.

Hits and later career

Armstrong had nineteen “Top Ten” records including “Stardust”, “What a Wonderful World”, “When The Saints Go Marching In”, “Dream a Little Dream of Me”, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “You Rascal You”, and “Stompin’ at the Savoy”. “We Have All the Time in the World” was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it featured on a Guinness advertisement. It reached number 3 in the charts on being re-released.

In 1964, Armstrong knocked The Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with “Hello, Dolly!”, which gave the 63-year-old performer a U.S. record as the oldest artist to have a number one song. His 1964 song “Bout Time” was later featured in the film Bewitched.

Armstrong performed in Italy at the 1968 Sanremo Music Festival where he sang “Mi Va di Cantare” alongside his friend, the Eritrean-born Italian singer Lara Saint Paul. In February 1968, he also appeared with Lara Saint Paul on the Italian RAI television channel where he performed “Grassa e Bella”, a track he sang in Italian for the Italian market and C.D.I. label.

In 1968, Armstrong scored one last popular hit in the United Kingdom with “What a Wonderful World”, which topped the British charts for a month. Armstrong appeared on the October 28, 1970, Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat King Cole’s hit “Ramblin’ Rose” and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on “Blue Yodel No. 9”.

Stylistic range

Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from blues to the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. He incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted him to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of “St. Louis Blues” from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.

Film, television, and radio

Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a bandleader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader c*m narrator in the 1956 musical High Society starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm. He appears throughout the film, also sings the title song as well as performs a duet with Crosby, “Now You Has Jazz”.[121] In 1947, he played himself in the movie New Orleans opposite Billie Holiday, which chronicled the demise of the Storyville district and the ensuing exodus of musicians from New Orleans to Chicago. In the 1959 film The Five Pennies he played himself, sang, and played several classic numbers. With Danny Kaye he performed a duet of “When the Saints Go Marching In” during which Kaye impersonated Armstrong. He had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story.

Armstrong was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show in the 1930s. In 1969, he had a cameo role in Gene Kelly’s film version of Hello, Dolly! as the bandleader Louis. He sang the title song with actress Barbra Streisand. His solo recording of “Hello, Dolly!” is one of his most recognizable performances. He was heard on such radio programs as The Story of Swing (1937) and This Is Jazz (1947), and he also made television appearances, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, a self-described Armstrong admirer, a*serted that a 1952 Louis Armstrong concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris played a significant role in inspiring him to create the fictional creatures called Cronopios that are the subject of a number of Cortázar’s short stories. Cortázar once called Armstrong himself “Grandísimo Cronopio” (The Great Cronopio).

There is a pivotal scene in Stardust Memories (1980) in which Woody Allen is overwhelmed by a recording of Armstrong’s “Stardust” and experiences a nostalgic epiphany.

Death

Against his doctor’s advice, Armstrong played a two-week engagement in March 1971 at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Empire Room. At the end of it, he was hospitalized for a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in May, and quickly resumed practicing his trumpet playing. Still hoping to get back on the road, Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a month before his 70th birthday. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City. His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord’s Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.

Awards and honors

Grammy Awards

Armstrong was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972 by the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. This Special Merit Award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy’s National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Armstrong were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have “qualitative or historical significance”.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Armstrong’s West End Blues on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll

Inductions and honors

In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong 32 cents commemorative postage stamp.

Film honors

In 1999 Armstrong was nominated for inclusion in the American Film Institute’s 100 Years … 100 Stars.

Legacy

The influence of Armstrong on the development of jazz is virtually immeasurable. His irrepressible personality both as a performer and as a public figure was so strong that to some it sometimes overshadowed his contributions as a musician and singer.

As a virtuoso trumpet player, Armstrong had a unique tone and an extraordinary talent for melodic improvisation. Through his playing, the trumpet emerged as a solo instrument in jazz and is used widely today. Additionally, jazz itself was transformed from a collectively improvised folk music to a soloist’s serious art form largely through his influence. He was a masterful accompanist and ensemble player in addition to his extraordinary skills as a soloist. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who came after him.

Though Armstrong is widely recognized as a pioneer of scat singing, Ethel Waters precedes his scatting on record in the 1930s according to Gary Giddins and others. Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra are just two singers who were greatly indebted to him. Holiday said that she always wanted Bessie Smith’s ‘big’ sound and Armstrong’s feeling in her singing. Even special musicians like Duke Ellington have praised Armstrong through strong testimonials. Duke Ellington, DownBeat magazine in 1971, said, “If anybody was a master, it was Louis Armstrong. He was and will continue to be the embodiment of jazz.” In 1950, Bing Crosby, the most successful vocalist of the first half of the 20th century, said, “He is the beginning and the end of music in America.”

In the summer of 2001, in commemoration of the centennial of Armstrong’s birth, New Orleans’s main airport was renamed Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

In 2002, the Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925–1928) were preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

The US Open tennis tournament’s former main stadium was named Louis Armstrong Stadium in honor of Armstrong who had lived a few blocks from the site.

Congo Square was a common gathering place for African-Americans in New Orleans for dancing and performing music. The park where Congo Square is located was later renamed Louis Armstrong Park. Dedicated in April 1980, the park includes a 12-foot statue of Armstrong, trumpet in hand.

The house where Armstrong lived for almost 28 years was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and is now a museum. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, at 34-56 107th Street between 34th and 37th avenues in Corona, Queens, presents concerts and educational programs, operates as a historic house museum and makes materials in its archives of writings, books, recordings and memorabilia available to the public for research. The museum is operated by the Queens College, City University of New York, following the dictates of Lucille Armstrong’s will. The museum opened to the public on October 15, 2003. A new visitors center is planned.

Armstrong appeared at many New York area venues, including several extended engagements at Freedomland U.S.A. in The Bronx. His performances there are featured in the book, Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History (Theme Park Press, 2019).

According to literary critic Harold Bloom, “The two great American contributions to the world’s art, in the end, are Walt Whitman and, after him, Armstrong and jazz … If I had to choose between the two, ultimately, I wouldn’t. I would say that the genius of this nation at its best is indeed Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong.”

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Louis Armstrong among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as “Ol’ Man River”, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”, “A Fine Romance”, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “The Song Is You”, “All the Things You Are”, “The Way You Look Tonight” and “Long Ago (and Far Away)”. He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.

A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern’s musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Many of Kern’s songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes.

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Biography

Early life

Kern was born in New York City, on Sutton Place, in what was then the city’s brewery district.[1] His parents were Henry Kern (1842–1908), a Jewish German immigrant, and Fannie Kern née Kakeles (1852–1907), who was an American Jew of Bohemian parentage.[2] At the time of Kern’s birth, his father ran a stable; later he became a successful merchant.[2] Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan, where he attended public schools. He showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher.

In 1897, the family moved to Newark, New Jersey, where Kern attended Newark High School (which became Barringer High School in 1907). He wrote songs for the school’s first musical, a minstrel show, in 1901, and for an amateur musical adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin put on at the Newark Yacht Club in January 1902.  Kern left high school before graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902. In response, Kern’s father insisted that his son work with him in business, instead of composing. Kern, however, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks: he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200. His father relented, and later in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Gallico, and harmony under Dr. Austin Pierce. His first published composition, a piano piece, At the Casino, appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his musical training under private tutors in Heidelberg, Germany, returning to New York via London.

First compositions

For a time, Kern worked as a rehearsal pianist in Broadway theatres and as a song-plugger for Tin Pan Alley music publishers. While in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. He began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for An English Daisy, by Seymour Hicks and Walter Slaughter, and Mr. Wix of Wickham, for which he wrote most of the songs.

In 1905, Kern contributed the song “How’d you like to spoon with me?” to Ivan Caryll’s hit musical The Earl and the Girl when the show transferred to Chicago and New York in 1905. He also contributed to the New York production of The Catch of the Season (1905), The Little Cherub (1906) and The Orchid (1907), among other shows. From 1905 on, he spent long periods of time in London, contributing songs to West End shows like The Beauty of Bath (1906; with lyricist P. G. Wodehouse) and making valuable contacts, including George Grossmith Jr. and Seymour Hicks, who were the first to introduce Kern’s songs to the London stage. In 1909 during one of his stays in England, Kern took a boat trip on the River Thames with some friends, and when the boat stopped at Walton-on-Thames, they went to an inn called the Swan for a drink. Kern was much taken with the proprietor’s daughter, Eva Leale (1891–1959), who was working behind the bar. He wooed her, and they were married at the Anglican church of St. Mary’s in Walton on October 25, 1910. The couple then lived at the Swan when Kern was in England.

Kern is believed to have composed music for silent films as early as 1912, but the earliest documented film music which he is known to have written was for a twenty-part serial, Gloria’s Romance in 1916.[9] This was one of the first starring vehicles for Billie Burke, for whom Kern had earlier written the song “Mind the Paint”, with lyrics by A. W. Pinero. The film is now considered lost, but Kern’s music survives. Another score for the silent movies, Jubilo, followed in 1919. Kern was one of the founding members of ASCAP.

Kern’s first complete score was Broadway’s The Red Petticoat (1912), one of the first musical-comedy Westerns. The libretto was by Rida Johnson Young. By World War I, more than a hundred of Kern’s songs had been used in about thirty productions, mostly Broadway adaptations of West End and European shows. Kern contributed two songs to To-Night’s the Night (1914), another Rubens musical. It opened in New York and went on to become a hit in London. The best known of Kern’s songs from this period is probably “They Didn’t Believe Me”, which was a hit in the New York version of the Paul Rubens and Sidney Jones musical, The Girl from Utah (1914), for which Kern wrote five songs.  Kern’s song, with four beats to a bar, departed from the customary waltz-rhythms of European influence and fitted the new American passion for modern dances such as the fox-trot. He was also able to use elements of American styles, such as ragtime, as well as syncopation, in his lively dance tunes. Theatre historian John Kenrick writes that the song put Kern in great demand on Broadway and established a pattern for musical comedy love songs that lasted through the 1960s.

In May 1915, Kern was due to sail with Charles Frohman from New York to London on board the RMS Lusitania, but Kern missed the boat, having overslept after staying up late playing poker. Frohman died in the sinking of the ship.

Princess Theatre musicals

Kern composed 16 Broadway scores between 1915 and 1920 and also contributed songs to the London hit Theodore & Co (1916; most of the songs are by the young Ivor Novello) and to revues like the Ziegfeld Follies. The most notable of his scores were those for a series of shows written for the Princess Theatre, a small (299-seat) house built by Ray Comstock. Theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury asked Kern and librettist Guy Bolton to create a series of intimate and low-budget, yet smart, musicals.

The “Princess Theatre shows” were unique on Broadway not only for their small size, but their clever, coherent plots, integrated scores and naturalistic acting, which presented “a sharp contrast to the large-scale Ruritanian operettas then in vogue” or the star-studded revues and extravaganzas of producers like Florenz Ziegfeld. Earlier musical comedy had often been thinly plotted, gaudy pieces, marked by the insertion of songs into their scores with little regard to the plot. But Kern and Bolton followed the examples of Gilbert and Sullivan and French opéra bouffe in integrating song and story. “These shows built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved. … The characters and situations were, within the limitations of musical comedy license, believable and the humor came from the situations or the nature of the characters. Kern’s exquisitely flowing melodies were employed to further the action or develop characterization.” The shows featured modern American settings and simple scene changes to suit the small theatre.

The team’s first Princess Theatre show was an adaptation of Paul Rubens’ 1905 London show, Mr. Popple (of Ippleton), called Nobody Home (1915). The piece ran for 135 performances and was a modest financial success. However, it did little to fulfill the new team’s mission to innovate, except that Kern’s song, “The Magic Melody”, was the first Broadway showtune with a basic jazz progression. Kern and Bolton next created an original piece, Very Good Eddie, which was a surprise hit, running for 341 performances, with additional touring productions that went on into the 1918-19 season. The British humorist, lyricist and librettist P. G. Wodehouse joined the Princess team in 1917, adding his skill as a lyricist to the succeeding shows. Oh, Boy! (1917) ran for an extraordinary 463 performances. Other shows written for the theatre were Have a Heart (1917), Leave It to Jane (1917) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918). The first opened at another theatre before Very Good Eddie closed. The second played elsewhere during the long run of Oh Boy! An anonymous admirer wrote a verse in their praise that begins:

This is the trio of musical fame,
Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.
Better than anyone else you can name
Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.

In February 1918, Dorothy Parker wrote in Vanity Fair:

Well, Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern have done it again. Every time these three gather together, the Princess Theatre is sold out for months in advance. You can get a seat for Oh, Lady! Lady!! somewhere around the middle of August for just about the price of one on the stock exchange. If you ask me, I will look you fearlessly in the eye and tell you in low, throbbing tones that it has it over any other musical comedy in town. But then Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern are my favorite indoor sport. I like the way they go about a musical comedy. … I like the way the action slides casually into the songs. … I like the deft rhyming of the song that is always sung in the last act by two comedians and a comedienne. And oh, how I do like Jerome Kern’s music. And all these things are even more so in Oh, Lady! Lady!! than they were in Oh, Boy!

Oh, Lady! Lady!! was the last successful “Princess Theatre show”. Kern and Wodehouse disagreed over money, and the composer decided to move on to other projects. Kern’s importance to the partnership was illustrated by the fate of the last musical of the series, Oh, My Dear! (1918), to which he contributed only one song: “Go, Little Boat”. The rest of the show was composed by Louis Hirsch and ran for 189 performances: “Despite a respectable run, everyone realized there was little point in continuing the series without Kern.”

Early 1920s

The 1920s were an extremely productive period in American musical theatre, and Kern created at least one show every year for the entire decade. His first show of 1920 was The Night Boat, with book and lyrics by Anne Caldwell, which ran for more than 300 performances in New York and for three seasons on tour. Later in the same year, Kern wrote the score for Sally, with a book by Bolton and lyrics by Otto Harbach. This show, staged by Florenz Ziegfeld, ran for 570 performances, one of the longest runs of any Broadway show in the decade, and popularized the song “Look for the Silver Lining” (which had been written for an earlier show), performed by the rising star Marilyn Miller. It also had a long run in London in 1921, produced by George Grossmith Jr. Kern’s next shows were Good Morning, Dearie (1921, with Caldwell) which ran for 347 performances; followed in 1922 by a West End success, The Cabaret Girl in collaboration with Grossmith and Wodehouse; another modest success by the same team, The Beauty Prize (1923); and a Broadway flop, The Bunch and Judy, remembered, if at all, as the first time Kern and Fred Astaire worked together.

Stepping Stones (1923, with Caldwell) was a success, and in 1924 the Princess Theatre team of Bolton, Wodehouse and Kern reunited to write Sitting Pretty, but it did not recapture the popularity of the earlier collaborations. Its relative failure may have been partly due to Kern’s growing aversion to having individual songs from his shows performed out of context on radio, in cabaret, or on record, although his chief objection was to jazz interpretations of his songs.[citation needed] He called himself a “musical clothier – nothing more or less,” and said, “I write music to both the situations and the lyrics in plays.” When Sitting Pretty was produced, he forbade any broadcasting or recording of individual numbers from the show, which limited their chance to gain popularity.

1925 was a major turning point in Kern’s career when he met Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he would entertain a lifelong friendship and collaboration. As a young man, Kern had been an easy companion with great charm and humor, but he became less outgoing in his middle years, sometimes difficult to work with: he once introduced himself to a producer by saying, “I hear you’re a son of a bitch. So am I.” He rarely collaborated with any one lyricist for long. With Hammerstein, however, he remained on close terms for the rest of his life. Their first show, written together with Harbach, was Sunny, which featured the song “Who (Stole My Heart Away)?” Marilyn Miller played the title role, as she had in Sally. The show ran for 517 performances on Broadway, and the following year ran for 363 performances in the West End, starring Binnie Hale and Jack Buchanan.

Show Boat

Because of the strong success of Sally and Sunny and consistent good results with his other shows, Ziegfeld was willing to gamble on Kern’s next project in 1927. Kern had been impressed by Edna Ferber’s novel Show Boat and wished to present a musical stage version. He persuaded Hammerstein to adapt it and Ziegfeld to produce it. The story, dealing with racism, marital strife and alcoholism, was unheard of in the escapist world of musical comedy. Despite his doubts, Ziegfeld spared no expense in staging the piece to give it its full epic grandeur. According to the theatre historian John Kenrick: “After the opening night audience filed out of the Ziegfeld Theatre in near silence, Ziegfeld thought his worst fears had been confirmed. He was pleasantly surprised when the next morning brought ecstatic reviews and long lines at the box office. In fact, Show Boat proved to be the most lasting accomplishment of Ziegfeld’s career – the only one of his shows that is regularly performed today.” The score is, arguably, Kern’s greatest and includes the well-known songs “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” as well as “Make Believe”, “You Are Love”, “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”, “Why Do I Love You”, all with lyrics by Hammerstein, and “Bill”, originally written for Oh, Lady! Lady!, with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse.[28] The show ran for 572 performances on Broadway and was also a success in London. Although Ferber’s novel was filmed unsuccessfully as a part-talkie in 1929 (using some songs from the Kern score), the musical itself was filmed twice, in 1936, and, with Technicolor, in 1951. In 1989, a stage version of the musical was presented on television for the first time, in a production from the Paper Mill Playhouse telecast by PBS on Great Performances.

While most Kern musicals have largely been forgotten, except for their songs, Show Boat remains well-remembered and frequently seen. It is a staple of stock productions and has been revived numerous times on Broadway and in London. A 1946 revival integrated choreography into the show, in the manner of a Rodgers and Hammerstein production, as did the 1994 Harold Prince–Susan Stroman revival, which was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning five, including best revival. It was the first musical to enter a major opera company’s repertory (New York City Opera, 1954), and the rediscovery of the 1927 score with Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations led to a large-scale EMI recording in 1987 and several opera-house productions.[ In 1941, the conductor Artur Rodziński wished to commission a symphonic suite from the score, but Kern considered himself a songwriter and not a symphonist. He never orchestrated his own scores, leaving that to musical a*sistants, principally Frank Saddler (until 1921) and Russell Bennett (from 1923).  In response to the commission, Kern oversaw an arrangement by Charles Miller and Emil Gerstenberger of numbers from the show into the orchestral work Scenario for Orchestra: Themes from Show Boat, premiered in 1941 by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Rodziński.

Kern’s last Broadway show in the 1920s was Sweet Adeline (1929), with a libretto by Hammerstein. It was a period piece, set in the Gay 90s, about a girl from Hoboken, New Jersey (near Kern’s childhood home), who becomes a Broadway star. Opening just before the stock market crash, it received rave reviews, but the elaborate, old-fashioned piece was a step back from the innovations in Show Boat, or even the Princess Theatre shows. In January 1929, at the height of the Jazz Age, and with Show Boat still playing on Broadway, Kern made news on both sides of the Atlantic for reasons wholly unconnected with music. He sold at auction, at New York’s Anderson Galleries, the collection of English and American literature that he had been building up for more than a decade. The collection, rich in inscribed first editions and manuscript material of eighteenth and nineteenth century authors, sold for a total of $1,729,462.50 – a record for a single-owner sale that stood for over fifty years. Among the books he sold were first or early editions of poems by Robert Burns and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and works by Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens, as well as manuscripts by Alexander Pope, John Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, Thomas Hardy and others.

First films and later shows

In 1929 Kern made his first trip to Hollywood to supervise the 1929 film version of Sally, one of the first “all-talking” Technicolor films. The following year, he was there a second time to work on Men of the Sky, released in 1931 without his songs, and a 1930 film version of Sunny. There was a public reaction against the early glut of film musicals after the advent of film sound; Hollywood released more than 100 musical films in 1930, but only 14 in 1931. Warner Bros. bought out Kern’s contract, and he returned to the stage. He collaborated with Harbach on the Broadway musical The Cat and the Fiddle (1931), about a composer and an opera singer, featuring the songs “She Didn’t Say Yes” and “The Night Was Made for Love”. It ran for 395 performances, a remarkable success for the Depression years, and transferred to London the following year. It was filmed in 1934 with Jeanette MacDonald.

Music in the Air (1932) was another Kern-Hammerstein collaboration and another show-biz plot, best remembered today for “The Song Is You” and “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star”. It was “undoubtedly an operetta”, set in the German countryside, but without the Ruritanian trimmings of the operettas of Kern’s youth. Roberta (1933) by Kern and Harbach included the songs “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “Let’s Begin and “Yesterdays” and featured, among others, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, George Murphy and Sydney Greenstreet all in the early stages of their careers. Kern’s Three Sisters (1934), was his last West End show, with a libretto by Hammerstein. The musical, depicting horse-racing, the circus, and class distinctions, was a failure, running for only two months. Its song “I Won’t Dance” was used in the film Roberta. Some British critics objected to American writers essaying a British story; James Agate, doyen of London theatre critics of the day, dismissed it as “American inanity,” though both Kern and Hammerstein were strong and knowledgeable Anglophiles. Kern’s last Broadway show (other than revivals) was Very Warm for May (1939), another show-biz story and another disappointment, although the score included the Kern and Hammerstein classic “All The Things You Are”.

Kern in Hollywood

In 1935, when musical films had become popular once again, thanks to Busby Berkeley, Kern returned to Hollywood, where he composed the scores to a dozen more films, although he also continued working on Broadway productions. He settled permanently in Hollywood in 1937. After suffering a heart attack in 1939, he was told by his doctors to concentrate on film scores, a less stressful task, as Hollywood songwriters were not as deeply involved with the production of their works as Broadway songwriters. This second phase of Kern’s Hollywood career had considerably greater artistic and commercial success than the first. With Hammerstein, he wrote songs for the film versions of his recent Broadway shows Music in the Air (1934), which starred Gloria Swanson in a rare singing role, and Sweet Adeline (1935). With Dorothy Fields, he composed the new music for I Dream Too Much (1935), a musical melodrama about the opera world, starring the Metropolitan Opera diva Lily Pons. Kern and Fields interspersed the opera numbers with their songs, including “the swinging ‘I Got Love,’ the lullaby ‘The Jockey on the Carousel,’ and the entrancing title song.”[45] Also with Fields, he wrote two new songs, “I Won’t Dance” and “Lovely to Look At”, for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film version of Roberta (1935), which was a hit. The show also included the song “I’ll Be Hard to Handle”. This was given a 1952 remake called Lovely to Look At.

Their next film, Swing Time (1936) included the song “The Way You Look Tonight”, which won the Academy Award in 1936 for the best song. Other songs in Swing Time include “A Fine Romance”, “Pick Yourself Up” and “Never Gonna Dance”. The Oxford Companion to the American Musical calls Swing Time “a strong candidate for the best of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals” and says that, although the screenplay is contrived, it “left plenty of room for dance and all of it was superb. … Although the movie is remembered as one of the great dance musicals, it also boasts one of the best film scores of the 1930s.” For the 1936 film version of Show Boat, Kern and Hammerstein wrote three new songs, including “I Have The Room Above Her” and “Ah Still Suits Me”. High, Wide, and Handsome (1937) was intentionally similar in plot and style to Show Boat, but it was a box-office failure. Kern songs were also used in the Cary Grant film, When You’re in Love (1937), and the first Abbott and Costello feature, One Night in the Tropics (1940). In 1940, Hammerstein wrote the lyric “The Last Time I Saw Paris”, in homage to the French capital, recently occupied by the Germans. Kern set it, the only time he set a pre-written lyric, and his only hit song not written as part of a musical. Originally a hit for Tony Martin and later for Noël Coward, the song was used in the film Lady Be Good (1941) and won Kern another Oscar for best song. Kern’s second and last symphonic work was his ‘Mark Twain Suite (1942).

In his last Hollywood musicals, Kern worked with several new and distinguished partners. With Johnny Mercer for You Were Never Lovelier (1942), he contributed “a set of memorable songs to entertain audiences until the plot came to its inevitable conclusion”.[48] The film starred Astaire and Rita Hayworth and included the song “I’m Old Fashioned”. Kern’s next collaboration was with Ira Gershwin on Cover Girl starring Hayworth and Gene Kelly (1944) for which Kern composed “Sure Thing”,”Put Me to the Test,” “Make Way for Tomorrow” (lyric by E. Y. Harburg), and the hit ballad “Long Ago (and Far Away)”.[49] For the Deanna Durbin Western musical, Can’t Help Singing (1944), with lyrics by Harburg, Kern “provided the best original score of Durbin’s career, mixing operetta and Broadway sounds in such songs as ‘Any Moment Now,’ ‘Swing Your Partner,’ ‘More and More,’ and the lilting title number.” “More and More” was nominated for an Oscar.[50]

Kern composed his last film score, Centennial Summer (1946) in which “the songs were as resplendent as the story and characters were mediocre. … Oscar Hammerstein, Leo Robin, and E. Y. Harburg contributed lyrics for Kern’s lovely music, resulting in the soulful ballad ‘All Through the Day,’ the rustic ‘Cinderella Sue,’ the cheerful ‘Up With the Lark,’ and the torchy ‘In Love in Vain.’” “All Through the Day” was another Oscar nominee. The music of Kern’s last two films is notable in the way it developed from his earlier work. Some of it was too advanced for the film companies; Kern’s biographer, Stephen Banfield, refers to “tonal experimentation … outlandish enharmonics” that the studios insisted on cutting. At the same time, in some ways his music came full circle: having in his youth helped to end the reigns of the waltz and operetta, he now composed three of his finest waltzes (“Can’t Help Singing”, “Californ-i-ay” and “Up With the Lark”), the last having a distinctly operetta-like character.

Personal life and death

Kern and his wife, Eva, often vacationed on their yacht Show Boat. He collected rare books and enjoyed betting on horses. At the time of Kern’s death, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was filming a fictionalized version of his life, Till the Clouds Roll By, which was released in 1946 starring Robert Walker as Kern. In the film, Kern’s songs are sung by Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, June Allyson, Lena Horne, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, among others, and Gower Champion and Cyd Charisse appear as dancers. Many of the biographical facts are fictionalized.

In the fall of 1945, Kern returned to New York City to oversee auditions for a new revival of Show Boat, and began to work on the score for what would become the musical Annie Get Your Gun, to be produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein. On November 5, 1945, at 60 years of age, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking at the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street. Identifiable only by his ASCAP card, Kern was initially taken to the indigent ward at City Hospital, later being transferred to Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. Hammerstein was at his side when Kern’s breathing stopped. Hammerstein hummed or sang the song “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star” from Music in the Air (a personal favorite of the composer’s) into Kern’s ear. Receiving no response, Hammerstein realized Kern had died. Rodgers and Hammerstein then a*signed the task of writing the score for Annie Get Your Gun to the veteran Broadway composer Irving Berlin.

Kern is interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. His daughter, Betty Jane (1913–1996) married Artie Shaw in 1942 and later Jack Cummings. Kern’s wife eventually remarried, to a singer named George Byron.

Awards

Jerome Kern was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, and won twice. Seven nominations were for Best Original Song; these included a posthumous nomination in each of 1945 and 1946. One nomination was in 1945 for Best Original Music Score. Kern was not eligible for any Tony Awards, which were not created until 1947. In 1976, Very Good Eddie was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Revival, and the director and actors received various Tony, Drama Desk and other awards and nominations. Elisabeth Welsh was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood in 1986, and Show Boat received Tony nominations in both 1983 and 1995, winning for best revival in 1995 (among numerous other awards and nominations), and won the Laurence Olivier Award for best revival in 2008. In 1986, Big Deal was nominated for the Tony for best musical, among other awards, and Bob Fosse won as best choreographer. In 2000, Swing!, featuring Kern’s “I Won’t Dance” was nominated for the Tony for Best Musical, among others. In 2002, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, featuring Kern’s “All in Fun”, won the Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. In 2004, Never Gonna Dance received two Tony nominations.

Kern was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame posthumously, in 1970. In 1985, the U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp (Scott #2110, 22¢), with an illustration of Kern holding sheet music.

Academy Award for Best Original Song

• 1935 – Nominated for “Lovely to Look At” (lyrics by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh) from Roberta
• 1936 – Won for “The Way You Look Tonight” (lyrics by Dorothy Fields) from Swing Time
• 1941 – Won for “The Last Time I Saw Paris” (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from Lady Be Good
• 1942 – Nominated for “Dearly Beloved” (lyrics by Johnny Mercer) from You Were Never Lovelier.
• 1944 – Nominated for “Long Ago (and Far Away)” (lyrics by Ira Gershwin) from Cover Girl
• 1945 – Posthumously nominated for “More and More” (lyrics by E. Y. Harburg) from Can’t Help Singing
• 1946 – Posthumously nominated for “All Through the Day” (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from Centennial Summer.

Academy Award for Best Original Music Score

• 1945 – Posthumously nominated for Can’t Help Singing (with H. J. Salter).

Selected works

Note: All shows listed are musical comedies for which Kern was the sole composer unless otherwise specified.

During his first phase of work (1904–1911), Kern wrote songs for 22 Broadway productions, including songs interpolated into British musicals or featured in revues (sometimes writing lyrics as well as music), and he occasionally co-wrote musicals with one or two other composers. During visits to London beginning in 1905, he also composed songs that were first performed in several London shows. The following are some of the most notable such shows from this period:^[3]

• Mr. Wix of Wickham (1904) – contributed most of the songs for this musical’s New York production
• The Catch of the Season (1905) – contributor to this Seymour Hicks musical’s New York production
• The Earl and the Girl (1905) – contributor of music and lyrics to this Hicks and Ivan Caryll musical’s American productions
• The Little Cherub (1906) – contributor to this Caryll and Owen Hall musical’s New York production
• The Rich Mr. Hoggenheimer (1906) – contributor of eight songs
• The Beauty of Bath (1906) – contributor to the original London production of this Hicks musical, with lyricist P. G. Wodehouse
• The Orchid (1907) – contributor to this Caryll and Lionel Monckton musical’s New York production
• The Girls of Gottenberg (1908) – contributor of “I Can’t Say That You’re The Only One” to this Caryll and Monckton musical’s New York production
• Fluffy Ruffles (1908) – co-composer for eight out of ten songs
• The Dollar Princess (1909) – contributor of songs for American production
• Our Miss Gibbs (1910) – contributor of four songs and some lyrics to this Caryll and Monckton musical’s New York production
• La Belle Paree (1911) – revue – co-composer for seven songs; the Broadway debut of Al Jolson

From 1912 to 1924, the more-experienced Kern began to work on dramatically concerned shows, including incidental music for plays, and, for the first time since his college show Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he wrote musicals as the sole composer. His regular lyricist collaborators for his more than 30 shows during this period were Bolton, Wodehouse, Caldwell, Harry B. Smith and Howard Dietz. Some of his most notable shows during this very productive period were as follows:

During the last phase of his theatrical composing career, Kern continued to work with his previous collaborators but also met Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, with whom Kern wrote his most lasting, memorable, and well-known works. The most successful of these are as follows:

• Sunny (1925) – a follow-up to Sally and almost as big a hit; first collaboration with Hammerstein and Harbach
• Criss Cross (1926) – with Harbach
• Show Boat (1927; revived frequently) – with Hammerstein
• Blue Eyes (1928; London)
• Sweet Adeline (1929) – with Hammerstein
• The Cat and the Fiddle (1931) – Kern collaborated with Harbach the music, book and lyrics
• Music in the Air (1932; revived in 1951) – composer and co-director with Hammerstein
• Roberta (1933) – with Harbach (remade as Lovely to Look At (1952))^[62]
• Three Sisters (1934; London)
• Mamba’s Daughters (1939; revived in 1940) – play – featured songwriter
• Very Warm for May (1939) – with Hammerstein; Kern’s last stage musical, and a failure

In addition to revivals of his most popular shows, Kern’s music has been posthumously featured in a variety of revues, musicals and concerts on and off Broadway.

• Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood (1986) – Broadway revue consisting solely of Kern songs with lyrics by twelve different writers
• Big Deal (1986) – a Bob Fosse dance revue; includes “Pick Yourself Up”
• Something Wonderful (1995) – concert celebrating Oscar Hammerstein II‘s 100th birthday – featured composer
• Dream (1997) – revue – includes “You Were Never Lovelier”, “I’m Old Fashioned”, and “Dearly Beloved”
• Swing! (1999) – dance revue; includes “I Won’t Dance”
• Elaine Stritch at Liberty (2002) – one-woman show; included “All In Fun”
• Never Gonna Dance (2003) – musical consisting solely of songs composed by Kern, with lyrics by nine different writers
• Jerome Kern: All the Things You Are (2008) – K T Sullivan’s revue biography of Kern featuring Kern’s songs
• Come Fly Away – a Twyla Tharp dance revue; includes “Pick Yourself Up”

George David Weiss (April 9, 1921 – August 23, 2010) was an American songwriter and arranger, who had been a president of the Songwriters Guild of America.

Career

Weiss was born in a Jewish family, and originally planned a career as a lawyer or accountant, but out of a love for music he was led to attend the Juilliard School of Music,  developing his skills in writing and arranging. After leaving school, he became an arranger for such big bands as those of Stan Kenton, Vincent Lopez, and Johnny Richards.

He was a very prolific songwriter during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, with many of his songs attaining high rankings on the charts.  Although he worked with many collaborators, the largest proportion of his well-known songs were written with Bennie Benjamin.

Weiss contributed to a number of film scores: Murder, Inc. (1960), Gidget Goes to Rome (1963), Mediterranean Holiday (1964), and Mademoiselle (1966).

Collaborations on three Broadway musicals were among his compositions. Mr. Wonderful was written in 1956 with Jerry Bock and Larry Holofcener. The Broadway production starred Sammy Davis, Jr. First Impressions was based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was written in 1959, with Bo Goldman and Glenn Paxton. Maggie Flynn was written in 1968, with Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore. It was set in New York during the American Civil War, and the Broadway production starred Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy. In addition, Weiss and Will Severin composed the family musical, A Tale of Cinderella, which was first presented in December 1994 at the Theater Institute in Troy, New York, and filmed for presentation on PBS.

Weiss wrote the lyrics for the Jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland”, which became a huge hit for Ella Fitzgerald. In 1984 Weiss was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

In 2006 a court settlement was reached regarding royalties for the worldwide rights of the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” best known as a #1 hit for The Tokens, which was based on a 1939 song, “Mbube”, by the South African musician, Solomon Linda. The settlement, which operates worldwide and in settlement of all claims, encompasses the following:

1. Linda’s heirs will receive payment for past uses of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and an entitlement to future royalties.
2. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is acknowledged as derived from “Mbube”.
3. Solomon Linda is acknowledged as a co-composer of the song and will be designated as such.
4. A trust will be formed to administer the heirs’ copyright and to receive on their behalf the payments due.

Death

Weiss died at age 89 on August 23, 2010, of natural causes at his home in Oldwick, New Jersey.

John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne (born 3 December 1948)[2] is an English singer, songwriter, and television personality. He rose to prominence during the 1970s as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath, during which period he adopted the nickname “Prince of Darkness”.

Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979 due to alcohol and drug problems, but went on to have a successful solo career, releasing 12 studio albums, the first seven of which received multi-platinum certifications in the US. Osbourne has since reunited with Black Sabbath on several occasions. He rejoined in 1997 and helped record the group’s final studio album, 13 (2013), before they embarked on a farewell tour that ended with a February 2017 performance in their hometown, Birmingham, England. His longevity and success have earned him the informal title “Godfather of Metal”.

Osbourne’s total album sales from his years in Black Sabbath, combined with his solo work, is over 100 million. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Black Sabbath and into the UK Music Hall of Fame as a solo artist and as a member of the band. He has been honoured with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Birmingham Walk of Stars. At the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards, he received the Global Icon Award. In 2015, Osbourne received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

In the early 2000s, Osbourne became a reality television star, appearing as himself in the MTV reality show The Osbournes alongside wife and manager Sharon and two of their three children, Kelly and Jack. He co-stars with Jack and Kelly in the television series Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour. The show’s third season debuted in June 2018.

Early life

Osbourne was born in the Aston area of Birmingham, England.[2] His mother, Lilian (née Unitt; 1916–2001), was a non-observant Catholic who worked days at a factory. His father, John Thomas “Jack” Osbourne (1915–1977), worked night shifts as a toolmaker at the General Electric Company. Osbourne has three older sisters, Jean, Iris, and Gillian, and two younger brothers, Paul and Tony. The family lived in a small two-bedroom home at 14 Lodge Road in Aston. Osbourne has had the nickname “Ozzy” since primary school. Osbourne dealt with dyslexia at school. At the age of 11, he suffered sexual abuse from school bullies. Drawn to the stage, he took part in school plays such as Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and HMS Pinafore. He possesses a “hesitant” Brummie accent.

Upon hearing their first hit single at age 14, Osbourne became a fan of the Beatles. He credits their 1963 song “She Loves You” for inspiring him to become a musician. He said in the 2011 documentary God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, “I knew I was going to be a rock star the rest of my life.” Osbourne left school at 15 and was employed as a construction site labourer, trainee plumber, apprentice toolmaker, car factory horn-tuner, and abattoir worker. He attempted burglary, stealing a television (which fell on him during his getaway and had to be abandoned), a handful of baby clothes (originally thought to be adult clothes as it was too dark to see when he committed the burglary, and which were stolen to sell to people at a pub), and some T-shirts. He spent six weeks in Winson Green Prison when he was unable to pay a fine after being convicted of burgling a clothes shop; to teach his son a lesson, his father refused to pay the fine.

Career

Black Sabbath

In late 1967, Geezer Butler formed his first band, Rare Breed, and soon recruited Osbourne to serve as vocalist.  The band played two shows, then broke up. Osbourne and Butler reunited in Polka Tulk Blues, along with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward, whose band Mythology had recently broken up. They renamed themselves Earth, but after being accidentally booked for a show instead of a different band with the same name, they decided to change their name again. They finally settled on the name Black Sabbath in August 1969, based on the film of the same title. The band had noticed how people enjoyed being frightened; inspired, the band decided to play a heavy blues style of music laced with gloomy sounds and lyrics. While recording their first album, Butler read an occult book and woke up seeing a dark figure at the end of his bed. Butler told Osbourne about it and together they wrote the lyrics to “Black Sabbath”, their first song in a darker vein.

Despite only a modest investment from their US record label Warner Bros. Records, Black Sabbath met with swift and enduring success. Built around Tony Iommi’s guitar riffs, Geezer Butler’s lyrics, Bill Ward’s dark tempo drumbeats, and topped by Osbourne’s eerie vocals, early records such as their debut album Black Sabbath and Paranoid sold huge numbers, as well as getting considerable airplay. Osbourne recalls a band lament, “in those days, the band wasn’t very popular with the women”.

At about this time, Osbourne first met his future wife, Sharon Arden. After the unexpected success of their first album, Black Sabbath were considering her father, Don Arden, as their new manager, and Sharon was at that time working as Don’s receptionist. Osbourne admits he was attracted to her immediately but a*sumed that “she probably thought I was a lunatic”.  Osbourne said years later that the best thing about eventually choosing Don Arden as manager was that he got to see Sharon regularly, though their relationship was strictly professional at that point.

Just five months after the release of Paranoid, the band released Master of Reality. The album reached the top ten in both the United States and UK, and was certified gold in less than two months. In the 1980s it received platinum certification  and went Double Platinum in the early 21st century. Reviews of the album were unfavourable. Lester Bangs of Rolling Stone famously dismissed Master of Reality as “naïve, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel”, although the very same magazine would later place the album at number 298 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, compiled in 2003. Black Sabbath’s Volume 4 was released in September 1972. Critics were again dismissive of the album, yet it achieved gold status in less than a month. It was the band’s fourth consecutive release to sell one million copies in the United States.

In November 1973, Black Sabbath released the critically acclaimed Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. For the first time, the band received favourable reviews in the mainstream press. Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone called the album “an extraordinarily gripping affair”, and “nothing less than a complete success”. Decades later, AllMusic’s Eduardo Rivadavia called the album a “masterpiece, essential to any heavy metal collection”, while also claiming the band displayed “a newfound sense of finesse and maturity”. The album marked the band’s fifth consecutive platinum selling album in the US. Sabotage was released in July 1975. Again there were favourable reviews. Rolling Stone stated, “Sabotage is not only Black Sabbath’s best record since Paranoid, it might be their best ever.” In a retrospective review, AllMusic was less favourable, noting that “the magical chemistry that made such albums as Paranoid and Volume 4 so special was beginning to disintegrate”. Technical Ecstasy, released on 25 September 1976, was also met with mixed reviews. AllMusic gives the album two stars, and notes that the band was “unravelling at an alarming rate”.

Dismissal

In 1978, Osbourne left the band for three months to pursue a solo project he called Blizzard of Ozz, a title which had been suggested by his father. Three members of the band Necromandus, who had supported Sabbath in Birmingham when they were called Earth, backed Osbourne in the studio and briefly became the first incarnation of his solo band.

At the request of the other members, Osbourne rejoined Sabbath. The band spent five months at Sounds Interchange Studios in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, writing and recording what would become Never Say Die! “It took quite a long time”, Iommi said. “We were getting really drugged out, doing a lot of dope. We’d go down to the sessions, and have to pack up because we were too stoned; we’d have to stop. Nobody could get anything right, we were all over the place, everybody’s playing a different thing. We’d go back and sleep it off, and try again the next day.”

Touring in support of Never Say Die! began in May 1978 with openers Van Halen. Reviewers called Sabbath’s performance “tired and uninspired”, in stark contrast to the “youthful” performance of Van Halen, who were touring the world for the first time. The band filmed a performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in June 1978, released on video as Never Say Die. The final show of the tour – and Osbourne’s last appearance with the band until 1985 – was in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 11 December.

In 1979, back in the studio, tension and conflict arose between the members. Osbourne recalls being asked to record his vocals over and over, and tracks being manipulated endlessly by Iommi. This was a point of contention between Osbourne and Iommi. At Iommi’s insistence, and with the support of Butler and Ward, Osbourne was fired on 27 April 1979. The reasons provided to him were that he was unreliable and had excessive substance abuse issues compared to the other members. Osbourne claims his drug use and alcohol consumption at that time was neither better nor worse than that of the other members.

The band replaced him with former Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio. “I was not, and never will be, Ozzy Osbourne,” Dio noted. “He was the vocalist and songwriter in that era who helped create that band and make it what it was, and what it is in its classic form.”

Conflict had existed between Iommi and Osbourne from the beginning. When responding to a 1969 flyer reading “Ozzy Zig Needs Gig- has own PA”  posted in a record store, Iommi and Ward arrived at the listed address to speak with Ozzy Zig. When Iommi saw Osbourne emerge from another room of the house, he left upon discovering it was the same “pest” he knew from growing up, as he knew of and disliked Osbourne from back in their school days.  Iommi had reportedly “punched out” Osbourne numerous times over the years when the singer’s drunken antics had become too much to take. Iommi recalls one incident in the early 1970s in which Osbourne and Butler were fighting in a hotel room. Iommi pulled Osbourne off Butler in an attempt to break up the drunken fight, and the vocalist proceeded to turn around and take a wild swing at him. Iommi responded by knocking Osbourne unconscious with one punch to the jaw.

Solo career

On leaving Sabbath, Osbourne recalled, “I’d got £96,000 for my share of the name, so I’d just locked myself away and spent three months doing coke and booze. My thinking was, ‘This is my last party, because after this I’m going back to Birmingham and the dole.”[41] However, Don Arden signed him to Jet Records with the aim of recording new material. Arden dispatched his daughter Sharon to Los Angeles to “look after Ozzy’s needs, whatever they were”, to protect his investment.[42] Initially, Arden hoped Osbourne would return to Sabbath (who he was personally managing at that time), and later attempted to convince the singer to name his new band “Son of Sabbath”, which Osbourne hated.[10] Sharon attempted to convince Osbourne to form a supergroup with guitarist Gary Moore.[10] “When I lived in Los Angeles,” Moore recalled, “[Moore’s band] G-Force helped him to audition musicians. If drummers were trying out, I played guitar, and if a bassist came along, my drummer would help out. We felt sorry for him, basically. He was always hovering around trying to get me to join, and I wasn’t having any of it.”

In late 1979, under the management of the Ardens, Osbourne formed the Blizzard of Ozz, featuring drummer Lee Kerslake (of Uriah Heep), bassist-lyricist Bob Daisley (of Rainbow and later Uriah Heep), keyboardist Don Airey (of Rainbow, and later Deep Purple), and guitarist Randy Rhoads (of Quiet Riot). The record company would eventually title the group’s debut album Blizzard of Ozz, credited simply to Osbourne, thus commencing his solo career. Cowritten with Daisley and Rhoads, it brought Osbourne considerable success on his first solo effort. Though it is generally accepted that Osbourne and Rhoads started the band, Daisley later claimed that he and Osbourne formed the band in England before Rhoads officially joined.

Blizzard of Ozz is one of the few albums amongst the 100 best-sellers of the 1980s to have achieved multi-platinum status without the benefit of a top-40 single. As of August 1997, it had achieved quadruple platinum status, according to RIAA. “I envied Ozzy’s career…” remarked former Sabbath drummer Bill Ward. “He seemed to be coming around from whatever it was that he’d gone through and he seemed to be on his way again; making records and stuff… I envied it because I wanted that… I was bitter. And I had a thoroughly miserable time.”

Osbourne’s second album, Diary of a Madman, featured more songs co-written with Lee Kerslake. For his work on this album and Blizzard of Ozz, Rhoads was ranked the 85th-greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003. This album is known for the singles “Over the Mountain” and “Flying High Again” and, as Osbourne explains in his autobiography, is his personal favourite. Tommy Aldridge and Rudy Sarzo soon replaced Kerslake and Daisley. Aldridge had been Osbourne’s original choice for drummer, but a commitment to Gary Moore had made him unavailable. Sarzo had played in Quiet Riot with Rhoads, who recommended him for the position.

On 19 March 1982, the band were in Florida for the Diary of a Madman tour, and a week away from playing Madison Square Garden in New York City. A light aircraft piloted by Andrew Aycock (the band’s tour bus driver) – carrying Rhoads and Rachel Youngblood, the band’s costume and make-up designer – crashed while performing low passes over the band’s tour bus. The left wing of the aircraft clipped the bus, causing the plane to graze a tree and crash into the garage of a nearby mansion, killing Rhoads, Aycock, and Youngblood. The crash was ruled the result of “poor judgement by the pilot in buzzing the bus and misjudging clearance of obstacles”. Experiencing firsthand the horrific death of his close friend and bandmate, Osbourne fell into a deep depression. The tour was cancelled for two weeks while Osbourne, Sharon, and Aldridge returned to Los Angeles to take stock while Sarzo remained in Florida with family.

Gary Moore was the first approached to replace Rhoads, but refused. With a two-week deadline to find a new guitarist and resume the tour, Robert Sarzo, brother of the band’s bassist Rudy Sarzo, was chosen to replace Rhoads. However, former Gillan guitarist Bernie Tormé had flown to California from England with the promise from Jet Records that he had the job. Once Sharon realized that Jet Records had already paid Tormé an advance, he was reluctantly hired instead of Sarzo. The tour resumed on 1 April 1982, but Tormé’s blues-based style was unpopular with fans. After a handful of shows he informed Sharon that he would be returning to England to continue work on a solo album he had begun before coming to America. At an audition in a hotel room, Osbourne selected Night Ranger’s Brad Gillis to finish the tour. The tour culminated in the release of the 1982 live album Speak of the Devil, recorded at the Ritz in New York City. A live tribute album for Rhoads was also later released. Despite the difficulties, Osbourne moved on after Rhoads’ death. Speak of the Devil, known in the United Kingdom as Talk of the Devil, was originally planned to consist of live recordings from 1981, primarily from Osbourne’s solo work. Under contract to produce a live album, it ended up consisting entirely of Sabbath covers recorded with Gillis, Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge.

In 1982 Osbourne appeared as lead vocalist on the Was (Not Was) pop dance track “Shake Your Head (Let’s Go to Bed)”. Remixed and rereleased in the early 1990s for a Was (Not Was) hits album in Europe, it reached number four on the UK Singles Chart. In 1983, Jake E. Lee, formerly of Ratt and Rough Cutt, joined Osbourne to record Bark at the Moon. The album, cowritten with Daisley, featured Aldridge and former Rainbow keyboard player Don Airey. The album contains the fan favourite “Bark at the Moon”. The music video for “Bark at the Moon” was partially filmed at the Holloway Sanitorium outside London, England. Within weeks the album became certified gold. It has sold three million copies in the US. 1986’s The Ultimate Sin followed (with bassist Phil Soussan and drummer Randy Castillo), and touring behind both albums with former Uriah Heep keyboardist John Sinclair joining prior to the Ultimate Sin tour. At the time of its release, The Ultimate Sin was Osbourne’s highest charting studio album. The RIAA awarded the album Platinum status on 14 May 1986, soon after its release; it was awarded Double Platinum status on 26 October 1994.

Jake E. Lee and Osbourne parted ways in 1987. Osbourne continued to struggle with chemical dependency. That year he commemorated the fifth anniversary of Rhoads’ death with Tribute, a collection of live recordings from 1981. In 1988 Osbourne appeared in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years and told the director Penelope Spheeris that “sobriety f*cking sucks”. Meanwhile, Osbourne found Zakk Wylde, who was the most enduring replacement for Rhoads to date. Together they recorded No Rest for the Wicked with Castillo on drums, Sinclair on keyboards, and Daisley co-writing lyrics and playing bass. The subsequent tour saw Osbourne reunited with erstwhile Black Sabbath bandmate Geezer Butler on bass. A live EP (entitled Just Say Ozzy) featuring Geezer was released two years later. In 1988, Osbourne performed on the rock ballad “Close My Eyes Forever”, a duet with Lita Ford, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1989 Osbourne performed at the Moscow Music Peace Festival.

Successful through the 1980s, Osbourne sustained commercial success into the 1990s, starting with 1991’s No More Tears, featuring “Mama, I’m Coming Home”. The album enjoyed much radio and MTV exposure. It also initiated a practice of bringing in outside composers to help pen Osbourne’s solo material instead of relying on his recording ensemble. The album was mixed by veteran rock producer Michael Wagener. Osbourne was awarded a Grammy Award for the track “I Don’t Want to Change the World” from Live & Loud, for Best Metal Performance of 1994. Wagener also mixed the live album Live & Loud released on 28 June 1993. Intended to be Osbourne’s final album, it went platinum four times over, and ranked at number 10 on that year’s Billboard rock charts. At this point Osbourne expressed his fatigue with touring, and proclaimed his “retirement tour” (which was to be short-lived). It was called “No More Tours”, a pun on No More Tears. Alice in Chains’ Mike Inez took over on bass and Kevin Jones played keyboards as Sinclair was touring with the Cult.

Osbourne’s entire CD catalogue was remastered and reissued in 1995. In 1995 Osbourne released Ozzmosis and returned to touring, dubbing his concert performances “The Retirement Sucks Tour”. The album reached number 4 on the US Billboard 200. The RIAA certified the album gold and platinum in that same year, and double platinum in April 1999.

The line-up on Ozzmosis was Wylde, Butler (who had just quit Black Sabbath again) and former Bad English, Steve Vai and Hardline drummer Deen Castronovo, who later joined Journey. Keyboards were played by Rick Wakeman and producer Michael Beinhorn. The tour maintained Butler and Castronovo and saw Sinclair return, but a major line-up change was the introduction of former David Lee Roth guitarist Joe Holmes. Wylde was considering an offer to join Guns N’ Roses. Unable to wait for a decision on Wylde’s departure, Osbourne replaced him. In early 1996, Butler and Castronovo left. Inez and Randy Castillo (Lita Ford, Mötley Crüe) filled in. Ultimately, Faith No More’s Mike Bordin and former Suicidal Tendencies and future Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo joined on drums and bass respectively. A greatest hits package, The Ozzman Cometh, was issued in 1997.

Ozzfest

Osbourne’s biggest financial success of the 1990s was a venture named Ozzfest, created and managed by his wife/manager Sharon and a*sisted by his son Jack. The first Ozzfest was held in Phoenix, Arizona on 25 October 1996 and in Devore, California on 26 October. Ozzfest was an instant hit with metal fans, helping many up-and-coming groups who were featured there to broad exposure and commercial success. Some acts shared the bill with a reformed Black Sabbath during the 1997 Ozzfest tour, beginning in West Palm Beach, Florida. Osbourne reunited with the original members of Sabbath in 1997 and has performed periodically with them since.

Since its beginning, five million people have attended Ozzfest which has grossed over US$100 million. The festival helped promote many new hard rock and heavy metal acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ozzfest helped Osbourne to become the first hard rock and heavy metal star to hit $50 million in merchandise sales. In 2005, Osbourne and his wife Sharon starred in an MTV competition reality show entitled “Battle for Ozzfest”. A number of yet unsigned bands send one member to compete in a challenge to win a spot on the 2005 Ozzfest and a possible recording contract. Shortly after Ozzfest 2005, Osbourne announced that he will no longer headline Ozzfest. Although he announced his retirement from Ozzfest, Osbourne came back headlining the tour. In 2006 Osbourne closed the event for just over half the concerts, leaving the others to be closed by System of a Down. He also played the closing act for the second stage at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on 1 July as well as Randalls Island, New York on 29 July. After the concert in Bristol, Virginia, Osbourne announced he would return for another year of Ozzfest in 2007.

Tickets for the 2007 tour were offered to fans free of charge, which led to some controversy. In 2008, Ozzfest was reduced to a one-day event in Dallas, where Osbourne played, along with Metallica and King Diamond. In 2010, Osbourne appeared as the headliner closing the show after opening acts Halford and Mötley Crüe. The tour, though small (only six US venues and one UK venue were played), generated rave reviews.

2000s

Down to Earth, Osbourne’s first album of new studio material in six years, was released on 16 October 2001. A live album, Live at Budokan, followed in 2002. Down to Earth, which achieved platinum status in 2003, featured the single “Dreamer”, a song which peaked at number 10 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks. In June 2002, Osbourne was invited to participate in the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, performing the Black Sabbath anthem “Paranoid” at the Party at the Palace concert in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. In 2003, Osbourne recruited former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, though his time with Osbourne would be short. Interestingly, Osbourne’s former bassist Robert Trujillo replaced Newsted in Metallica during this same period.

On 8 December 2003, Osbourne was rushed into emergency surgery at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, England when he had an accident with his quad bike on his estate in Jordans, Buckinghamshire. Osbourne broke his collar bone, eight ribs, and a neck vertebra.  An operation was performed to lift the collarbone, which was believed to be resting on a major artery and interrupting blood flow to the arm. Sharon later revealed that Osbourne had stopped breathing following the crash and was resuscitated by Osbourne’s then personal bodyguard, Sam Ruston. While in hospital, Osbourne achieved his first ever UK number one single, a duet of the Black Sabbath ballad, “Changes” with daughter Kelly. In doing so, he broke the record of the longest period between an artist’s first UK chart appearance (with Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, number four in August 1970) and their first number one hit: a gap of 33 years. Since the quad accident, apart from some short-term memory problems, he fully recovered and headlined the 2004 Ozzfest, in the reunited Black Sabbath.

In March 2005, Osbourne released a box set called Prince of Darkness. The first and second discs are collections of live performances, B-sides, demos and singles. The third disc contained duets and other odd tracks with other artists, including “Born to Be Wild” with Miss Piggy. The fourth disc, is entirely new material where Osbourne covers his favourite songs by his biggest influences and favourite bands, including the Beatles, John Lennon, David Bowie and others. In November 2005, Osbourne released the covers album Under Cover, featuring 10 songs from the fourth disc of Prince of Darkness and 3 more songs. Osbourne’s band for this album included Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Chris Wyse and Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin.

Osbourne also helped judge the 2005 UK series of the X-Factor where his wife Sharon was one of the main judges. In March 2006, he said that he hoped to release a new studio album soon with longtime on-off guitarist, Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society. In October 2006, it was announced that Tony Iommi, Ronnie James Dio, Vinny Appice, and Geezer Butler would be touring together again, though not as Black Sabbath, but under the moniker Heaven and Hell (the title of Dio’s first Black Sabbath album). The response to the news on Osbourne’s website was that Osbourne wished Tony and Ronnie well and that there is only one Sabbath. Osbourne’s album, titled Black Rain, was released on 22 May 2007. Osbourne’s first new studio album in almost six years, it featured a more serious tone than previous albums. “I thought I’d never write again without any stimulation… But you know what? Instead of picking up the bottle I just got honest and said, ‘I don’t want life to go [to pieces]’”, Osbourne stated to Billboard magazine.

Osbourne revealed in July 2009 that he was currently seeking a new guitar player. While he states that he has not fallen out with Zakk Wylde, he said he felt his songs were beginning to sound like Black Label Society and fancied a change. In August 2009, Osbourne performed at the gaming festival BlizzCon with a new guitarist in his line-up Gus G. Osbourne also provided his voice and likeness to the video game Brütal Legend character The Guardian of Metal. In November, Slash featured Osbourne on vocals in his single “Crucify The Dead”, and Osbourne with wife Sharon were guest hosts on WWE Raw. In December, Osbourne announced he would be releasing a new album titled Soul Sucka with Gus G, Tommy Clufetos on drums, and Blasko on bass.[80] Negative fan feedback was brought to Osbourne’s attention regarding the album title. In respect of fan opinion, on 29 March Osbourne announced his album would be renamed Scream.

2010s

On 13 April 2010, Osbourne announced the release date for Scream would be 15 June 2010. The release date was later changed to a week later. A single from the album, “Let Me Hear You Scream”, debuted on 14 April 2010 episode of CSI: NY. The song spent eight weeks on the Billboard Rock Songs chart, peaking at No. 7.

On 9 August 2010, Osbourne announced that the second single from the album would be “Life Won’t Wait” and the video for the song would be directed by his son Jack. When asked of his opinions on Scream in an interview, Osbourne announced that he is “already thinking about the next album”. Osbourne’s current drummer, Tommy Clufetos, has reflected this sentiment, saying that “We are already coming up with new ideas backstage, in the hotel rooms and at soundcheck and have a bunch of ideas recorded”.[84] In October 2014, Osbourne released Memoirs of a Madman, a collection celebrating his entire solo career. A CD version contained 17 singles from across his career, never before compiled together. The DVD version contained music videos, live performances, and interviews.

In August 2015, Epic Records president Sylvia Rhone confirmed with Billboard that Osbourne was working on another studio album;  in September 2019, Osbourne announced he had finished the album in four weeks following his collaboration with Post Malone. In April 2017, it was announced that guitarist Zakk Wylde would reunite with Osbourne for a summer tour to mark the 30th anniversary of their first collaboration on 1988’s No Rest for the Wicked. The first show of the tour took place on 14 July at the Rock USA Festival in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

On 6 November 2017, Ozzy was announced as the headline act for the Sunday of the 2018 Download Festival held annually at Donington Park in Leicestershire, England. Having previously graced the main stage in previous years fronting Black Sabbath, this will be his first ever Download headline solo appearance. The Download Festival set comes as part of Osbourne’s final world tour announcement that morning.

On 6 February 2018, Osbourne announced that he would embark on his final world tour dubbed No More Tours II, a reference to his 1992 tour of the same name, with support from Stone Sour on the North American portion of the tour. He later insisted that he would not retire, “It’s ‘No More Tours’, so I’m just not doing world tours anymore. I’m still going to be doing gigs, but I’m not going on tour for six months at a time anymore. I’d like to spend some time at home.”

On 6 September 2019, Osbourne featured on the song “Take What You Want” by Post Malone. The song would peak on the Billboard Hot 100 charts at number 8, making it Osbourne’s first US Top 10 single in 30 years since he was featured on Lita Ford’s “Close My Eyes Forever”.

2020s

On 21 February 2020, Osbourne released his first solo album in almost ten years, Ordinary Man, which received positive reviews from music critics and debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart. A few days after the release, Osbourne told IHeartRadio that he wanted to make another album with Andrew Watt, the main producer of Ordinary Man. One week after the release of the album, an 8-bit video game dedicated to Osbourne was released, called Legend of Ozzy. Osbourne has started working on his follow up album, once again with Andrew Watt.

Black Sabbath reunion

It was announced on 11 November 2011 during a news conference at the Whisky a Go Go club on West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip that the original Black Sabbath line up of Ozzy, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward would reunite for a world tour and new album, to be produced by Rick Rubin. Bill Ward dropped out for contractual reasons, but the project continued with Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk stepping in for Ward on drums. On 21 May 2012, Black Sabbath played at the O2 Academy in their hometown Birmingham, their first concert since their reunion. The album, entitled 13, was released 11 June 2013, and topped both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200.

In January 2016, the band began a farewell tour, titled “The End”, signifying the final performances of Black Sabbath. The final shows of The End tour took place at the Genting Arena in their home city of Birmingham, England on 2 and 4 February 2017, with Tommy Clufetos replacing Bill Ward as the drummer for the final show.

Other production work

Osbourne achieved greater celebrity status via his own brand of reality television. The Osbournes, a series featuring the domestic life of Osbourne and his family (wife Sharon, children Jack and Kelly, occasional appearances from his son Louis, but eldest daughter Aimee did not participate). The program became one of MTV’s greatest hits. It premiered on 5 March 2002, and the final episode aired 21 March 2005.

The success of The Osbournes led Osbourne and the rest of his family to host the 30th Annual American Music Awards in January 2003. The night was marked with constant “bleeping” due to some of the lewd and raunchy remarks made by Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Presenter Patricia Heaton walked out midway in disgust. On 20 February 2008, Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly and Jack Osbourne hosted the 2008 BRIT Awards held at Earls Court, London. Ozzy appeared in a TV commercial for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! which began airing in the UK in February 2006. Ozzy appears in a commercial for the online video game World of Warcraft. He was also featured in the music video game Guitar Hero World Tour as a playable character. He becomes unlocked upon completing “Mr. Crowley” and “Crazy Train” in the vocalist career.

Osbourne published an autobiography in October 2009, titled I Am Ozzy. Osbourne says ghost writer Chris Ayres told the singer he has enough material for a second book. A movie adaptation of I Am Ozzy is also in the works, and Osbourne says he hopes “an unknown guy from England” will get the role over an established actor, while Sharon stated she would choose established English actress Carey Mulligan to play her.

A documentary film about Osbourne’s life and career, entitled God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, premiered in April 2011 at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released on DVD in November 2011. The film was produced by Osbourne’s son Jack. On 15 May 2013 Osbourne, along with the current members of Black Sabbath, appeared in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled “Skin in the Game”. The History Channel premiered a comedy reality television series starring Ozzy Osbourne and his son Jack Osbourne on 24 July 2016 named Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour. During each episode Ozzy and Jack visit one or more sites to learn about history from experts, and explore unusual or quirky aspects of their background.

Osbourne appeared in a November 2017 episode of Gogglebox along with other UK celebrities such as Ed Sheeran, former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as part of Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK’s Stand Up to Cancer fundraising campaign. In November 2017, Osbourne entered into a new realm of sponsorship as he signed on as an ambassador of a rock-themed online casino known as Metal Casino, which was founded by metal music fans in August 2017. In February 2019, Osbourne’s merchandising partner announced that Ozzy would have his own branded online slots game as part of the NetEnt Rocks music-themed portfolio.

Awards

Osbourne has received several awards for his contributions to the music community. In 1994, he was awarded a Grammy Award for the track “I Don’t Want to Change the World” from Live & Loud for Best Metal Performance of 1994.[ At the 2004 NME Awards in London, Osbourne received the award for Godlike Genius. In 2005 Osbourne was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame both as a solo artist and as a member of Black Sabbath. In 2006, he was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, and Geezer Butler.

In 2007 Osbourne was honoured at the second annual VH1 Rock Honors, along with Genesis, Heart, and ZZ Top. In addition, that year a bronze star honouring Osbourne was placed on Broad Street in Birmingham, England while Osbourne watched. On 18 May Osbourne had received notice that he would be the first inductee into The Birmingham Walk of Stars. He was presented the award by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham. “I am really honoured”, he said, “All my family is here and I thank everyone for this reception—I’m absolutely knocked out”.

In 2008 Osbourne was crowned with the prestigious Living Legend award in the Classic Rock Roll of Honour Awards. Past recipients include Alice Cooper, Lemmy, Jimmy Page. Slash, the former Guns N’ Roses guitarist, presented the award. In 2010 Osbourne won the “Literary Achievement” honour for his memoir, I Am Ozzy, at the Guys Choice Awards at Sony Pictures Studio in Culver City, California. Osbourne was presented with the award by Sir Ben Kingsley. The book debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times’ hardcover non-fiction best-seller list. Osbourne was also a judge for the 6th, 10th and 11th  annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists’ careers. In May 2015, Osbourne received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors at a ceremony held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London. In 2016, Osbourne had a tram named after him in his home city of Birmingham.

Personal life

In 1971, Osbourne met his first wife Thelma (née Riley) at a nightclub in Birmingham called the Rum Runner, where she worked. They were married in 1971 and children Jessica and Louis were soon born while Osbourne adopted Thelma’s son Elliot. Osbourne later referred to his first marriage as “a terrible mistake”. His drug and alcohol abuse, coupled with his frequent absences while touring with Black Sabbath, took their toll on his family life, with his children later complaining that he was not a good father. In the 2011 documentary film God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, produced by his son Jack, Osbourne sheepishly admitted that he could not even remember when Louis and Jessica were born.

Osbourne married his manager Sharon Arden on 4 July 1982 and the couple would have three children together, Aimee (born 2 September 1983), Kelly (born 27 October 1984), and Jack (born 8 November 1985). He later confessed that the well known “Fourth of July” US Independence Day date was chosen so that he would never forget his anniversary. Guitarist Randy Rhoads predicted in 1981 that the couple would “probably get married someday” despite their constant bickering and the fact that Osbourne was still married to Thelma at the time. Osbourne has numerous grandchildren.

Osbourne wrote a song for his daughter Aimee, which appeared as a B-side on the album Ozzmosis. At the end of the song, his daughter can be heard saying “I’ll always be your angel”, referring to the song’s chorus lyrics. The song My Little Man, which appears on Ozzmosis, was written about his son Jack. The Osbourne family divide their time between their Buckinghamshire mansion and a home in Los Angeles, California.

Though Osbourne has long been accused of being a Satanist, it was reported by The New York Times in 1992 that he was a practicing member of the Church of England and prayed before each show. In 2002, Osbourne and wife Sharon were invited to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner by Fox News Channel correspondent Greta Van Susteren for that year’s event. Then-President George W. Bush noted Osbourne’s presence by joking, “The thing about Ozzy is, he’s made a lot of big hit recordings – ‘Party with the Animals’, ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’, ‘Facing Hell’, ‘Black Skies’ and ‘Bloodbath in Paradise’. Ozzy, Mom loves your stuff.”

Ozzy and his wife are one of the UK’s richest couples, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. They ranked at number 458 in 2005, with an estimated £100 million earned from recording, touring, and TV shows. Osbourne has over 15 tattoos, the most famous of which are the letters O-Z-Z-Y across the knuckles of his left hand. This was his first tattoo, created by himself as a teenager with a sewing needle and pencil lead. A longtime fan of the comedy troupe Monty Python, in a 2010 interview with Us Weekly Osbourne stated, “My favourite movie is Monty Python’s Life of Brian”. Osbourne suffered minor burns after a small house fire in January 2013. On his 65th birthday on 3 December 2013, he asked fans to celebrate his birthday by donating to the Royal Marsden cancer charity in London.

On 6 February 2019, Osbourne was hospitalized in an undisclosed location on his doctor’s advice due to flu complications, postponing the European leg of his “No More Tours 2” tour. The issue was described as a “severe upper-respiratory infection” following a bout with the flu which his doctor feared could develop into pneumonia, given the physicality of the live performances and an extensive travel schedule throughout Europe in harsh winter conditions. Pneumonia targets the airway and breathing and is typically fatal in elderly patients, necessitating the preventive measures. By 12 February 2019, Osbourne had been moved to intensive care. Tour promoters Live Nation said in a statement that they were hopeful that Osbourne would be “fit and healthy” and able to honor tour dates in Australia and New Zealand in March. Osbourne later cancelled the tour entirely, and ultimately all shows scheduled for 2019, after sustaining serious injuries from a fall in his Los Angeles home while still recovering from pneumonia. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in February 2019, which he publicly revealed in January 2020. In February 2020, Osbourne cancelled the 2020 North American tour, seeking treatment in Switzerland until April.

Drug and alcohol abuse

Osbourne has abused alcohol and other drugs for most of his adult life. He admitted to Sounds in 1978, “I get high, I get f*cked up … what the hell’s wrong with getting f*cked up? There must be something wrong with the system if so many people have to get f*cked up … I never take dope or anything before I go on stage. I’ll smoke a joint or whatever afterwards.” Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi said that while all the band were involved with alcohol and other drugs to various degrees in the 1970s, Osbourne had the unhealthiest lifestyle of them all. Despite this, said Iommi, he was typically the only one left standing when the others were “out for the count”. Longtime guitarist Zakk Wylde has attributed Osbourne’s longevity in spite of decades of substance abuse to “a very special kind of fortitude that’s bigger than King Kong and Godzilla combined… seriously, he’s hard as nails, man!”[

Osbourne’s first experience with cocaine was in early 1971 at a hotel in Denver, Colorado, after a show Black Sabbath had done with Mountain. He states that Mountain’s guitarist, Leslie West, introduced him to the drug.[ Though West is reluctant to take credit for introducing Osbourne to cocaine, Osbourne remembers the experience quite clearly: “When you come from Aston and you fall in love with cocaine, you remember when you started. It’s like having your first f*ck!” Osbourne says that upon first trying the drug, “The world went a bit fuzzy after that.”

Osbourne’s drug and alcohol abuse have at times caused friction within his band. Don Airey, keyboardist for Osbourne during his early solo career, has said that the vocalist’s substance-abuse issues were what ultimately caused him to leave the band. In his memoir Off the Rails, former bassist Rudy Sarzo detailed the frustrations felt by him and his bandmates as they coped with life on the road with the vocalist, who was in a state of near-constant inebriation and was often so hungover that he would refuse to perform. When he was able to perform, his voice was often so damaged from cigarettes and alcohol that the performance suffered. Many shows on the American leg of the 1981-82 Diary of a Madman tour were simply canceled, and the members of his band quickly began to tire of the unpredictability, coupled with the often violent mood swings he was prone to when drunk.

Osbourne claims in his autobiography that he was invited in 1981 to a meeting with the head of CBS Europe in Germany. Intoxicated, he decided to lighten the mood by performing a striptease on the table and then kissing the record executive on the lips. According to his wife Sharon, he had actually performed a goose-step up and down the table and urinated in the executive’s wine, but was too drunk to remember.

On 18 February 1982, while wearing his future wife Sharon’s dress for a photoshoot near the Alamo, Osbourne drunkenly urinated on a cenotaph erected in honour of those who died at the famous battle in Texas, across the street from the actual building. A police officer arrested Osbourne, and he was subsequently banned from the city of San Antonio for a decade. Osbourne had been on a long drinking binge and earlier that same day had drunkenly fired his entire band, including Randy Rhoads, after they had informed him that they would not participate in a planned live album of Black Sabbath songs. He also physically attacked Rhoads and Rudy Sarzo in a hotel bar that morning, and Sharon informed the band that she feared he had “finally snapped”. Osbourne later had no memory of firing his band and the tour continued, though his relationship with Rhoads never fully recovered. In May 1984, Osbourne was arrested in Memphis, Tennessee, again for public intoxication. The most notorious incident came in August 1989, when Sharon claimed that Ozzy had tried to strangle her after returning home from the Moscow Music Peace Festival, in a haze of alcohol and drugs. The incident led Ozzy to six months in rehabilitation, after which time, Sharon regained her faith in her husband and did not press charges.

Though he has managed to remain clean and sober for extended periods in recent years, Osbourne has frequently commented on his former wild lifestyle, expressing bewilderment at his own survival through 40 years of drug and alcohol abuse. Upon being fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, Osbourne spent the next three months locked in his hotel room taking vast amounts of alcohol and other drugs all day, every day. He claims that he would certainly have died if his future wife Sharon had not offered to manage him as a solo artist.

In 2003, Osbourne told the Los Angeles Times how he was nearly incapacitated by medication prescribed by a Beverly Hills doctor. The doctor was alleged to have prescribed 13,000 doses of 32 drugs in one year. However, after a nine-year investigation by the Medical Board of California, the Beverly Hills physician was exonerated of all charges of excessive prescribing.

Osbourne experienced tremors for some years and linked them to his continuous drug abuse. In May 2005, he found out it was actually Parkin syndrome, a genetic condition, the symptoms of which are similar to Parkinson’s disease. Osbourne will have to take daily medication for the rest of his life to combat the involuntary shudders a*sociated with the condition. Osbourne has also shown symptoms of mild hearing loss, as depicted in the television show, The Osbournes, where he often asks his family to repeat what they say. At the TEDMED Conference in October 2010, scientists from Knome joined Osbourne on stage to discuss their analysis of Osbourne’s whole genome, which shed light on how the famously hard-living rocker has survived decades of drug abuse.

In April 2013, Osbourne revealed through Facebook that he had resumed drinking and taking drugs for the past year and a half, stating he “was in a very dark place” but said he had been sober again since early March. He also apologised to Sharon, his family, friends, bandmates and his fans for his “insane” behaviour during that period.

Controversy

Throughout his career, many religious groups have accused Osbourne of being a negative influence on teenagers, stating that his genre of rock music has been used to glorify Satanism. Scholar Christopher M. Moreman compared the controversy to those levelled against the occultist Aleister Crowley. Both were demonised by the media and some religious groups for their antics. Although Osbourne tempts the comparison with his song “Mr. Crowley“, he denies the charge of being a Satanist; conversely it has been alleged that Osbourne is a member of the Church of England and that he prays before taking the stage each night before every concert^.

In 1981, after signing his first solo career record deal, Osbourne bit the head off a dove during a meeting with CBS Records executives in Los Angeles. Apparently, he had planned to release doves into the air as a sign of peace, but due to being intoxicated at the time, he instead grabbed a dove and bit its head off. He then spat the head out, with blood still dripping from his lips. Despite its controversy, the head-biting act has been parodied and alluded to several times throughout his career and is part of what made Osbourne famous.

On 20 January 1982, Osbourne bit the head off a bat that he thought was rubber while performing at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa. Rolling Stone magazine in 2004 ranked this incident number two on its list of “Rock’s Wildest Myths”. While the Rolling Stone article stated the bat was alive, 17-year-old Mark Neal who threw it onto the stage said it was brought to the show dead. According to Osbourne in the booklet to the 2002 edition of Diary of a Madman, the bat was not only alive but managed to bite him, resulting in Osbourne being treated for rabies. On 20 January 2019, Osbourne commemorated the 37th anniversary of the bat incident by offering an ‘Ozzy Plush Bat’ toy “with detachable head” for sale on his personal web-store. The site claimed the first batch of toys sold out within hours.

On New Year’s Eve 1983, Canadian youth James Jollimore killed a woman and her two sons in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after listening to the “Bark at the Moon” song. A friend of the murderer quoted: “Jimmy said that every time he listened to the song he felt strange inside … He said when he heard it on New Year’s Eve he went out and stabbed someone”.

In 1984, California teenager John McCollum committed suicide while listening to Osbourne’s “Suicide Solution”. The song deals with the dangers of alcohol abuse. McCollum’s suicide led to allegations that Osbourne promoted suicide in his songs. Despite knowing McCollum suffered clinical depression, his parents sued Osbourne (McCollum v. CBS for their son’s death, saying the lyrics in the song, “Where to hide, suicide is the only way out. Don’t you know what it’s really about?” convinced McCollum to commit suicide. The family’s lawyer suggested that Osbourne should be criminally charged for encouraging a young person to commit suicide, but the courts ruled in Osbourne’s favour, saying there was no connection between the song and McCollum’s suicide. Osbourne was sued for the same reason in 1991 (Waller v. Osbourne), by the parents of Michael Waller, for $9 million, but the courts once again ruled in Osbourne’s favour.

In lawsuits filed in 2000 and 2002 which were dismissed by the courts in 2003, former band members Bob Daisley, Lee Kerslake, and Phil Soussan stated that Osbourne was delinquent in paying them royalties and had denied them due credit on albums they played on. In November 2003, a Federal Appeals Court unanimously upheld the dismissal by the US District Court for the Central District of California of the lawsuit brought by Daisley and Kerslake. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Osbourne does not owe any royalties or credit to the former band members who were let go in 1981. To resolve further issues, management chose to replace Daisley and Kerslake’s contributions on the original masters, replacing them with Robert Trujillo on bass and Mike Bordin on drums. The albums were then reissued. The original tracks have since been restored in accordance with the 30th anniversary of those albums.

In July 2010, Osbourne and Tony Iommi decided to discontinue the court proceedings over ownership of the Black Sabbath trademark. As reported to Blabbermouth, “Both parties are glad to put this behind them and to cooperate for the future and would like it to be known that the issue was never personal, it was always business.”

Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music,  who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including “Over the Rainbow”, Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. “Over the Rainbow” was voted the 20th century’s No. 1 song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Life and career

Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, United States, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville[5] and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman, and Eddie Duchin, usually singing his own compositions.

In 1929, Arlen composed his first well-known song: “Get Happy” (with lyrics by Ted Koehler). Throughout the early and mid-1930s, Arlen and Koehler wrote shows for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem night club, as well as for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Arlen and Koehler’s partnership resulted in a number of hit songs, including the familiar standards “Let’s Fall in Love” and “Stormy Weather”. Arlen continued to perform as a pianist and vocalist with some success, most notably on records with Leo Reisman’s society dance orchestra.

In the mid-1930s, Arlen married, and spent increasing time in California, writing for movie musicals. It was at this time that he began working with lyricist E. Y. “Yip” Harburg. In 1938, the team was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz, the most famous of which is “Over the Rainbow”, for which they won the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song. They also wrote “Down with Love” (featured in the 1937 Broadway show Hooray for What!), “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”, for Groucho Marx in At the Circus in 1939, and “Happiness is a Thing Called Joe”, for Ethel Waters in the 1943 movie Cabin in the Sky.

Arlen was a longtime friend and onetime roommate of actor Ray Bolger, who starred in The Wizard of Oz.

In the 1940s, he teamed up with lyricist Johnny Mercer, and continued to write hit songs like “Blues in the Night”, “Out of this World”, “That Old Black Magic”, “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”, “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home”, “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)”.

Arlen composed two of the defining songs of Judy Garland’s career: “Over the Rainbow” and “The Man That Got Away”, the last written for the 1954 version of the film A Star Is Born.

Marriage and death

Arlen and Anya Taranda married on January 6, 1937, over the objection of their parents, because she was a Gentile and he was Jewish, but it turned out to be a successful marriage. In 1951 Anya was institutionalized for seven years and died from a brain tumor in 1970.  Arlen never remarried and died on April 23, 1986 of cancer at his Manhattan apartment at the age of eighty-one. Arlen is buried next to his wife at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. After his death, Irving Berlin summed up his life at a tribute, saying: “He wasn’t as well known as some of us, but he was a better songwriter than most of us and he will be missed by all of us.”

Shortly before his death, Arlen adopted the 22 year old adult son of his brother Julius “Jerry” Arluck, so that his estate would have an heir in order to extend his copyright. Samuel Arlen runs the company that owns the rights to the Arlen catalog.

Timeline

• 1905 Arlen born in Buffalo, New York
• 1920 (age 15) He formed his first professional band, Hyman Arluck’s Snappy Trio.
• 1921 (16) Against his parents’ wishes he left home.
• 1923 (18) With his new band – The Southbound Shufflers, performed on the Crystal Beach lake boat “Canadiana” during the summer of 1923.
• 1924 (19) Performed at Lake Shore Manor during the summer of 1924.
• 1924 (19) Wrote his first song, collaborating with friend Hyman Cheiffetz to write “My Gal, My Pal”. Copyrighting the song as “My Gal, Won’t You Please Come Back to Me?” and listed lyrics by Cheiffetz and music by Harold Arluck.
• 1925 (20) Makes his way to New York City with the group, The Buffalodians, with Arlen playing piano.
• 1926 (21) Had first published song, collaborating with Dick George to compose “Minor Gaff (Blues Fantasy)” under the name Harold Arluck.
• 1928 (23) Chaim (Life) (or Hyman) Arluck renames himself Harold Arlen.
• 1929 (24) Landed a singing and acting role as Cokey Joe in the musical The Great Day.
• 1929 (24) Composed his first well known song – “Get Happy” – under the name Harold Arlen.
• 1929 (24) Signed a yearlong song writing contract with the George and Arthur Piantadosi firm.
• 1930–1934 (25–29) Wrote music for the Cotton Club.
• 1933 (28) At a party, along with partner Ted Koehler, wrote the major hit song “Stormy Weather”
• 1934 (29) Wrote “Ill Wind (You’re Blowin’ Me No Good)” with lyrics by Ted Koehler for their last show at the Cotton Club Parade, in 1934, which was sung by Adelaide Hall
• 1935 (30) Went back to California after being signed by Samuel Goldwyn to write songs for the film Strike Me Pink.
• 1937 (32) Composed the score for the Broadway musical Hooray for What!. Married 22-year-old Anya Taranda, a celebrated Powers Agency model and former Earl Carroll and Busby Berkeley showgirl, actress, and one of the Original “Breck Girls”.
• 1938 (33) Hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz.
• 1938 (33) While driving along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and stopping in front of Schwab’s Drug Store, he came up with the song “Over the Rainbow“.
• 1941 (36) Wrote “Blues in the Night“
• 1942 (37) Along with Johnny Mercer, he wrote one of his most famous songs, “That Old Black Magic“.
• 1943 (38) Wrote “My Shining Hour“
• 1944 (39) While driving with songwriter partner Johnny Mercer came up with the song “Accentuate the Positive“.
• 1945 (40) In a single evening’s work in October with Johnny Mercer came up with the song “Come Rain or Come Shine“.
• 1949 (44) Collaborated with Ralph Blane to write the score for My Blue Heaven.
• 1950 (45) Worked with old pal Johnny Mercer on the film The Petty Girl, out of which came the song “Fancy Free”.
• 1951 (46) His wife Anya was institutionalized in a sanitarium for 7 years.
• 1952 (47) Teamed up with Dorothy Fields on the film The Farmer Takes a Wife.
• 1953 (48) Harold’s father, Cantor Samuel Arluck, died.
• 1954 (49) The musical A Star is Born starring Judy Garland singing the now classic, Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin collaboration, “The Man That Got Away“.
• 1954 (49) Becomes dangerously ill with a bleeding ulcer and is hospitalized but recovers to work with Truman Capote on the musical House of Flowers.
• 1958 (53) His mother Celia Arluck dies and Harold doesn’t touch music for over a year, mourning her loss.
• 1962 (56) Wrote the score for the animated musical Gay Purr-ee, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg.
• 1970 (65) Arlen’s wife Anya Taranda dies from a brain tumor. Arlen begins to lose interest in life, withdrawing from friends and family and becoming more reclusive.
• 1974 (69) The theme song for the ABC sitcom Paper Moon is based on the song of that title, written by Arlen and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg in 1932. The series was based on a 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film of the same name, which used the same song.
• 1979 (74) Is inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
• 1985 (80) Adopts Samuel (“Sammy”), son of his younger brother Jerry and Rita Arluck as his son and primary heir.
• 1986 (81) Harold Arlen dies in New York City and is interred next to his wife at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Works for Broadway

• Earl Carroll’s Vanities of 1930 (1930) – revue – contributing composer
• You Said It (1931) – musical – composer
• Earl Carroll’s Vanities of 1932 (1932) – revue – co-composer and co-lyricist with Ted Koehler
• Americana (1932) – revue – contributing composer
• George White’s Music Hall Varieties (1933) – revue – co-composer
• Life Begins at 8:40 (1934) – revue – composer
• The Show is On (1936) – revue – contributing composer
• Hooray for What! (1937) – musical – composer
• Bloomer Girl (1944) – musical – composer
• St. Louis Woman (1946) – musical – composer
• House of Flowers (1954) – musical – composer and co-lyricist
• Mr. Imperium (1951) – movie musical – featured composer
• Jamaica (1957) – musical – composer – Tony nomination for Best Musical
• Saratoga (1959) – musical – composer

Major songs

• “A Sleepin’ Bee” – lyrics by Harold Arlen and Truman Capote
• “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “As Long as I Live” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Blues in the Night” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Come Rain or Come Shine” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “Down with Love” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “For Every Man There’s a Woman” – lyrics by Leo Robin
• “Get Happy” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “Hit the Road to Dreamland” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Hooray for Love” – lyrics by Leo Robin
• “I Could Go On Singing” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “If I Only Had a Brain” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “I Had Myself A True Love” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “I Love a Parade” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Ill Wind” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “I Never Has Seen Snow” – lyrics by Harold Arlen and Truman Capote
• “It Was Written in the Stars” – lyrics by Leo Robin
• “I’ve Got the World on a String” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “It’s Only a Paper Moon” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, Billy Rose
• “I Wonder What Became of Me” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Last Night When We Were Young” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “Let’s Fall in Love” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Let’s Take a Walk Around the Block” – lyrics by Ira Gershwin and E. Y. Harburg
• “Like a Straw in the Wind” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “My Shining Hour” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “On the Swing Shift” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Out of This World” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “Over the Rainbow” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “Right As The Rain” – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
• “Sing My Heart” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “So Long, Big Time!” – lyrics by Dory Langdon
• “Stormy Weather” – lyrics by Ted Koehler
• “That Old Black Magic” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “The Man That Got Away” – lyrics by Ira Gershwin
• “This Time the Dream’s on Me” – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
• “What’s Good About Goodbye?” – lyrics by Leo Robin
• “When the Sun Comes Out” – lyrics by Ted Koehler

Films

• 2003 – Stormy Weather: The Music of Harold Arlen. Directed by Larry Weinstein.

Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist.

A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene”, which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers rights, and environmental causes.

A prolific songwriter, his best-known songs include “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (with additional lyrics by Joe Hickerson), “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)” (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” (also with Hays), and “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement. “Flowers” was a hit recording for the Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). “If I Had a Hammer” was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963) while the Byrds had a number one hit with “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in 1965.

Seeger was one of the folk singers responsible for popularizing the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS American Masters episode “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song”, Seeger said it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional “We will overcome” to the more singable “We shall overcome”.

Early years

Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, at the French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan. His family, which Seeger called “enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition”,  traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a doctor from Württemberg, Germany, had emigrated to America during the American Revolution and married into the old New England family of Parsons in the 1780s.

Seeger’s father, the Harvard-trained composer and musicologist Charles Louis Seeger, Jr., was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to American parents. Charles established the first musicology curriculum in the U.S. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1913, helped found the American Musicological Society, and was a key founder of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology. Pete’s mother, Constance de Clyver Seeger (née Edson), raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music, was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the Juilliard School.

In 1912, his father Charles Seeger was hired to establish the music department at the University of California, Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspoken pacifism during World War I. Charles and Constance moved back east, making Charles’ parents’ estate in Patterson, New York, just north of New York City, their base of operations. When baby Pete was eighteen months old, they set out with him and his two older brothers in a homemade trailer to bring musical uplift to the working people in the American South. Upon their return, Constance taught violin and Charles taught composition at the New York Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), whose president, family friend Frank Damrosch, was Constance’s adoptive “uncle”. Charles also taught part-time at the New School for Social Research. Career and money tensions led to quarrels and reconciliations, but when Charles discovered Constance had opened a secret bank account in her own name, they separated, and Charles took custody of their three sons.[8] Beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal government’s Farm Resettlement program, the WPA’s Federal Music Project (1938–1940) and the wartime Pan American Union. After World War II, he taught ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University.

Charles and Constance divorced when Pete was seven and in 1932 Charles married his composition student and a*sistant, Ruth Crawford, now considered by many to be one of the most important modernist composers of the 20th century. Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements to Carl Sandburg’s extremely influential folk song anthology the American Songbag (1927) and later created significant original settings for eight of Sandburg’s poems. Pete’s eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the Dalton School in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 at Fieldston Lower School in the Bronx. Pete’s uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted American war poet (“I Have a Rendezvous with Death”), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in World War I. All four of Pete’s half-siblings from his father’s second marriage – Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny) – became folk singers. Peggy Seeger, a well-known performer in her own right, married British folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Seeger was a founder of the New Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, married Pete’s half-sister Penny – also a talented singer who died young. Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folk songs for children. In 1935, Pete attended Camp Rising Sun, an international leadership camp held every summer in upstate New York that influenced his life’s work. His final visit occurred in 2012.

Career

Early work

At four, Seeger was sent away to boarding school, but came home two years later when his parents learned the school had failed to inform them he had contracted scarlet fever. He attended first and second grades in Nyack, New York, where his mother lived, before entering boarding school in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Despite being classical musicians, his parents did not press him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to the ukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen, Seeger enrolled in the Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1936. He was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the George E. Jonas Foundation’s international summer leadership program. During the summer of 1936, while traveling with his father and stepmother, Pete heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in western North Carolina near Asheville, organized by local folklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom Charles Seeger had hired for Farm Resettlement music projects. The festival took place in a covered baseball field. There the Seegers:

watched square-dance teams from Bear Wallow, Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, and Soco Gap; heard the five-string banjo player Samantha Bumgarner; and family string bands, including a group of Indians from the Cherokee reservation who played string instruments and sang ballads. They wandered among the crowds who camped out at the edge of the field, hearing music being made there as well. As Lunsford’s daughter would later recall, those country people “held the riches that Dad had discovered. They could sing, fiddle, pick the banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and style found nowhere else but deep in the mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies drift over the ball park.”

For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music firsthand was a “conversion experience”. Pete was deeply affected and, after learning basic strokes from Lunsford, spent much of the next four years trying to master the five-string banjo.[17] The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings at the Greenwich Village loft of painter and art teacher Thomas Hart Benton and his wife Rita. Benton, a lover of Americana, played “Cindy” and “Old Joe Clark” with his students Charlie and Jackson Pollock; friends from the “hillbilly” recording industry; as well as avant-garde composers Carl Ruggles and Henry Cowell. It was at one of Benton’s parties that Pete heard “John Henry” for the first time.

Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but as he became increasingly involved with politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938.[ He dreamed of a career in journalism and took courses in art, as well. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during a summer stint of touring New York State with The Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling puppet theater “inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico”.  One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An article in the October 2, 1939, Daily Worker reported on the Puppeteers’ six-week tour this way:

During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm women would bring “suppers” and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.

“They fed us too well,” the girls reported. “And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the offers to spend a week on the farm.

In the farmers’ homes they talked about politics and the farmers’ problems, about antisemitism and Unionism, about war and peace and social security — “and always,” the puppeteers report, “the farmers wanted to know what can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers. They felt the need of this more strongly than ever before, and the support of the CIO in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the part of city organizations—unions, consumers’ bodies, the American Labor Party and similar groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for progress.

That fall, Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., a*sisting Alan Lomax, a friend of his father’s, at the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seeger’s job was to help Lomax sift through commercial “race” and “hillbilly” music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division of the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–53). Lomax also encouraged Seeger’s folk singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray’s weekly Columbia Broadcasting show Back Where I Come From (1940–41) alongside Josh White, Burl Ives, Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie (whom he had first met at Will Geer’s Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for migrant workers on March 3, 1940). Back Where I Come From was unique in having a racially-integrated cast. The show was a success, but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast. During the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.

From 1942-1945, Seeger served in the Army, as an Entertainment Specialist.

In 1949, Seeger worked as the vocal instructor for the progressive City and Country School in Greenwich Village, New York.

Early activism

In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its influence. In 1942, he became a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself but left in 1949.

In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch, and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), the Talking Union, and an album each of sea shanties and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, “It wouldn’t be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil,” that were sharply critical of Roosevelt’s unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was “phony” and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time — as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL’s members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill’s arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake), and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in Time magazine, which under its owner, Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs’ John Doe, accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called “the mendacious Moscow tune” that “Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J.P. Morgan war.” Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album “in bad taste,” though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser on domestic propaganda to the United States military. In a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly, entitled “The Poison in Our System,” he pronounced Songs for John Doe “…strictly subversive and illegal,” “…whether Communist or Nazi financed,” and “a matter for the attorney general,” observing further that “mere” legal “suppression” would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist poison,[28] the poison being folk music and the ease with which it could be spread.

While the U.S. had not officially declared war on the Axis powers in the summer of 1941, the country was energetically producing arms and ammunition for their allies overseas. Despite the boom in manufacturing this concerted rearming effort brought, African-Americans were barred from working in defense plants. Racial tensions rose as Black labor leaders (such as A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin) and their white allies began organizing protests and marches. To combat this social unrest, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) on 25 June 1941. The order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, at which time the Communist Party quickly directed its members to get behind the draft and forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war — angering some leftists. Copies of Songs for John Doe were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors. The Almanac Singers’ Talking Union album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year, the Almanacs issued Dear Mr. President, an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, “Dear Mr. President”, was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his lifelong credo:

Now, Mr. President,
We haven’t always agreed in the past, I know,
But that ain’t at all important now.
What is important is what we got to do,
We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do,
Other things can wait.

Now, as I think of our great land …
I know it ain’t perfect, but it will be someday,
Just give us a little time.

This is the reason that I want to fight,
Not ’cause everything’s perfect, or everything’s right.
No, it’s just the opposite: I’m fightin’ because
I want a better America, and better laws,
And better homes, and jobs, and schools,
And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like
“You can’t ride on this train ’cause you’re a Negro,”
“You can’t live here ’cause you’re a Jew,”
“You can’t work here ’cause you’re a union man.”

So, Mr. President,
We got this one big job to do
That’s lick Mr. Hitler and when we’re through,
Let no one else ever take his place
To trample down the human race.
So what I want is you to give me a gun
So we can hurry up and get the job done.

Seeger’s critics, however, continued to bring up the Almanacs’ repudiated Songs for John Doe. In 1942, a year after the John Doe album’s brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York World Telegram (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich’s 1941 article “The Poison in Our System” was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce’s right-hand man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President of Time magazine, had founded “…to combat all the Nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist …” antiwar groups in the United States).

Seeger served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. Later, when people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered: “I strummed my banjo.” After returning from service, Seeger and others established People’s Songs, conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts and designed to “create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People.”  With Pete Seeger as its director, People’s Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt’s former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a third-party candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however, Wallace won only in New York City, and following the election, he was excoriated for accepting the help in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers, such as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.

Spanish Civil War songs

Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with Tom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called Songs of the Lincoln Battalion on Moe Asch’s Stinson label. This included such songs as “There’s a Valley in Spain called Jarama” and “Viva la Quince Brigada”. In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary Six Songs for Democracy (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch and a chorus of members of the Thälmann Battalion, made up of volunteers from Germany. The songs were: “Moorsoldaten” (“Peat Bog Soldiers”, composed by political prisoners of German concentration camps); “Die Thaelmann-Kolonne”, “Hans Beimler”, “Das Lied Von Der Einheitsfront” (“Song of The United Front” by Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), “Der Internationalen Brigaden” (“Song of the International Brigades”), and “Los cuatro generales” (“The Four Generals”, known in English as “The Four Insurgent Generals”).

Group recordings

As a self-described “split tenor” (between a tenor and a countertenor), Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: the Almanac Singers and the Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement, racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, and Sam Gary. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under the stage name “Pete Bowers” to avoid compromising his father’s government career.

In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as the Weavers, named after the title of an 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann, about a workers’ strike (which contained the lines, “We’ll stand it no more, come what may!”). They did benefits for strikers, at which they sang songs such as ‘Talking Union’, about the struggles for unionisation of industrial workers such as miners and auto mobile workers. Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman; later Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling, and Bernie Krause serially took Seeger’s place. In the atmosphere of the 1950s red scare, the Weavers’ repertoire had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its progressive message was couched in indirect language — arguably rendering it even more powerful. The Weavers on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers refused to let them perform at political venues. The Weavers’ string of major hits began with “On Top of Old Smoky” and an arrangement of Lead Belly’s signature waltz, “Goodnight, Irene”,[4] which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950 and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of “Irene” was the Israeli song “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena”. Other Weaver hits included “Dusty Old Dust” (“So Long It’s Been Good to Know You” by Woody Guthrie), “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly), and the South African Zulu song by Solomon Linda, “Wimoweh” (about Shaka), among others.

The Weavers’ performing career was abruptly derailed in 1953, at the peak of their popularity, when blacklisting prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced a hit version of Merle Travis’s “Sixteen Tons”, as well as LPs of their concert performances. “Kumbaya”, a Gullah black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.

In the late 1950s, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latter’s repertoire, though with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial, and mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits and in its turn spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.

In the documentary film Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers when the three other band members agreed to perform a jingle for a cigarette commercial.

Banjo and 12-string guitar

In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic How to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the Long Neck or Seeger banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, is slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region,[citation needed] the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger’s championing of and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in David King Dunaway’s biography, “by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth string”, Pete Seeger “gentrified” the more percussive traditional Appalachian “frailing” style, “with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head.”[38] Although what Dunaway’s informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality a*sociated with the style.

From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that had been a*sociated with Lead Belly, who had styled himself “the King of the 12-String Guitar”. Seeger’s distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28″) and capo-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.

Introduction of the “Steel Pan” to U.S. audiences

In 1956, then “Peter” Seeger (see film credits) and his wife, Toshi, traveled to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to seek out information on the steelpan, steel drum or “ping-pong” as it was sometimes called. The two searched out a local panyard director Isaiah and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then new, national instrument of Trinidad-Tobago. He was attempting to include the unique flavor of the steel pan into American Folk music.

McCarthy era

In the 1950s and indeed consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace campaign) and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. However, with the ever-growing revelations of Joseph Stalin’s atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Communism. He left the CPUSA in 1949, but remained friends with some who did not leave it, although he argued with them about it.

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which would have a*serted that his testimony might be self-incriminating) and instead, as the Hollywood Ten had done, refused to name personal and political a*sociations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my a*sociation, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.” Seeger’s refusal to answer questions that he believed violated his fundamental Constitutional rights led to a March 26, 1957, indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to ten 1-year terms in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962, an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.

In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the government. Seeger refused, and the American Civil Liberties Union obtained an injunction against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. Almost 50 years later, in February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of their predecessors.

Folk music revival

To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger worked gigs as a music teacher in schools and summer camps, and traveled the college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as five albums a year for Moe Asch’s Folkways Records label. As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger’s anti-war songs, such as, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (co-written with Joe Hickerson), “Turn! Turn! Turn!”,  adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and “The Bells of Rhymney” by the Welsh poet Idris Davies  (1957), gained wide currency. Seeger was the first person to make a studio recording of “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” in 1956. Seeger also was closely a*sociated with the Civil Rights Movement and in 1963 helped organize a landmark Carnegie Hall concert, featuring the youthful Freedom Singers, as a benefit for the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. This event, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in August of that same year, brought the Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” to wide audiences. He sang it on the 50-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, along with 1,000 other marchers.[49] By this time, Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as a longtime columnist in Sing Out!, the successor to the People’s Songs Bulletin, and as a founder of the topical Broadside magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase “Woody’s children”, alluding to his a*sociate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. This urban folk-revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the 1930s and 1940s and of People’s Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies’ Little Red Song Book, compiled by Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill (1879–1915). (The Little Red Song Book had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie’s, who was known to carry it around.)

Seeger toured Australia in 1963. His single “Little Boxes”, written by Malvina Reynolds, was number one in the nation’s Top 40s. That tour sparked a folk boom throughout the country at a time when popular music tastes, post-Kennedy a*sassination, competed between folk, the surfing craze, and the British rock boom which gave the world the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, among others. Folk clubs sprung up all over the nation, folk performers were accepted in established venues, and Australian performers singing Australian folk songs – many of their own composing – emerged in concerts and festivals, on television, and on recordings, and overseas performers were encouraged to tour Australia.

The long television blacklist of Seeger began to end in the mid-1960s, when he hosted a regionally broadcast, educational, folk-music television show, Rainbow Quest. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, the Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick Sky, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Hedy West, Donovan, The Clancy Brothers, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mamou Cajun Band, Bernice Johnson Reagon, The Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb, Malvina Reynolds, Sonia Malkine, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine[40] hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU’s Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The Smothers Brothers ended Seeger’s national blacklisting by broadcasting him singing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on their CBS variety show on February 25, 1968, after his similar performance in September 1967 was censored by CBS.

In November 1976, Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song “Delbert Tibbs”, about the death-row inmate Delbert Tibbs, who was later exonerated. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs.

Seeger also supported the Jewish Camping Movement. He came to Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Spring, New York, over the summer many times. He sang and inspired countless campers.

Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan

Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers of Bob Dylan; he was responsible for urging A&R man John Hammond to produce Dylan’s first LP on Columbia, and for inviting him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, of which Seeger was a board member. There was a widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the extremely loud amplified sound that Dylan, backed by members of the Butterfield Blues Band, brought into the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that he threatened to disconnect the equipment. There are multiple versions of what went on, some fanciful. What is certain is that tensions had been running high between Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman and Festival Board members (who besides Seeger also included Theodore Bikel, Bruce Jackson, Alan Lomax, festival MC Peter Yarrow, and George Wein) over the scheduling of performers and other matters. Two days earlier, there had been a scuffle and brief exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax, and the Board in an emergency session had voted to ban Grossman from the grounds, but had backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular draws Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Seeger has been portrayed as a folk “purist” who was one of the main opponents to Dylan’s “going electric”. but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his “objections” to the electric style, he said:

I couldn’t understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, “Maggie’s Farm,” and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, “Fix the sound so you can hear the words.” He hollered back, “This is the way they want it.” I said “Damn it, if I had an axe, I’d cut the cable right now.” But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, “you didn’t boo Howlin’ Wolf yesterday. He was electric!” Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father’s old term.

Vietnam War era and beyond

A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the Vietnam War, Seeger satirically attacked then-President Lyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album Dangerous Songs!?, of Len Chandler’s children’s song, “Beans in My Ears”. Beyond Chandler’s lyrics, Seeger said that “Mrs. Jay’s little son Alby” had “beans in his ears,” which, as the lyrics imply, ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the Vietnam War, the phrase implied that “Alby Jay”, a loose pronunciation of Johnson’s nickname “LBJ,” did not listen to anti-war protests as he too had “beans in his ears”.

During 1966, Seeger and Malvina Reynolds took part in environmental activism. The album God Bless the Grass was released on January of that year and became the first album in history wholly dedicated to songs about environmental issues. Their politics were informed by the same ideologies of nationalism, populism, and criticism of big business.

Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”, about a captain — referred to in the lyrics as “the big fool” — who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. With its lyrics about a platoon being led into danger by an ignorant captain, the song’s anti-war message was obvious — the line “the big fool said to push on” is repeated several times.[61] In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song’s political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were “Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on.” The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the “big fool” and the Vietnam War as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show, after wide publicity, it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers’ Brothers show in the following January.

At the November 15, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium March on Washington, DC, Seeger led 500,000 protesters in singing John Lennon’s song “Give Peace a Chance” as they rallied across from the White House. Seeger’s voice carried over the crowd, interspersing phrases like, “Are you listening, Nixon?” between the choruses of protesters singing, “All we are saying … is give peace a chance”.

Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled “This machine kills fascists,”photo Seeger’s banjo was emblazoned with the motto “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender.”

In the documentary film The Power of Song, Seeger mentions that he and his family visited North Vietnam in 1972.

Being a supporter of progressive labor unions, Seeger had supported Ed Sadlowski in his bid for the presidency of the United Steelworkers of America. In 1977, Seeger appeared at a fundraiser in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In 1978, Seeger joined American folk, blues, and jazz singer Barbara Dane at a rally in New York for striking coal miners.

In 1980, Pete Seeger performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The performance was later released by Smithsonian Folkways as the album Singalong Sanders Theater, 1980.

Hudson River sloop Clearwater

In 1966, Seeger and his wife Toshi founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit organization based in Poughkeepsie, New York, that sought to protect the Hudson River and surrounding wetlands and waterways through advocacy and public education. It constructed a floating ambassador for this environmental mission, the sloop Clearwater, and began an annual music and environmental festival, today known as the Great Hudson River Revival.

Reflection on support for Soviet Communism

In 1982, Seeger performed at a benefit concert for Poland’s Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer David Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger’s decades-long personal dislike of communism in its Soviet form. In the late 1980s, Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that “the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time.” In his autobiography Where Have All the Flowers Gone (1993, 1997, reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, “Should I apologize for all this? I think so.” He went on to put his thinking in context:

How could Hitler have been stopped? Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to the League of Nations in ’36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times check out pacifist Dave Dellinger‘s book, From Yale to Jail … At any rate, today I’ll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a “hard driver” and not a “supremely cruel misleader.” I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza, of Southern White Democrats, of Franco Spain, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She’s part African, part European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part Native American. Let’s look ahead.

In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that “I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.” In recent years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his lifelong activism, he also found himself criticized once again for his opinions and a*sociations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, David Boaz—Voice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato Institute—wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled “Stalin’s Songbird” in which he excoriated The New Yorker and The New York Times for lauding Seeger. He characterized Seeger as “someone with a longtime habit of following the party line” who had only “eventually” parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he quoted lines from the Almanac Singers’ May 1941 Songs for John Doe, contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from Dear Mr. President, issued in 1942, after the United States and the Soviet Union had entered the war.

In 2007, in response to criticism from historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative National Review — Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, “Big Joe Blues”:

I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe.
He ruled with an iron hand.
He put an end to the dreams
Of so many in every land.
He had a chance to make
A brand new start for the human race.
Instead he set it back
Right in the same nasty place.
I got the Big Joe Blues.
Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast.
I got the Big Joe Blues.
Do this job, no questions asked.
I got the Big Joe Blues.

The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, “I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965].”

Later work

On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister Peggy, his brothers Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the American Folklife Center in honor of the Seeger family, held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.,  where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.
In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released At 89, Seeger’s first studio album in 12 years. On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, singing “Take It From Dr. King”.

On January 18, 2009, Seeger and his grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen, and the crowd in singing the Woody Guthrie song “This Land Is Your Land” in the finale of Barack Obama’s Inaugural concert in Washington, D.C. The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion of two verses not often included in the song, one about a “private property” sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a passing reference to a Depression-era relief office. The former’s final line, however, “This land was made for you and me,” is modified to “That side was made for you and me.”

Over the years, he lent his fame to support numerous environmental organizations, including South Jersey’s Bayshore Center, the home of New Jersey’s tall ship, the oyster schooner A.J. Meerwald. Seeger’s benefit concerts helped raise funds for groups so they could continue to educate and spread environmental awareness. On May 3, 2009, at the Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at Madison Square Garden to celebrate Seeger’s 90th birthday (which was later televised on PBS during the summer), ranging from Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Eric Weissberg, Ani DiFranco and Roger McGuinn to Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Joanne Shenandoah, R. Carlos Nakai, Bill Miller, Joseph Fire Crow, Margo Thunderbird, Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Arlo Guthrie. Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez was also invited to appear but his visa was not approved in time by the United States government. Consistent with Seeger’s long-time advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the event benefited the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit organization founded by Seeger in 1966, to defend and restore the Hudson River. Seeger’s 90th Birthday was also celebrated at The College of Staten Island on May 4.

On September 19, 2009, Seeger made his first appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, which was particularly notable because the festival does not normally feature folk artists.

In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote and performed the song God’s Counting on Me, God’s Counting on You with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A performance of the song by Seeger, Wyatt, and friends was recorded and filmed aboard the Sloop Clearwater in August for a single and video produced by Richard Barone and Matthew Billy, released on election day November 6, 2012.

On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street to Columbus Circle in New York City. The march began with Seeger and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Space (95th and Broadway), where they had performed as part of a benefit for Seeger’s Clearwater organization. Thousands of people crowded Pete Seeger by the time they reached Columbus Circle, where he performed with his grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, and other celebrated musicians.[105] The event, promoted under the name OccupyTheCircle, was live streamed, and dubbed by some as “The Pete Seeger March”.

On December 14, 2012, Seeger performed, along with Harry Belafonte, Jackson Browne, Common, and others, at a concert to bring awareness to the 37-year-long ordeal of Native American Activist Leonard Peltier. The concert was held at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

On April 9, 2013, Hachette Audio Books issued an audiobook entitled Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems. This two-CD spoken-word work was conceived of and produced by noted percussionist Jeff Haynes and presents Pete Seeger telling the stories of his life against a background of music performed by more than 40 musicians of varied genres. The launch of the audiobook was held at the Dia:Beacon on April 11, 2013, to an enthusiastic audience of around two hundred people, and featured many of the musicians from the project (among them Samite, Dar Williams, Dave Eggar, and Richie Stearns of the Horse Flies and Natalie Merchant) performing live under the direction of producer and percussionist Haynes.[108] April 15, 2013, Sirius XM Book Radio presented the Dia:Beacon concert as a special episode of “Cover to Cover Live with Maggie Linton and Kim Alexander” entitled “Pete Seeger: The Storm King and Friends.”

On August 9, 2013, one month widowed, Seeger was in New York City for the 400-year commemoration of the Two Row Wampum Treaty between the Iroquois and the Dutch. On an interview he gave that day to Democracy Now!, Seeger sang “I Come and Stand at Every Door”, as it was also the 68th anniversary of bombing of Nagasaki.

On September 21, 2013, Pete Seeger performed at Farm Aid at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York. Joined by Wille Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews, he sang “This Land Is Your Land”,  and included a verse he said he had written specifically for the Farm Aid concert.

Personal life

Seeger married Toshi Aline Ota in 1943, whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. The couple remained married until Toshi’s death in July 2013.  Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months, while Pete was deployed overseas. Pete never saw him. They went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker), Mika (a potter and muralist), and Tinya (a potter), as well as grandchildren Tao Rodríguez-Seeger (a musician), Cassie (an artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (a psychotherapist), Moraya (a marriage and family therapist married to the NFL player Chris DeGeare), Penny, Isabelle, and great-grandchildren Dio and Gabel. Tao, a folk musician in his own right, sings and plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was a*sociate producer of the PBS documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.

When asked by Beliefnet about his religious or spiritual beliefs, and his definition of God, Seeger replied:

Nobody knows for sure. But people undoubtedly get feelings which are not explainable and they feel they’re talking to God or they’re talking to their parents who are long dead. I feel most spiritual when I’m out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it’s all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I’m not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I’m looking at God. Whenever I’m listening to something I’m listening to God. I’ve had preachers of the gospel, Presbyterians and Methodists, saying, “Pete, I feel that you are a very spiritual person.” And maybe I am. I feel strongly that I’m trying to raise people’s spirits to get together. … I tell people I don’t think God is an old white man with a long white beard and no navel; nor do I think God is an old black woman with white hair and no navel. But I think God is literally everything, because I don’t believe that something can come out of nothing. And so there’s always been something. Always is a long time.

He was a member of a Unitarian Universalist Church in New York.

Seeger lived in Beacon, New York. He remained engaged politically and maintained an active lifestyle in the Hudson Valley region of New York throughout his life. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves. Toshi died in Beacon on July 9, 2013, at the age of 91,  and Pete died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 27, 2014, at the age of 94.

Legacy

Response and reaction to Seeger’s death quickly poured in. President Barack Obama noted that Seeger had been called “America’s tuning fork”  and that he believed in “the power of song” to bring social change, “Over the years, Pete used his voice and his hammer to strike blows for workers’ rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation, and he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger.” Folksinger and fellow activist Billy Bragg wrote that: “Pete believed that music could make a difference. Not change the world, he never claimed that – he once said that if music could change the world he’d only be making music – but he believed that while music didn’t have agency, it did have the power to make a difference.” Bruce Springsteen said of Seeger’s death, “I lost a great friend and a great hero last night, Pete Seeger”, before performing “We Shall Overcome” while on tour in South Africa.

Tributes

• A proposal was made in 2009 to name the Walkway Over the Hudson in his honor.
• A posthumous suggestion that Seeger’s name be applied to the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge being built over the Hudson River was made by a local town supervisor. Seeger’s boat, the sloop Clearwater, is based at Beacon, New York, just upriver from the bridge.
• Oakwood Friends School located in Poughkeepsie New York, not far from Seeger’s home, performed Where Have All the Flowers Gone? at one of their worship meetings. The collaboration was with three teachers (playing guitar and vocals) as well as a student harmonica player and a student vocalist.
• A free five-day memorial called Seeger Fest took place on July 17 to 21, 2014, featuring Judy Collins, Peter Yarrow, Harry Belafonte, Anti-Flag, Michael Glabicki of Rusted Root, Steve Earle, Holly Near, Fred Hellerman, Guy Davis, DJ Logic, Paul Winter Consort, Dar Williams, DJ Kool Herc, The Rappers Delight Experience, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, David amram, Mik + Ruthy, Tom Chapin, James Maddock, The Chapin Sisters, Rebel Diaz, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, Elizabeth Mitchell, Emma’s Revolution, Toni Blackman, Kim & Reggie Harris, Magpie, Abrazos Orcchestra, Nyraine, George Wein, The Vanaver Caravan, White Tiger Society, Lorre Wyatt, AKIR, Adira & Alana Amram, Aurora Barnes, The Owens Brothers, The Tony Lee Thomas Band, Jay Ungar & Molly Mason, Ney York Sity Labor Chorus, Roland Moussa, Roots Revelators, Kristen Graves, Bob Reid, Hudson River Sloop Singers, Walkabout Clearwater Chorus, Betty & The baby Boomers, Work O’ The Weavers, Jacob Bernz * Sarah Armour, and Amanda Palmer.
• In 2006, thirteen folk music songs made popular by Pete Seeger have been reinterpreted by Bruce Springsteen in his fourteenth studio album: “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions“
• In 2014, Wepecket Island Records recorded a Pete Seeger tribute album called “For Pete’s Sake“

Awards

Seeger received many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including:

• Induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1972)
• The Eugene V. Debs Award (1979)
• The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award (1986)
• The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993)
• The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994)
• Kennedy Center Honor (1994)
• The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)
• The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal (1996)^[130]
• Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996)
• Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 for his record Pete (1997)
• The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba‘s highest honor for “his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism” (1999)
• The Schneider Family Book Award for his children’s picture book The Deaf Musicians. (2007)
• The Mid-Hudson Civic Center Hall of Fame (2008)- Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the first public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York not-for-profit family entertainment venue, close to Seeger’s home, in 1976. Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.
• Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 2008 for his record At 89 (2009)
• The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)
• The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2009)
• Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children of 2010 for his record album Tomorrow’s Children with the Rivertown Kids and Friends (2011)
• George Peabody Medal (2013)
• Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album of 2013 nomination for Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems (2014)
• Woody Guthrie Prize (2014) (inaugural recipient)

Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known also as “the father of American music”, was an American songwriter known primarily for his parlor and minstrel music. He wrote more than 200 songs, including “Oh! Susanna”, “Hard Times Come Again No More”, “Camptown Races”, “Old Folks at Home” (“Swanee River”), “My Old Kentucky Home”, “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”, “Old Black Joe”, and “Beautiful Dreamer”, and many of his compositions remain popular today. He has been identified as “the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century” and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries. Most of his handwritten music manuscripts are lost, but editions issued by publishers of his day feature in various collections.

Biography

There are many biographies on Foster, but details can differ widely. In addition, Foster wrote very little biographical information himself, and his brother Morrison Foster destroyed much of the information that he judged to reflect negatively upon the family.

Foster was born on July 4, 1826, to William Barclay Foster and Eliza Clayland Tomlinson Foster, with three older sisters and six older brothers. His parents were of Ulster Scots and English descent. He attended private academies in Allegheny, Athens, and Towanda, Pennsylvania and received an education in English grammar, diction, the classics, penmanship, Latin, Greek, and mathematics. The family lived in a northern city but they did not support the abolition of slavery.

Foster taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano. He did not have formal instruction in composition but he was helped by Henry Kleber (1816–97), a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh. In 1839, his brother William was serving his apprenticeship as an engineer at Towanda and thought that Stephen would benefit from being under his supervision. The site of the Camptown Races is 30 miles (48 km) from Athens and 15 miles from Towanda. His education included a brief period at Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, now Washington & Jefferson College. His tuition was paid, but he had little spending money. He left Canonsburg to visit Pittsburgh with another student and did not return.

Career

In 1846, Foster moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a bookkeeper with his brother Dunning’s steamship company. He wrote his first successful songs in 1848–1849, among them “Oh! Susanna”, which became an anthem of the California Gold Rush. In 1849, he published Foster’s Ethiopian Melodies, which included the successful song “Nelly Was a Lady” as made famous by the Christy Minstrels. A plaque marks the site of his residence in Cincinnati, where the Guilford School building is now located.
House in Hoboken, New Jersey where Foster is believed to have written “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” in 1854

Then he returned to Pennsylvania and signed a contract with the Christy Minstrels. It was during this period that he wrote most of his best-known songs: “Camptown Races” (1850), “Nelly Bly” (1850), “Ring de Banjo” (1851), “Old Folks at Home” (known also as “Swanee River”, 1851), “My Old Kentucky Home” (1853), “Old Dog Tray” (1853), and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” (1854), written for his wife Jane Denny McDowell.
A Pittsburgh Press illustration of the original headstone on Stephen Foster’s grave

Many of Foster’s songs were of the blackface minstrel show tradition popular at the time but now recognized as racist. He sought to “build up taste…among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order”.[citation needed] In the 1850s, he a*sociated with a Pittsburgh-area abolitionist leader named Charles Shiras, and wrote an abolitionist play himself.  Many of his songs had Southern themes, yet Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once, during his 1852 honeymoon.

Foster’s last four years were spent in New York City. There is little information on this period of his life, although family correspondence has been preserved.

Illness and death

Foster got sick with a fever in January 1864. Weakened, he fell in his hotel in the Bowery, cutting his neck. His writing partner George Cooper found him still alive but lying in a pool of blood. Foster died in Bellevue Hospital three days later at the age of 37. Other biographers describe different accounts of his death.

Historian JoAnne O’Connell speculates in her biography, The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster, that Foster may have killed himself, a common occurrence during the Civil War. George Cooper, who was with Foster until he died, said: “He lay there on the floor, naked, suffering horribly. He had wonderful big brown eyes, and they looked up at me with an appeal I can never forget. He whispered, ‘I’m done for.’” Unlike Foster’s brother Morrison, who was not in New York and said Foster was ill and cut his neck on a washbasin, Cooper mentioned no broken crockery and also said Foster had a “large knife” for cutting up apples and turnips. Morrison may have covered up Foster’s suicide. Evelyn Morneweck, Morrison’s daughter, also said the family would have covered up the suicide of their uncle if they could have.

As O’Connell and musicologist Ken Emerson have noted, several of the songs Foster wrote during the last years of his life foreshadow his death, such as “The Little Ballad Girl” and “Kiss Me Dear Mother Ere I Die.”Emerson says in his 2010 Stephen Foster and Co. that Foster’s injuries may have been “accidental or self-inflicted.”
Telegram that communicated Stephen Foster’s death addressed to his brother Morrison Foster

When Foster died, his leather wallet contained a scrap of paper that simply said, “Dear friends and gentle hearts”, along with 38 cents (one for each year of his life) in Civil War scrip and three pennies. The note is said to have inspired Bob Hilliard’s lyric for “Dear Hearts and Gentle People” (1949). Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. After his death, Morrison Foster became his “literary executor”. As such, he answered requests for copies of manuscripts, autographs, and biographical information. One of the best-loved of his works was “Beautiful Dreamer”, published shortly after his death.

Music

Foster grew up in a section of the city where many European immigrants had settled and was accustomed to hearing the music of the Italian, Scots-Irish, and German residents. He composed his first song when he was 14 and entitled it the “Tioga Waltz”. The first song that he had published was “Open thy Lattice Love” (1844). He wrote songs in support of drinking, such as “My Wife Is a Most Knowing Woman”, “Mr. and Mrs. Brown”, and “When the Bowl Goes Round”, while also composing temperance songs such as “Comrades Fill No Glass for Me” or “The Wife”. Foster also authored many church hymns, although the inclusion of his hymns in hymnals ended by 1910. Some of the hymns are “Seek and ye shall find”, “All around is bright and fair, While we work for Jesus”, and “Blame not those who weep and sigh”.  Several rare Civil War-era hymns by Foster were performed by The Old Stoughton Musical Society Chorus, including “The Pure, The Bright, The Beautiful”, “Over The River”, “Give Us This Day”, and “What Shall The Harvest Be?”

Foster usually sent his handwritten scores directly to his publishers. The publishers kept the sheet music manuscripts and did not give them to libraries nor return them to his heirs. Some of his original, hand-written scores were bought and put into private collections and the Library of Congress.

Popular songs

Foster’s songs, lyrics, and melodies have often been altered by publishers and performers. Ray Charles released a version of “Old Folks at Home” that was titled “Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ’Bout That River),” which became his first pop hit in November 1957.

“My Old Kentucky Home” is the official state song of Kentucky, adopted by the General Assembly on March 19, 1928. “Old Folks at Home” became the official state song of Florida, designated in 1935. The lyrics are widely regarded as racist today, however, so “Old Folks at Home” was modified with approval from the Stephen Foster Memorial. The modified song was kept as the official state song, while “Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)” was added as the state anthem.

Critics and controversies

From a modern perspective Foster’s compositions can be seen as disparaging to African Americans, or outright racist. Apologists have argued that Foster unveiled the realities of slavery in his work while also imparting some dignity to African Americans in his compositions, especially as he grew as an artist.[ Foster composed many songs that were used in minstrel shows. This form of public entertainment lampooned African Americans as buffoonish, superstitious, without a care, musical, lazy, and dim-witted. In the early 1830s, these minstrel shows gained popularity, and blackface minstrel shows were a separate musical art form by 1848, more readily accessible to the general public than opera.

Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum

In 1935, Henry Ford ceremonially presented a new addition to his historical collection of early American memorabilia in the “Home of Stephen Foster”. The structure was identified by notable historians of the time as being authentic and was then deconstructed and moved “piece by piece” from Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), to Greenfield Village, attached to the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan. Foster’s niece insisted that it was not his birthplace, and the claim was withdrawn in 1953. Greenfield Village still displays a structure that is identified as the birthplace of Stephen Foster.  The Foster family stated that the original Foster birthplace structure was torn down in 1865.

Legacy

Musical influence

• Many early filmmakers selected Foster’s songs for their work because his copyrights had expired and cost them nothing.
• Professor of Folklore and musician John Minton wrote a song titled “Stephen C. Foster’s Blues”.
• Erika M. Anderson, of the band EMA, refers to Foster’s “Camptown Races” in the song “California”, from past Life Martyred Saints (2011): “I bet my money on the bobtail nag/somebody bet on the bay.”
• The Firesign Theatre makes many references to Foster’s compositions in their CD, Boom Dot Bust (1999, Rhino Records)
• Larry Kirwan of Black 47 mixes the music of Foster with his own in the musical Hard Times, which earned a New York Times accolade in its original run: “a knockout entertainment”. Kirwan gives a contemporary interpretation of Foster’s troubled later years and sets it in the tumultuous time of the New York draft riots and the Irish–Negro relations of the period. A revival ran at the Cell Theater in New York in early 2014, and a revised version of the musical, called Paradise Square opened at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2018.
• Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song in 1970 titled “Your Love’s Return (Song for Stephen Foster)”
• Spike Jones recorded a comedy send-up “I Dream of Brownie in the Light Blue Jeans.”
• Humorist Stan Freberg imagined a 1950s style version of Foster’s music in “Rock Around Stephen Foster” and, with Harry Shearer, had a sketch about Foster having writer’s block in a bit from his “United States of America” project.
• Songwriter Tom Shaner mentions Stephen Foster meeting up with Eminem’s alter ego “Slim Shady” on the Bowery in Shaner’s song “Rock & Roll is A Natural Thing.”
• The music of Stephen Foster was an early influence on the Australian composer Percy Grainger, who stated that hearing “Camptown Races” sung by his mother was one of his earliest musical recollections. He went on to write a piece entitled “Tribute to Foster,” a composition for mixed choir, orchestra, and pitched wine glasses based on the melody of “Camptown Races.”
• Art Garfunkel was cast as Stephen Foster and sang his songs in an elementary school play in Queens, New York
• Neil Sedaka wrote and recorded a song about Foster and released it on his 1975 album, The Hungry Years.
• Alternative country duo The Handsome Family‘s song “Wildebeest,” from their 2013 album Wilderness, is about Foster’s death.

Television

• Two television shows about the life of Foster and his childhood friend (and later wife) Jane MacDowell were produced in Japan, the first in 1979 with 13 episodes, and the second from 1992 to 1993 with 52 episodes; both were titled Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair after the song of the same name.
• In the Honeymooners episode, “The $99,000 Answer,” Ed Norton warms up on the piano by playing the opening to “Swanee River.” Later, when Ralph returns to the game show, the first question asked is “Who is the composer of ‘Swanee River’?” Ralph nervously responds, “Ed Norton,” and loses the game.
• In a “Fractured Fairy Tales” segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Aladdin finds a lamp with a female genie with light brown hair, who immediately asks, “Are you Stephen Foster?”

Film

• Three Hollywood films have been made of Foster’s life: Harmony Lane (1935) with Douglass Montgomery, Swanee River (1939) with Don Ameche, and I Dream of Jeanie (1952), with Bill Shirley. The 1939 production was one of Twentieth Century Fox‘s more ambitious efforts, filmed in Technicolor; the other two were low-budget affairs made by B-movie studios.
• In the film Tombstone (1993), Billy Clanton (played by Thomas Haden Church) tries to bait Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer), who is playing a Chopin nocturne on the piano, by saying, “Is that ‘Old Dog Tray’? That sounds like ‘Old Dog Tray’ to me.” When the goad fails, Clanton asks whether Doc knows any other songs, like “‘Camptown Races?’, ‘Oh Susanna’, “You know, Stephen stinkin’ Foster?!?”
• In the film A Million Ways to Die in the West, Seth MacFarlane‘s character Albert can’t get Foster’s song “If You’ve Only Got a Mustache”, from the previous scene, out of his head. Charlize Theron‘s character suggests singing a different song, to which he replies, “There are only like 3 songs,” and she adds “And they’re all by Stephen Foster”.
• In the 1949 film Mighty Joe Young the character Jill Young (Terry Moore) is able to calm her pet 12-foot-tall gorilla by whistling or playing “Beautiful Dreamer“.

Other events

• “Stephen Foster! Super Saturday” is a day of thoroughbred racing during the Spring/Summer meet at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. During the call to the post, selections of Stephen Foster songs are played by the track bugler, Steve Buttleman. The day is headlined by the Stephen Foster Handicap, a Grade I dirt race for older horses at 9 furlongs.
• 36 U.S.C. §140 designates January 13 as Stephen Foster Memorial Day, a United States National Observance. In 1936, Congress authorized the minting of a silver half dollar in honor of the Cincinnati Musical Center. Foster was featured on the obverse of the coin.
• “Stephen Foster Music Camp” is a summer music camp held on EKU’s campus of Richmond, Kentucky. The camp offers piano courses, choir, band, and orchestra ensembles.

Art

• A public sculpture by Giuseppe Moretti honoring Foster and commemorating his song “Uncle Ned” sat in close proximity to the Stephen Foster Memorial until 2018. The statue was removed following complaints about the banjo-playing slave seated next to Foster.
• In Alms Park in Cincinnati, overlooking the Ohio River, there is a seated statue of him.
• The Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, overlooking the Harlem River, has a bronze bust of him by artist Walter Hancock. Added in 1940, he is among only 98 honorees from 15 classes of distinguished men and women.
• In My Old Kentucky Home State Park in Bardstown, Kentucky, a musical, called The Stephen Foster Story has been performed since 1958. There is also a statue of him next to the Federal Hill mansion, where he visited relatives and which is the inspiration for My Old Kentucky Home. A painting by Howard Chandler Christy entitled, “Stephen Foster and the Angel of Genius” is on display in the park’s art collection. The painting inspired Florence Foster Jenkins to author a tableau in which she personally plays the role of the angel depicted in Christy’s painting. The scene was featured in the film Florence Foster Jenkins in 2016.

Accolades and honors

Foster is honored on the University of Pittsburgh campus with the Stephen Foster Memorial, a landmark building that houses the Stephen Foster Memorial Museum, the Center for American Music, as well as two theaters: the Charity Randall Theatre and Henry Heymann Theatre, both performance spaces for Pitt’s Department of Theater Arts. It is the largest repository for original Stephen Foster compositions, recordings, and other memorabilia his songs have inspired worldwide.

Two state parks are named in Foster’s honor: the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida and Stephen C. Foster State Park in Georgia. Both parks are on the Suwannee River. Stephen Foster Lake at Mount Pisgah State Park in Pennsylvania is also named in his honor.

One state park is named in honor of Foster’s songs, My Old Kentucky Home, an historic mansion formerly named Federal Hill, located in Bardstown, Kentucky where Stephen is said to have been an occasional visitor according to his brother, Morrison Foster. The park dedicated a bronze statue in honor of Stephen’s work.

The Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh) Historical Society, together with the Allegheny Cemetery Historical Association, hosts the annual Stephen Foster Music and Heritage Festival (Doo Dah Days!). Held the first weekend of July, Doo Dah Days! celebrates the life and music of one of the most influential songwriters in America’s history. His home in the Lawrenceville Section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, still remains on Penn Avenue nearby the Stephen Foster Community Center.

A 1900 statue of Foster by Giuseppe Moretti was located in Schenley Plaza, in Pittsburgh, from 1940 until 2018. On the unanimous recommendation of the Pittsburgh Art Commission, the statue was removed on April 26, 2018. Its new home has not yet been determined. It has a long reputation as the most controversial public art in Pittsburgh “for its depiction of an African-American banjo player at the feet of the seated composer. Critics say the statue glorifies white appropriation of black culture, and depicts the vacantly smiling musician in a way that is at best condescending and at worst racist.”  A city-appointed Task Force on Women in Public Art called for the statue to be replaced with one honoring an African American woman with ties to the Pittsburgh community. The Task Force held a series of community forums in Pittsburgh to collect public feedback on the statue replacement and circulated an online form which allowed the public to vote for one of seven previously selected candidates or write in an alternate suggestion. However, the Task Force on Women in Public Art and the Pittsburgh Art Commission have not reached an agreement as to who will be commemorated or if the statue will stay in the Schenley Plaza location.

Mack David (July 5, 1912 – December 30, 1993) was an American lyricist and songwriter, best known for his work in film and television, with a career spanning the period between the early 1940s and the early 1970s. David was credited with writing lyrics or music or both for over one thousand songs.  He was particularly well known for his work on the Disney films Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland, and for the mostly-English lyrics  through which Édith Piaf’s signature song “La Vie en rose” gained much of its familiarity among native speakers of English.

David was the elder brother of American lyricist and songwriter Hal David.  David died in 1993 in his Rancho Mirage, California home and his remains are buried at the Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

Life and career

David was born on July 5, 1912 in New York City to a Jewish family. David originally planned to become an attorney and attended Cornell University and St. John’s University Law School. Despite these original goals, in the mid-1940s, David began writing songs for New York’s Tin Pan Alley. These initial successes prompted David to move to Hollywood, California, to work in the film and television industries. David enjoyed considerable success, including eight Academy Award nominations for “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, which he, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston wrote for Walt Disney’s Cinderella (1950), followed by the title songs from The Hanging Tree (1959), Bachelor in Paradise (1961), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), “The Ballad of Cat Ballou” from Cat Ballou (1965) and “My Wishing Doll” from Hawaii (1966). David was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975. David’s “most remunerative”[6] song, “Sunflower”, was published in 1948, and Frank Sinatra turned it into a hit. Jerry Herman’s hit theme song for Hello, Dolly!, composed over a decade later, used four bars of David’s “Sunflower”. When David sued Herman for copyright infringement, Herman settled out of court with David (for a reputed $250,000), claiming he had never heard David’s “Sunflower” prior to working on “Hello, Dolly!”

Academy Award nominations

• 1950 “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” (with Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman) from Cinderella
• 1959 “The Hanging Tree” (with Jerry Livingston) from The Hanging Tree
• 1961 “Bachelor in Paradise” (with Henry Mancini) from Bachelor in Paradise
• 1962 “Walk on the Wild Side” (with Elmer Bernstein) from Walk on the Wild Side
• 1963 “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (with Ernest Gold) from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
• 1964 “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” (with Frank De Vol) from Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte
• 1965 “The Ballad of Cat Ballou” (with Jerry Livingston) from Cat Ballou
• 1966 “My Wishing Doll” (with Elmer Bernstein) from Hawaii

Composer and lyricist of popular songs

In addition to his many Academy Award nominations, David also had a number of hit songs, including:

“Rain, Rain, Go Away” (1932)
Duke Ellington’s “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So” (1939)
“I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine”, sung by Patti Page in 1950 (with subsequent cover versions), later covered by Elvis Presley as a rockabilly-styled tune in 1954
“The Unbirthday Song” (with Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman) from Alice in Wonderland (1951)
The Shirelles’ “Baby It’s You” (1961 with Burt Bacharach and Luther Dixon (credited as Barney Williams))
“(Beware of) The Blob” (a charted hit by The 5 Blobs; film theme song to 1958 camp-horror classic The Blob, starring Steve McQueen, with Burt Bacharach
“It Must Be Him” (1967 with Gilbert Becaud)
Theme song to Casper the Friendly Ghost (1955 with Jerry Livingston)
“Trick or Treat for Halloween” (with Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman) from Trick or Treat (1952)

David collaborated with many composers, including Raymond Scott, Al Hoffman, Alex Kramer, Count Basie, Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini, and Jerry Livingston, on numerous songs for stage and screen, including Casper the Friendly Ghost, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6 and “This Is It” (for the 1960s The Bugs Bunny Show).

Perhaps David’s most popular lyrics were written for “La Vie en rose”, a French song with lyrics by Édith Piaf and music by Louiguy (Louis Guglielmi), which was Piaf’s signature song. Although David did not write an English translation of Piaf’s lyrics, his words captured the spirit of the song; his version was performed by artists such as Louis Armstrong. The song was recorded by over eighty international singers and musicians and been featured in several dozen motion pictures.

David’s song “Candy” (co-written with Whitney and Kramer) was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald for her 1968 album 30 by Ella.

Work on Broadway

• Bright Lights of 1944 (1943) – revue – lyricist
• Gilbert Bécaud on Broadway (1966) – concert – featured lyricist
• Molly (1973) – musical – co-lyricist
• Sophisticated Ladies (1981) – revue – featured songwriter for “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So”
• Swing! (1999) – revue – featured songwriter for “Candy

Inventor

David had a varied interest in musical composition. In 1975, according to the New York Times in David’s obituary: “Mr. David was granted a patent for inventing an electronic system for composing songs from fractional recordings. The system, which included playback units, stored records of lyrics and melodies. The operator selected words and music that fit together and recorded the combination.”

Alecia Beth Moore (born September 8, 1979), known professionally as Pink (stylized as P!nk), is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, record producer, and spokesperson. She was originally a member of the girl group Choice. In 1995, LaFace Records saw potential in P!nk and offered her a solo recording contract. Her R&B-influenced debut studio album Can’t Take Me Home (2000) was certified double-platinum in the United States and spawned two Billboard Hot 100 top-ten songs: “There You Go” and “Most Girls”. She gained further recognition with the collaborative single “Lady Marmalade” from the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack, which topped many charts worldwide. Refocusing her sound to pop rock with her second studio album Missundaztood (2001), the album sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and yielded the international number-one songs “Get the Party Started”, “Don’t Let Me Get Me”, and “Just Like a Pill”.

While Pink’s third studio album, Try This (2003), sold significantly less than her previous work, it earned her the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She returned to the top of record charts with her fourth and fifth studio albums, I’m Not Dead (2006) and Funhouse (2008), which generated the top-ten entries “Who Knew” and “U + Ur Hand”, as well as the number-one single “So What”. Pink’s sixth studio album, The Truth About Love (2012), was her first Billboard 200 number-one album and spawned her fourth US number-one single, “Just Give Me a Reason”. In 2014, Pink recorded a collaborative album, Rose Ave., with Canadian musician Dallas Green under a folk music duo named You+Me. Her next studio albums, Beautiful Trauma (2017) and Hurts 2B Human (2019), both debuted at atop the Billboard 200 chart, with the former becoming the world’s third best-selling album of the year.

Recognized for her distinctive, raspy voice and acrobatic stage presence,[1][2] Pink has sold 90 million records worldwide as of 2020,[citation needed] making her one of the world’s best-selling music artists.[3] Her career accolades include three Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award and seven MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. In 2009, Billboard named Pink the Pop Songs Artist of the Decade. Pink was also the second most-played female solo artist in the United Kingdom during the 2000s decade, behind only Madonna. VH1 ranked her number 10 on their list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music, while Billboard awarded her the Woman of the Year award in 2013. At the 63rd annual BMI Pop Awards, she received the BMI President’s Award for “her outstanding achievement in songwriting and global impact on pop culture and the entertainment industry.”

Early life and family

Alecia Beth Moore was born on September 8, 1979,[5] in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to emergency room nurse Judith “Judy” Moore (née Kugel)[6] and insurance salesman James “Jim” Moore.[7][8][9][10] She has described herself as an “Irish-German-Lithuanian-Jew”,[11] and self-identifies as Jewish.[12][13] Although a healthy baby at birth, she quickly developed asthma that plagued her through her early years.[14] When Pink was a toddler, her parents began having marital problems and divorced before she was 10.[15]

Pink was trained as a competitive gymnast between the ages 4 and 12.[16][17] She developed her voice early in life. She attended Central Bucks High School West.[7] In high school, Pink joined her first band, Middleground, but it disbanded upon losing a Battle of the Bands competition. As a teenager, she wrote lyrics as an outlet for her feelings, and her mother commented, “Her initial writings were always very introspective. Some of it was very black, and very deep, almost worrisome.”

Career

1995–1998: Career beginnings

Pink began performing in Philadelphia clubs when she was about 14 years old. She adopted her stagename, “Pink”, around this time. She had that nickname for quite some time by that point, and initially it had been “a mean thing”.[18] She took that name from the character “Mr. Pink” in Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs. At 14, she was convinced to audition to become a member of the all-female group Basic Instinct, and earned a spot in the lineup. Ultimately, the group disbanded without releasing any material.[19] At 16, Pink and two other teenage girls, Sharon Flanagan[20] and Chrissy Conway, formed the R&B group Choice. A copy of their first song, “Key to My Heart”, was sent to LaFace Records in Atlanta, Georgia, where L.A. Reid overheard it and arranged for the group to fly there so he could see them perform. After that, he signed them to a record deal. Since the three girls were under 18 at the time, their parents had to cosign the contract. The group relocated to Atlanta and recorded an album, which was never released, but “Key to My Heart” appeared on the soundtrack to the 1996 film Kazaam. During a Christmas party, Reid gave Pink an ultimatum: go solo or go home. Choice disbanded in 1998.

1999–2002: Can’t Take Me Home and Missundaztood

After Choice disbanded, Pink signed a recording contract with LaFace Records and began working on her debut solo album with producers such as Babyface, Kandi Burruss and Tricky Stewart.[22] Her debut single, “There You Go”, was released in February 2000 and became her first top-ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it peaked at number seven.[23] Internationally, the song also charted inside the top ten in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.[24] In April, Pink’s debut album, Can’t Take Me Home, was released to commercial success. It peaked 26 on the Billboard 200 chart, and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for two million units shipped in the United States.[25][26] It also went platinum in the United Kingdom and multi-platinum in Australia and Canada, while selling over four million copies worldwide.[27][28] Critical reception to the album was mixed.[29] The album’s second single, “Most Girls”, peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100[23] and became her first chart-topping single in Australia.[30] “You Make Me Sick” was released as the final single and reached number 33 on the Hot 100.[23]

Pink won the trophy for Female New Artist of the Year at the 2000 Billboard Music Awards.[31] She was billed as a supporting act on the North American leg of NSYNC’s No Strings Attached Tour throughout the summer of 2000.[32] In 2001, Pink, alongside singers Christina Aguilera and Mýa as well as rapper Lil’ Kim, performed a cover of “Lady Marmalade” for the soundtrack of the film Moulin Rouge!. In the US it became the most successful airplay-only single in history, as well as Pink’s first #1 single.[33] The success of the single was helped by its music video, which was popular on music channels[34] and won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.[35] The song won Pink’s first Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals[36]

Tired of being marketed as another cookie cutter pop act, as well as eager both to be seen as a more serious songwriter and musician and to perform the type of music she wanted to, Pink took her sound in a new direction and sought more artistic or creative control during the recording of her second album, Missundaztood.[37] She recruited Linda Perry, former singer of 4 Non Blondes (one of Pink’s favorite groups in her teenage years).[38] Pink moved into Perry’s Los Angeles home where the pair spent several months writing songs for the album.[39] Perry co-wrote and co-produced the album with Dallas Austin and Scott Storch, and according to VH1’s Driven program, Antonio “LA” Reid of LaFace Records was not initially content with the new music Pink was making. The album, named Missundaztood because of Pink’s belief that people had a wrong image of her,[38] was released in November 2001.[40]

“Get the Party Started” was released as the lead single and peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. It also became a worldwide hit, reaching number one in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Romania, and Spain, as well as spending four weeks at the top of the European Hot 100 Singles chart.[41] At the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, its music video won in the categories of Best Female Video and Best Dance Video. The album’s other singles—”Don’t Let Me Get Me”, “Just Like a Pill”, and “Family Portrait”—were also radio and chart successes, with “Just Like a Pill” becoming Pink’s second number-one hit in the United Kingdom. Missundaztood remains Pink’s best-selling record with over 13 million copies sold worldwide.[42][43] According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Missundaztood was the eighth best-selling album of 2002 globally.[44] Pink won a World Music Award for Best Selling American Pop/Rock Female Artist.[45] She was also nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 45th Grammy Awards. Faith Hill’s 2002 album, Cry, features a song co-written by Pink and Perry (“If You’re Gonna Fly Away”). In 2002, Pink headlined a tour of America, Europe and Australia, the Party Tour, as well as becoming a supporting act for Lenny Kravitz’s American tour. Pink was named the Top Female Billboard 200 Artist of 2002.

2003–2007: Try This and I’m Not Dead

In mid-2003, Pink contributed the song “Feel Good Time” to the soundtrack of the film Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, in which she had a cameo appearance as a motocross race ramp owner/promoter. Featuring electronic music artist William Orbit, it became Pink’s first single to miss the top 40 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, although it was a hit in Europe and in Australia. It was later included on non-U.S. editions of Pink’s third album, Try This, which was released on November 11, 2003. Eight of the 13 tracks were co-written with Tim Armstrong of the band Rancid. Linda Perry was featured on the album as a writer and musician. Despite the album reaching the top ten on album charts in the US, in Canada, in the UK, and in Australia, sales were considerably lower than those of Missundaztood. However, it did go platinum in the US. The singles “Trouble” and “God Is a DJ” did not reach the US top 40 but did reach the top ten in other countries, and “Last to Know” was released as a single outside North America. “Trouble” earned Pink the Grammy award in Best Female Rock Vocal Performance category at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, and “Feel Good Time” was nominated for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.[36] She toured extensively on the Try This Tour through Europe and Australia, where the album was better received.

During the same period, Pink co-wrote the song “Take A Picture” with Damon Elliott which was released on Mýa’s album Moodring. In 2005, Pink collaborated with Lisa Marie Presley on the track “Shine”, released on Presley’s second album Now What. Pink took a break to write the songs for her fourth album, I’m Not Dead, which she said she titled as such because “It’s about being alive and feisty and not sitting down and shutting up even though people would like you to.”[47] Pink worked with producers Max Martin, Billy Mann, Christopher Rojas, Butch Walker, Lukasz Gottwald, and Josh Abraham on the album. The album’s release through LaFace Records in April 2006 was a substantial success throughout the world, particularly in Australia. The album reached the top ten in the US, the top five in the UK, No. 1 in Germany, and was No. 1 in Australia for two non-consecutive weeks.

The album’s lead single, “Stupid Girls”, was Pink’s biggest US hit since 2002 and earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Its music video, in which she parodies celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Paris Hilton,[48] won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Pop Video. Subsequent singles “Who Knew” and “U + Ur Hand” were substantial hits in Australia and Europe, and they later became top ten singles in the US. in 2007. The non-US singles were “Nobody Knows”, a minor hit in the UK, Australia and Germany; “Dear Mr. President”, an open letter to the US President George W. Bush which featured the Indigo Girls and became a No. 1 hit in Belgium as well as a top five hit in Germany, Australia, and other countries; “Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)”, a UK top 40 and Australian top five entry; and “‘Cuz I Can”. The album has sold over 1.3 million copies in the US, as well as over 700,000 copies in Australia. The album proved very popular in Australia, with six top five singles and a record-breaking 62 weeks in the top 10; so far the album has gone 10 times platinum.

In support of the album, Pink embarked on the world I’m Not Dead Tour, for which ticket sales in Australia were particularly high; she sold approximately 307,000 tickets in Australia, giving her the record for the biggest concert attendance for an arena tour by a female artist.[49] One of the London shows on the tour was taped and released as a DVD, Pink: Live from Wembley Arena, where she sang Linda Perry’s “Whats Up?”. In 2006, Pink was chosen to sing the theme song for NBC Sunday Night Football, “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night”, which is a take on “I Hate Myself for Loving You” by Joan Jett.[50] She contributed a cover of Rufus’s “Tell Me Something Good” to the soundtrack of the film Happy Feet, and lent her name to PlayStation to promote the PSP, a special pink edition of which was released.[51]

Pink collaborated with several other artists in 2006 and 2007, when she opened for Justin Timberlake on the American leg of his FutureSex/LoveShow Tour. She sang on the Indigo Girls album Despite Our Differences. She was featured on India.Arie’s song “I Am Not My Hair” from the Lifetime Television film Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy. She wrote a song, “I Will”, for Natalia’s third album, Everything and More. “Outside of You”, another song she co-wrote, was recorded by dance-pop singer Hilary Duff and released on her 2007 album Dignity. Pink recorded a song with Annie Lennox and twenty-two other female acts for Lennox’s fourth solo studio album, Songs of Mass Destruction; titled “Sing”, it was written as an anthem for HIV/AIDS, according to Lennox’s website.[52] In December 2007, a special edition Pink Box, which comprises her second to fourth albums and the DVD Live in Europe, was released in Australia. It reached the top twenty on the albums chart and was certified Gold, selling over 35,000 units.

2008–2011: Funhouse and Greatest Hits… So Far!!!

On August 7, 2008, Pink’s single “So What” was leaked online, and radio stations across Australia were quick to give it massive airplay. Less than six hours after the leak, “So What” was voted No.1 on Nova 100 Melbourne and shot to No.1 on the Today Network’s national radio Hot30 Countdown.[54] On August 22, Pink announced a new track, titled “Crystal Ball”. On September 18, 2008, “So What” became her second number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100.[55] Pink was the guest of honor at the 2008 ARIA Music Awards, which were held in Sydney, Australia, in October 2008. There she sang “So What”. On November 3, 2008, Funhouse debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA charts. In Australia it sold over 86,000 units in its first week, and was eventually certified eleven times platinum.

On November 23, 2008, Pink performed “Sober”, the second single from Funhouse, at the American Music Awards. The third single was “Please Don’t Leave Me”, with a video directed by Dave Meyers. In Australia, “Bad Influence” was released as the album’s fourth single[57] as a promotional single for her Funhouse Tour, and “Funhouse” was later released as the fifth single. However, “Bad Influence” was not released as a single in Europe until March 2010, which was after “Funhouse” had been released. In May 2009, Pink released a four-CD box set of her first four albums; this set peaked at No. 7 in the UK Album Chart.[58] In 2009, Pink performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.[59]

Pink’s Funhouse Tour started in France on February 24, 2009, and continued through Europe until mid-May, with supporting act Raygun. Pink then performed a series of shows in Australia, all of which sold out. Between May and August 2009, she performed for a total of more than 600,000 Australian fans at 58 shows around the country.[60]

On September 13, 2009, Pink performed “Sober” while doing a trapeze act at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, where she was nominated for Best Female Video for “So What”.[61] On January 31, 2010, Pink did another circus act in the form of aerial silks at the 2010 Grammy Awards, this time performing the song “Glitter in the Air”. She received a standing ovation. In 2013, Billboard ranked the performance as the best between 2000 and 2012.[62] Billboard recognized Pink as the Pop Songs Artist of the Decade.[63] According to the BBC countdown compiled by PPL, Pink was the second most-played female solo artist in the United Kingdom during the 2000s decade, behind Madonna.[64]

Pink was a soloist in the remake of the 1985 charity single, “We Are the World”. She collaborated on the 2010 Herbie Hancock album, The Imagine Project, in which she sang Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” with John Legend and contributed vocals to John Lennon’s “Imagine” with Seal, India.Arie, Jeff Beck, Konono Nº1, Oumou Sangaré, and others.[65] The last collaboration earned Pink a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.[36] She was featured on a track titled “Won’t Back Down” for Eminem’s 2010 album Recovery; Eminem explained that he included Pink because he “felt like she would smash this record.”[66]

On July 15, 2010, during a concert in Nurnberg, Germany, Pink was preparing to end her concert with an aerial acrobatic routine when she was pulled offstage and onto a barricade below. Her left-side flywire had been activated before the right-side one had been properly attached to her harness.[67] She was taken to a local hospital where it was determined that she had not been seriously injured.[68] Pink sold a total of 3,000,000 concert tickets on her 2009–10 worldwide tour, according to a statement on behalf of UK tour promoter Marshall Arts.[69]

In the first week of October 2010, Pink released “Raise Your Glass”, the first single from her first compilation album, Greatest Hits… So Far!!!. The song celebrates a decade since Pink’s debut in 2000 and is dedicated to her fans who have been supporting her over the years. The song reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Pink’s tenth Top 10 hit, and her third number-one on the chart.[70] She released the compilation album on November 12, 2010, and almost a month later she released the album’s second single, named “Fuckin’ Perfect”. The song reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100,[71] and peaked at number one on the airplay charts in Germany.[72] On the German singles chart, the song entered at number seven in March 2011.[73]

Pink voiced the character of Gloria in Happy Feet Two, which premiered on November 18, 2011 in the United States. She also sings the movie’s theme song, “Bridge of Light”.[74]

On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced that it would be disbanding Jive Records, along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, Pink and all other artists previously signed to the labels would release any future material through RCA Records.

2012–2015: The Truth About Love and You+Me

In February 2012, Pink confirmed that she was in the writing process for her next studio album, The Truth About Love. She was scheduled to perform at a fundraiser for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama that June, but had to cancel her performance after she was hospitalized and underwent the removal of her gallbladder.[76] The Truth About Love was preceded with the release of its lead single, “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)”, in July.[77] The single peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100, while reaching number one in Australia and Hungary, and the top five in Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Released in September, The Truth About Love made its debut atop the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 281,000, making it her first number-one album in the United States.[78] It also topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and Switzerland,[79] and became the world’s sixth best-selling album of 2012 according to the IFPI. The album was certified double platinum by the RIAA for two million copies shipped and has sold over seven million copies worldwide.[80] The Truth About Love received positive response from music critics and was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.[81]

“Try” was released as the second single from The Truth About Love in October 2012 and became a worldwide top-ten hit, peaking at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100. In February 2013, Pink released the fourth single, “Just Give Me a Reason”, featuring guest vocals by Nate Ruess of fun. It became the most successful single from The Truth About Love, topping the record charts in more than 20 countries worldwide and becoming Pink’s fourth number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100. According to the IFPI, the song was the fourth best-selling digital single of 2013 with 9.9 million copies sold worldwide.[82] The song won the Billboard Mid-Year Award for Favorite Hot 100 No.1 Song, and garnered two nominations for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Song of the Year at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.[83] Three further singles, “True Love”, “Walk of Shame”, and “Are We All We Are”, was released throughout 2013 to less commercial success. On February 13, 2013, Pink kicked off her sixth tour, known as The Truth About Love Tour, in Phoenix, Arizona.[84] Billboard released a statement on June 14, announcing that Pink held the No. 1 spot on their Hot Tours chart, as the American leg of her Truth About Love Tour grossed over $23.6 million.[85] She still held the title a week later, as the European leg grossed $30.7 million.[86]

In addition to her work for The Truth About Love, Pink appeared on the track “Guns and Roses” on T.I.’s album Trouble Man: Heavy Is the Head.[87] The song has been certified Gold by the ARIA for sales of 35,000 digital downloads shipped in Australia.[88][89] She also wrote two songs, “I Walk Alone” and “Lie to Me”, for Cher’s new album, Closer to the Truth.[90][91][92] Pink starred as a sex addict alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Mark Ruffalo in the 2013 movie Thanks for Sharing.[93] The official trailer was released on June 27 and the movie premièred on September 20, 2013.[94] Her legal name, Alecia Moore, is used for the movie credits. Her role as Dede was heavily praised by critics. rogerebert.com commented on her performance saying “Of all the cast here, the least experienced is the pop singer Pink, yet she does the best acting in the film: natural, a little harsh, a little unstable. Pink, like Macy Gray in her Lee Daniels movie roles, knows instinctively how to behave on camera by just pretending that the camera isn’t there.”

Billboard named Pink Woman of the Year 2013.[96] In December, the magazine also named The Truth About Love Tour the 3rd best selling tour of 2013 with $147.9 million in ticket sales; falling only behind Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour.[97] Also in Billboard’s end of year charts, Pink was ranked the 6th top artist of 2013 and she scored her highest charting end-of-year song and album; with Just Give Me a Reason sitting at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and The Truth About Love placing at number 8 on Billboard 200.[98][99][100] In Australia, Pink has had an album placed at number one or two in the ARIA End of Year Albums Chart for six out of the past seven years as The Truth About Love topped the chart for two years in a row.[101] She was the 9th top grossing music artist of 2013, with $20,072,072.32 earned.[102] RCA Records later announced that they have signed Pink for a multi-album deal that will last for years to come. The singer was quoted about the deal saying “I am super-duper excited to continue onwards and upwards with RCA and my team there”.[103]

It was announced in September 2014, that Pink and Dallas Green, lead singer of City and Colour, worked together on a collaborative album, under the band name You+Me. The album, titled Rose Ave., was released on October 14, 2014.[104] The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the US Folk Albums chart.[105][106]

In August 2015, Pink recorded the theme song for the 13th season of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The song, “Today’s the Day”, was performed during the show’s premiere week in New York City on September 10, 2015.

2016–present: Beautiful Trauma, Hurts 2B Human and hiatus

It was announced in February 2016 that Pink will cover a Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, for the upcoming Netflix original series Beat Bugs.[108] In the same month, it was announced that she had recorded a cover of “White Rabbit” for the movie Alice Through the Looking Glass, while in April it was revealed that she contributed the song “Just like Fire” to the soundtrack of the movie.[109][110] In Australia, it topped the ARIA Charts.[111] The following July, it was announced that Pink had written a song for French-Canadian singer Celine Dion called “Recovering” for inclusion on her upcoming English-language album.[112] Pink provided guest vocals on country singer Kenny Chesney’s single “Setting the World on Fire” which was released on August 1, 2016. The single topped on the Billboard Hot Country Songs and went platinum in the United States and Canada.[113][114][115] On March 10, 2017, Pink teamed up with Stargate and Australian star Sia on the former’s debut single, “Waterfall”.

Pink took a break to write songs for her upcoming seventh album. In June 2017, Pink confirmed that she was making her next studio album.[116] On July 17, 2017, she announced via her official Twitter account that the video shoot for the first single will take place the following week.[117] “What About Us”, the lead single from Pink’s seventh studio album, Beautiful Trauma, was released on August 10, 2017[118] and reached number one in Australia.[111] The album was released on October 13, 2017 and became the third best-selling album of the year worldwide.[119][120] On August 27, 2017, Pink received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards. She also performed a medley of some of her hits, including her new single, “What About Us”, before accepting the award, which was presented to her by Ellen DeGeneres. “What About Us” reached number one on the Adult Pop Songs chart, earning Pink her ninth leader on the chart, breaking her out of a tie with Katy Perry for the solo female artist with the most number-ones in the chart’s history and placing her in second place amongst all acts.[121] The song received one nomination at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Pop Solo Performance. “Beautiful Trauma” was released on November 21, 2017, as the second single from Beautiful Trauma to less commercial success, reaching top thirty in Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and Scotland. While it only managed to peak at number seventy-eight on the Billboard Hot 100, it topped on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart.[122] On December 5, 2017, rapper Eminem revealed that Pink would be collaborating on the song “Need Me” for his ninth studio album Revival.[123] The album received the nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album erned Pink’s 20th nomination at the Annual Grammy Awards.

Although sick with influenza, Pink sang the U.S. national anthem ahead of Super Bowl LII, a dream she had had since, as a child, seeing Whitney Houston sing at Super Bowl XXV in 1991.[124] On March 1, 2018, Pink started her seventh concert tour, the Beautiful Trauma World Tour, which was scheduled to visit North America and Oceania until September 8, 2018. She later decided to extend the tour until May 2019 including Europe.[125] On April 6, 2018, she was featured on Elton John’s Revamp & Restoration, singing the song “Bennie and the Jets”, with Elton John himself and Logic.[126]

On April 17, 2018, People teased its 2018 “Most Beautiful” cover star by calling her “a performer, mother and role model whose honesty, humour, confidence and sheer star power make her one of the most beloved and fascinating entertainers on the planet.” The next day the magazine revealed the cover, which features Pink with her two kids Willow and Jameson. The magazine issue was named the “beautiful issue.” Similar covers had featured Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston.[127][128] On October 23, 2018, Pink released her version of the song “A Million Dreams” from the upcoming “The Greatest Showman – Reimagined” album, a reworking of the soundtrack with contributions from various artists including Kelly Clarkson, Kesha, Jess Glynne and Missy Elliott. Pink’s daughter, Willow Sage Hart is also featured on the album performing the song’s reprise.[129]

On February 5, 2019, Pink received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame;[130] she further announced the release of her eighth album, Hurts 2B Human, which was released on April 26, 2019. The album’s lead single, “Walk Me Home” was released on February 20, 2019.[131][132] On the release date, Pink performed the song alongside a medley of her biggest hits at the BRIT Awards, including “Try”, “Just Give Me a Reason”, with Fun. lead singer Nate Ruess, and “What About Us”. She was also awarded with the Outstanding Contribution to Music Award at the ceremony.[133][134] In December 2019, Pollstar named her Artist of the Year.[135] Pink confirmed that in 2020 she will take a break from music to focus on her family.

Artistry

Influences

Pink has named Madonna and Janis Joplin as her biggest musical influences.[137] In a 2000 interview with MTV, Pink said that during her childhood she used to think that she was Madonna’s daughter, saying: “I’ve always been the type of person that followed Madonna like a lost puppy. I didn’t speak to my mother for a year, because I was sure she adopted me.”[138] She stated, “Madonna has always been an inspiration for me… I was a fan right from the first time I heard ‘Holiday’.”[139] Pink also won her first talent show singing Madonna’s “Oh Father”.[140] Of Janis Joplin, Pink said “She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn’t culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie.”[139] In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin “a woman who inspired me when everyone else … didn’t!”[141]

As a child, she admired the leader of 4 Non Blondes, Linda Perry, whom she would later track down and form a close relationship with on her second album. She said:

“Literally this woman spoke to me. Being in pain and being on drugs and being misunderstood and, yeah she spoke my language. Without having to say anything, she could sing a note and it was what I was feeling. I used to sit at three or four o’ clock in the morning, tripping on whatever, screaming 4 Non Blondes out the window until the cops were called”.

Other influences for Pink include Joan Jett, Mary J. Blige, Billy Joel, and Whitney Houston.

Voice and timbre

Throughout her career, Pink has received acclaim from critics for her powerful vocal prowess.[145][146][147][148] Her voice has been described as “raspy”, “husky”, and “distinctive.”[149] James Montgomery of MTV calls her “a deceptively good singer … who can out-sing almost anyone”.[148] The Guardian describes her voice as “prodigious”.[150] Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times labeled her “a powerhouse vocalist”.[151] Pink has also been noted for her “raw”, “soulful” voice and her ability to emote. The Inquirer defined her voice as “husky” and “gutsy”, further complimenting her for developing into a “powerfully emotive vocalist”, while comparing her to Janis Joplin.[152] The Star Tribune commends her by writing, “Her slightly raspy, slightly soulful voice made you feel the dysfunction in ‘Family Portrait’, the longing of ‘Who Knew’ and the empowerment in ‘Perfect’.”[153] CNN has said that Pink is known for singing “with the right level of emotion”.[154] Fellow artist Kelly Clarkson has called Pink’s voice “the best of our generation”.[155] Troy L. Smith, writing for Cleveland.com, called Pink one of her generation’s most underrated vocals, writing that she is capable of “sing[ing] anything, from rock and pop to folk and R&B.” Smith named her 2006’s second best vocalist, runner-up to Carrie Underwood.

Public image

Aside from her music, Pink has been noted for her fashion style, such the “adventurous” hairstyles she has worn, which have included fluorescent spikes to pink-streaked dreadlocks to a pitch-black skater cut.[157] Regarding her style, she told InStyle, “I’m eclectic. I’m a tomboy, but I’m kind of a hippie and kind of a gangster […] I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but it is my thing.”[157]

Pink is an animal-rights activist and a prominent campaigner for PETA, contributing her voice toward causes such as the protest against KFC.[158] In conjunction with PETA, she criticized the Australian wool industry over its use of mulesing. In January 2007, she stated that she had been misled by PETA about mulesing and that she had not done enough research before lending her name to the campaign.[159] Her campaigning led to a headlining concert called PAW (Party for Animals Worldwide) in Cardiff, Wales on August 21, 2007.[160] In 2015, she posed nude for PETA’s “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur”, campaign.[161]

Pink is also outspoken about LGBT rights and supports same-sex marriage.[162] In October 2012, Pink told The Advocate that she does not define her sexual orientation saying, “I never felt the need to.”[163]

Pink is also involved with several charities, including Human Rights Campaign, ONE Campaign, Prince’s Trust, New York Restoration Project, Run for the Cure Foundation, Save the Children, Take Back the Night, UNICEF and World Animal Protection.[164] As of May 2008, Pink has been officially recognized as an advocate for the RSPCA in Australia. On February 16, 2009, Pink announced she was donating $250,000 to the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal to aid the victims of the bushfires that swept through the Australian state of Victoria earlier that month.[165] Pink stated that she wanted to make “a tangible expression of support”.[166] Pink also donated money to Autism Speaks.[167]

In August 2012, Pink became a spokesmodel for CoverGirl, featuring in a fall 2013 advertising campaign themed “beauty with an edge”.[168]

On August 21, 2018, Pink stopped her concert in Brisbane for a grieving fan. A girl named Leah lost her mother one month prior to the concert, and she and her family hung up signs all around the concert, saying “My name is Leah – I’m 14 years old. I lost my beautiful Mum last month. I would LOVE a hug… Please!”. The signs grabbed the attention of Pink.

Legacy

Pink has been credited for breaking boundaries and pushing the envelope throughout her career. She is regarded as the “most trailblazing artist” of her pop generation.[151][170] Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times says, “Pink stood up for her music, broke the music industry’s mold and scored a breakout hit, challenging a school of teen singers to find their own sounds as well.” He adds, “[Pink] also started a race among other teen pop stars like Christina Aguilera to add substance to their own sound.”[171] Ann Powers refers to her as a “powerhouse vocalist”, stating her mix of rebellion, emotional rawness, humor, and “infectious” dance beats created “a model for the mashup approach of latter-day divas such as Katy Perry, Kesha, and Rihanna.”[151] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone commented: “I think people respond to her sense of independence and dedication. It inspires people… This is a prolific pop artist who is sometimes famous and successful, sometimes obscure, who nonetheless keeps making her own kind of music.”[151]

James Montgomery of MTV describes her as “a fabulously fearless pop artist” who can “out-sing almost anyone out there. She can out-crazy Gaga or Lily. She’s the total pop-star package, everything you’d want in a singer/entertainer/icon. And still, she remains oddly off the radar. Such is the price of busting borders”.[170] Entertainment Weekly said: “She essentially invented the whole modern wave of Pop Diva Domination: You can draw a straight line from “Get This Party Started” to Katy Perry, Kesha, pre-messianic Lady Gaga, and post-weird Rihanna.”[172] Glamour Magazine wrote: “When Pennsylvania-born Alecia Moore debuted in 2000, pop was dominated by long-locked blonds like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson. Pink changed the game. Without her, the last 13 years of big-voiced, tough chick music is hard to imagine.”[173][better source needed]

Following her performance at the American Music Awards of 2012, LZ Granderson of CNN wrote:

“… our culture’s biggest sin may well be the auto-tuned syrup we’ve allowed to dominate the pop charts. All-time chart records are handed to vacuous acts such as the Black Eyed Peas and singing awards are given to vocal lightweights such as Taylor Swift […] But thank God for Pink. […] While Christina Aguilera has a tendency to oversing, Britney Spears can’t sing, and Lauryn Hill sorta stopped singing, Pink has managed to carve a brilliant 13-year career by being something that is incredibly rare these days—an artist.”

British soul singer Adele considers Pink’s performance at Brixton Academy in London as one of “the most defining moments” in her life, saying “It was the Missundaztood record, so I was about 13 or 14. I had never heard, being in the room, someone sing like that live. I remember sort of feeling like I was in a wind tunnel, her voice just hitting me. It was incredible.”[175][176]

Pink’s work has inspired several other artists including Christina Aguilera[177], Demi Lovato,[178] Kelly Clarkson,[179] Taylor Swift,[180] Katy Perry,[181] Tegan and Sara,[182] Ashley Tisdale,[183] Alessia Cara,[184] Victoria Justice,[185] Adele,[186] Julia Michaels,[187] Ben Hopkins of Pwr Bttm[188] Dua Lipa,[189] Bebe Rexha,[190] Halsey,[191] Anne Marie,[192] Kehlani[193] and Daya

Personal life

Pink met professional motocross racer Carey Hart at the 2001 X Games in Philadelphia. Following a brief separation in 2003, Pink proposed to Hart in June 2005 during a Mammoth Lakes motocross race; she was “assisting” in his race and wrote “Will You Marry Me? I’m serious!” on a pit board. He initially didn’t notice and continued on for another lap. When he did notice later, he veered off the track to accept right then. She then made him finish the race.[195][196] They married in Costa Rica on January 7, 2006.[197]

After months of speculation, Pink announced in February 2008, that she and Hart had separated.[198][199] Hart subsequently appeared in the video for her 2008 song “So What”,[200] which deals with their separation.[201] The couple sought marriage counseling during their separation[202] in hopes of reconciliation.[203] In February 2010, Pink confirmed that she and Hart were back together.[204] Hart also appears with Pink in the music video for her songs “Just Give Me a Reason”, “True Love”, and “Just like Fire”.[205][206]

In November 2010, Pink announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she and Hart were expecting their first child.[207] In June 2011, she gave birth to their daughter, Willow Sage.[208] In December 2016, she gave birth to their second child, a son, Jameson Moon.[209][210]

Pink is a supporter of attachment parenting.[211]

In 2010, she appeared on Forbes’ “The Celebrity 100” list at number 27, with earnings of $44 million.[212] In 2011, she appeared on Forbes’ The Top-Earning Women in Music list at number 6 with earnings of $22 million, with an average of $1 million per show on the road.[213] In 2009, Billboard put her number 6 on their “Money Makers” list, listing her earnings as $36,347,658.[214] In 2013, she appeared on Forbes’ list of “Highest Paid Musicians”, with earnings of $32 million.[215] In 2018, she appeared on Forbes’ list of “Highest Paid Female Celebrities”, with earnings of $52 million.[216]

On April 4, 2020, Pink announced that she and her three-year-old son, Jameson, showed symptoms for COVID-19 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and she subsequently tested positive then fully recovered.[217] She also announced donations of $500,000 each to the Temple University Hospital Fund in Philadelphia, where her mother worked for nearly two decades, and the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Emergency COVID-19 Crisis Fund.

Sir James Paul McCartney CH MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record and film producer who gained worldwide fame as co-lead vocalist and bassist for the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with John Lennon remains the most successful in history.[4] After the group disbanded in 1970, he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine.

A self-taught musician, McCartney is proficient on bass, guitar, keyboards, and drums. He is known for his melodic approach to bass-playing (mainly playing with a plectrum), his versatile and wide tenor vocal range (spanning over four octaves), and his eclecticism (exploring styles ranging from pre-rock and roll pop to classical and electronica). McCartney began his career as a member of the Quarrymen in 1957, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Starting with the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he gradually became the Beatles’ de facto leader, providing the creative impetus for most of their music and film projects. His Beatles songs “And I Love Her” (1964), “Yesterday” (1965), “Eleanor Rigby” (1966) and “Blackbird” (1968) rank among the most covered songs in history.[5][6]

In 1970, McCartney debuted as a solo artist with the album McCartney. Throughout the 1970s, he led Wings, one of the most successful bands of the decade, with more than a dozen international top 10 singles and albums. McCartney resumed his solo career in 1980. Since 1989, he has toured consistently as a solo artist. In 1993, he formed the music duo the Fireman with Youth of Killing Joke. Beyond music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as animal rights, seal hunting, land mines, vegetarianism, poverty, and music education.

McCartney is one of the most successful composers and performers of all time. He has written or co-written 32 songs that have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2009, had sales of 25.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. His honours include two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1999), 18 Grammy Awards, an appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, and a knighthood in 1997 for services to music. As of 2020, he is also one of the wealthiest musicians in the world, with an estimated fortune of £800 million.

Early life

James Paul McCartney was born on 18 June 1942 at Walton Hospital in the Walton area of Liverpool, where his mother, Mary Patricia (née Mohin), had qualified to practise as a nurse. His father, James (“Jim”) McCartney, was absent from his son’s birth due to his work as a volunteer firefighter during World War II.[8] McCartney has a younger brother named Michael and a stepsister named Ruth. The children were baptised in their mother’s Catholic faith, even though their father was a former Protestant who had turned agnostic. Religion was not emphasised in the household.[9]

McCartney attended Stockton Wood Road Primary School in Speke from 1947 until 1949, when he transferred to Joseph Williams Junior School in Belle Vale because of overcrowding at Stockton.[10] In 1953, he was one of only three students out of 90 to pass the 11-Plus exam, meaning he could attend the Liverpool Institute, a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school.[11] In 1954, he met schoolmate George Harrison on the bus from his suburban home in Speke. The two quickly became friends; McCartney later admitted: “I tended to talk down to him because he was a year younger.”

Career

1957–1960: The Quarrymen

At the age of fifteen on 6 July 1957, McCartney met John Lennon and his band, the Quarrymen, at the St Peter’s Church Hall fête in Woolton.[26] The Quarrymen played a mix of rock and roll and skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz, blues and folk influences.[27] Soon afterwards, the members of the band invited McCartney to join as a rhythm guitarist, and he formed a close working relationship with Lennon. Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, in 1960.[28] By May 1960, the band had tried several names, including Johnny and the Moondogs, Beatals and the Silver Beetles.[29] They adopted the name the Beatles in August 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before a five-engagement residency in Hamburg.

1960–1970: The Beatles

In 1961, Sutcliffe left the band and McCartney reluctantly became their bass player.[31] While in Hamburg, they recorded professionally for the first time and were credited as the Beat Brothers, who were the backing band for English singer Tony Sheridan on the single “My Bonnie”.[32] This resulted in attention from Brian Epstein, who was a key figure in their subsequent development and success. He became their manager in January 1962.[33] Ringo Starr replaced Best in August, and the band had their first hit, “Love Me Do”, in October, becoming popular in the UK in 1963, and in the US a year later. The fan hysteria became known as “Beatlemania”, and the press sometimes referred to McCartney as the “cute Beatle”.[34][nb 2] McCartney co-wrote (with Lennon) several of their early hits, including “I Saw Her Standing There”, “She Loves You”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1963) and “Can’t Buy Me Love” (1964).[36]

In August 1965, the Beatles released the McCartney composition “Yesterday”, featuring a string quartet. Included on the Help! LP, the song was the group’s first recorded use of classical music elements and their first recording that involved only a single band member.[37] “Yesterday” became one of the most covered songs in popular music history.[38] Later that year, during recording sessions for the album Rubber Soul, McCartney began to supplant Lennon as the dominant musical force in the band. Musicologist Ian MacDonald wrote, “from [1965] … [McCartney] would be in the ascendant not only as a songwriter, but also as instrumentalist, arranger, producer, and de facto musical director of the Beatles.”[39] Critics described Rubber Soul as a significant advance in the refinement and profundity of the band’s music and lyrics.[40] Considered a high point in the Beatles catalogue, both Lennon and McCartney said they had written the music for the song “In My Life”.[41] McCartney said of the album, “we’d had our cute period, and now it was time to expand.”[42] Recording engineer Norman Smith stated that the Rubber Soul sessions exposed indications of increasing contention within the band: “the clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious … [and] as far as Paul was concerned, George [Harrison] could do no right—Paul was absolutely finicky.”[43]

In 1966, the Beatles released the album Revolver. Featuring sophisticated lyrics, studio experimentation, and an expanded repertoire of musical genres ranging from innovative string arrangements to psychedelic rock, the album marked an artistic leap for the Beatles.[44] The first of three consecutive McCartney A-sides, the single “Paperback Writer” preceded the LP’s release.[45] The Beatles produced a short promotional film for the song, and another for its B-side, “Rain”. The films, described by Harrison as “the forerunner of videos”, aired on The Ed Sullivan Show and Top of the Pops in June 1966.[46] Revolver also included McCartney’s “Eleanor Rigby”, which featured a string octet. According to Gould, the song is “a neoclassical tour de force … a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of song”.[47] Except for some backing vocals, the song included only McCartney’s lead vocal and the strings arranged by producer George Martin.

The band gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour.[50] Later that year, McCartney completed his first musical project independently of the group—a film score for the UK production The Family Way. The score was a collaboration with Martin, who used two McCartney themes to write thirteen variations. The soundtrack failed to chart, but it won McCartney an Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme.[51]

Upon the end of the Beatles’ performing career, McCartney sensed unease in the band and wanted them to maintain creative productivity. He pressed them to start a new project, which became Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, widely regarded as rock’s first concept album.[52] McCartney was inspired to create a new persona for the group, to serve as a vehicle for experimentation and to demonstrate to their fans that they had musically matured. He invented the fictional band of the album’s title track.[53] As McCartney explained, “We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that f*cking four little mop-top approach. We were not boys we were men … and [we] thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers.”[54]

Starting in November 1966, the band adopted an experimental attitude during recording sessions for the album.[55] Their recording of “A Day in the Life” required a forty-piece orchestra, which Martin and McCartney took turns conducting.[56] The sessions produced the double A-side single “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane” in February 1967, and the LP followed in June.[35][nb 4] Based on an ink drawing by McCartney, the LP’s cover included a collage designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, featuring the Beatles in costume as the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing with a host of celebrities.[58] The cover piqued a frenzy of analysis.Epstein’s death in August 1967 created a void, which left the Beatles perplexed and concerned about their future.[61] McCartney stepped in to fill that void and gradually became the de facto leader and business manager of the group that Lennon had once led.[62][dubious – discuss] In his first creative suggestion after this change of leadership, McCartney proposed that the band move forward on their plans to produce a film for television, which was to become Magical Mystery Tour. According to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, the project was “an administrative nightmare throughout”.[63] McCartney largely directed the film, which brought the group their first unfavourable critical response.[64] However, the film’s soundtrack was more successful. It was released in the UK as a six-track double extended play disc (EP), and as an identically titled LP in the US, filled out with five songs from the band’s recent singles.[35] The only Capitol compilation later included in the group’s official canon of studio albums, the Magical Mystery Tour LP achieved $8 million in sales within three weeks of its release, higher initial sales than any other Capitol LP up to that point.

The Beatles’ animated film Yellow Submarine, loosely based on the imaginary world evoked by McCartney’s 1966 composition, premiered in July 1968. Though critics admired the film for its visual style, humour and music, the soundtrack album issued six months later received a less enthusiastic response.[66] By late 1968, relations within the band were deteriorating. The tension grew during the recording of their eponymous double album, also known as the “White Album”.[67][nb 5] Matters worsened the following year during the Let It Be sessions, when a camera crew filmed McCartney lecturing the group: “We’ve been very negative since Mr. Epstein passed away … we were always fighting [his] discipline a bit, but it’s silly to fight that discipline if it’s our own”.[69]

In March 1969, McCartney married his first wife, Linda Eastman, and in August, the couple had their first child, Mary, named after his late mother.[70] Abbey Road was the band’s last recorded album, and Martin suggested “a continuously moving piece of music”, urging the group to think symphonically.[71] McCartney agreed, but Lennon did not. They eventually compromised, agreeing to McCartney’s suggestion: an LP featuring individual songs on side one, and a long medley on side two.[71] In October 1969, a rumour surfaced that McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike, but this was quickly refuted when a November Life magazine cover featured him and his family, accompanied by the caption “Paul is still with us”.[72]

McCartney was in the midst of business disagreements with his bandmates when he announced his departure from the group on 10 April 1970.[73] He filed a suit for the band’s formal dissolution on 31 December 1970, and in March 1971 the court appointed a receiver to oversee Apple’s finances. An English court legally dissolved the Beatles’ partnership on 9 January 1975, though sporadic lawsuits against their record company EMI, Klein, and each other persisted until 1989.

1970–1981: Wings

As the Beatles were breaking up in 1969–70, McCartney fell into a depression. His wife helped him pull out of that condition by praising his work as a songwriter and convincing him to continue writing and recording. In her honour, he wrote “Maybe I’m Amazed”, explaining that with the Beatles breaking up, “that was my feeling: Maybe I’m amazed at what’s going on … Maybe I’m a man and maybe you’re the only woman who could ever help me; Baby won’t you help me understand … Maybe I’m amazed at the way you pulled me out of time, hung me on the line, Maybe I’m amazed at the way I really need you.” He added that “every love song I write is for Linda.”[79][80]

In 1970, McCartney continued his musical career with his first solo release, McCartney, a US number-one album. Apart from some vocal contributions from Linda, McCartney is a one-man album, with McCartney providing compositions, instrumentation and vocals.[81][nb 8] In 1971, he collaborated with Linda and drummer Denny Seiwell on a second album, Ram. A UK number one and a US top five, Ram included the co-written US number-one hit single “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”.[83] Later that year, ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine joined the McCartneys and Seiwell to form the band Wings. McCartney had this to say on the group’s formation: “Wings were always a difficult idea … any group having to follow [the Beatles’] success would have a hard job … I found myself in that very position. However, it was a choice between going on or finishing, and I loved music too much to think of stopping.”[84][nb 9] In September 1971, the McCartneys’ daughter Stella was born, named in honour of Linda’s grandmothers, both of whom were named Stella.[86]

Following the addition of guitarist Henry McCullough, Wings’ first concert tour began in 1972 with a debut performance in front of an audience of seven hundred at the University of Nottingham. Ten more gigs followed as they travelled across the UK in a van during an unannounced tour of universities, during which the band stayed in modest accommodation and received pay in coinage collected from students, while avoiding Beatles songs during their performances.[87] McCartney later said, “The main thing I didn’t want was to come on stage, faced with the whole torment of five rows of press people with little pads, all looking at me and saying, ‘Oh well, he is not as good as he was.’ So we decided to go out on that university tour which made me less nervous … by the end of that tour I felt ready for something else, so we went into Europe.”[88] During the seven-week, 25-show Wings Over Europe Tour, the band played almost solely Wings and McCartney solo material: the Little Richard cover “Long Tall Sally” was the only song that had previously been recorded by the Beatles. McCartney wanted the tour to avoid large venues; most of the small halls they played had capacities of fewer than 3,000 people.[89]

In March 1973, Wings achieved their first US number-one single, “My Love”, included on their second LP, Red Rose Speedway, a US number one and UK top five.[90][nb 10] McCartney’s collaboration with Linda and former Beatles producer Martin resulted in the song “Live and Let Die”, which was the theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. Nominated for an Academy Award, the song reached number two in the US and number nine in the UK. It also earned Martin a Grammy for his orchestral arrangement.[91] Music professor and author Vincent Benitez described the track as “symphonic rock at its best”.

After the departure of McCullough and Seiwell in 1973, the McCartneys and Laine recorded Band on the Run. The album was the first of seven platinum Wings LPs.[94] It was a US and UK number one, the band’s first to top the charts in both countries and the first ever to reach Billboard magazine’s charts on three separate occasions. One of the best-selling releases of the decade, it remained on the UK charts for 124 weeks. Rolling Stone named it one of the Best Albums of the Year for 1973, and in 1975, Paul McCartney and Wings won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance for the song “Band on the Run” and Geoff Emerick won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording for the album.[95][nb 12] In 1974, Wings achieved a second US number-one single with the title track.[97] The album also included the top-ten hits “Jet” and “Helen Wheels”, and earned the 413th spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[98][nb 13]

Wings followed Band on the Run with the chart-topping albums Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976).[100][nb 14] In 1975, they began the fourteen-month Wings Over the World Tour, which included stops in the UK, Australia, Europe and the US. The tour marked the first time McCartney performed Beatles songs live with Wings, with five in the two-hour set list: “I’ve Just Seen a Face”, “Yesterday”, “Blackbird”, “Lady Madonna” and “The Long and Winding Road”.[102] Following the second European leg of the tour and extensive rehearsals in London, the group undertook an ambitious US arena tour that yielded the US number-one live triple LP Wings over America.[103]

In September 1977, the McCartneys had a third child, a son they named James. In November, the Wings song “Mull of Kintyre”, co-written with Laine, was quickly becoming one of the best-selling singles in UK chart history.[104] The most successful single of McCartney’s solo career, it achieved double the sales of the previous record holder, “She Loves You”, and went on to sell 2.5 million copies and hold the UK sales record until the 1984 charity single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

London Town (1978) spawned a US number-one single (“With a Little Luck”), and continued Wings’ string of commercial successes, making the top five in both the US and the UK. Critical reception was unfavourable, and McCartney expressed disappointment with the album.[107][nb 16] Back to the Egg (1979) featured McCartney’s a*semblage of a rock supergroup dubbed “Rockestra” on two tracks. The band included Wings along with Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones, John Bonham and others. Though certified platinum, critics panned the album.[109] Wings completed their final concert tour in 1979, with twenty shows in the UK that included the live debut of the Beatles songs “Got to Get You into My Life”, “The Fool on the Hill” and “Let it Be”.[110]

In 1980, McCartney released his second solo LP, the self-produced McCartney II, which peaked at number one in the UK and number three in the US. As with his first album, he composed and performed it alone.[111] The album contained the song “Coming Up”, the live version of which, recorded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979 by Wings, became the group’s last number-one hit.[112] By 1981, McCartney felt he had accomplished all he could creatively with Wings and decided he needed a change. The group discontinued in April 1981 after Laine quit following disagreements over royalties and salaries.

1982–1990

In 1982, McCartney collaborated with Stevie Wonder on the Martin-produced number-one hit “Ebony and Ivory”, included on McCartney’s Tug of War LP, and with Michael Jackson on “The Girl Is Mine” from Thriller.[117][nb 19] “Ebony and Ivory” was McCartney’s record 28th single to hit number one on the Billboard 100.[119] The following year, he and Jackson worked on “Say Say Say”, McCartney’s most recent US number one as of 2014. McCartney earned his latest UK number one as of 2014 with the title track of his LP release that year, “Pipes of Peace”.[120][nb 20]

In 1984, McCartney starred in the musical Give My Regards to Broad Street, a feature film he also wrote and produced which included Starr in an acting role. It was disparaged by critics: Variety described the film as “characterless, bloodless, and pointless”;[122] while Roger Ebert awarded it a single star, writing, “you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the soundtrack”.[123] The album fared much better, reaching number one in the UK and producing the US top-ten hit single “No More Lonely Nights”, featuring David Gilmour on lead guitar.[124] In 1985, Warner Brothers commissioned McCartney to write a song for the comedic feature film Spies Like Us. He composed and recorded the track in four days, with Phil Ramone co-producing.[125][nb 21] McCartney participated in Live Aid, performing “Let it Be”, but technical difficulties rendered his vocals and piano barely audible for the first two verses, punctuated by squeals of feedback. Equipment technicians resolved the problems and David Bowie, Alison Moyet, Pete Townshend and Bob Geldof joined McCartney on stage, receiving an enthusiastic crowd reaction.[127]

McCartney collaborated with Eric Stewart on Press to Play (1986), with Stewart co-writing more than half the songs on the LP.[128][nb 22] In 1988, McCartney released Снова в СССР, initially available only in the Soviet Union, which contained eighteen covers; recorded over the course of two days.[130] In 1989, he joined forces with fellow Merseysiders Gerry Marsden and Holly Johnson to record an updated version of “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, for the Hillsborough disaster appeal fund.[131][nb 23] That same year, he released Flowers in the Dirt; a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello that included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins.[133][nb 24] McCartney then formed a band consisting of himself and Linda, with Hamish Stuart and Robbie McIntosh on guitars, Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards and Chris Whitten on drums.[135] In September 1989, they launched the Paul McCartney World Tour, his first in over a decade. During the tour, McCartney performed for the largest paying stadium audience in history on 21 April 1990, when 184,000 people attended his concert at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[136] That year, he released the triple album Tripping the Live Fantastic, which contained selected performances from the tour.

1991–1999

McCartney ventured into orchestral music in 1991 when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by him to celebrate its sesquicentennial. He collaborated with composer Carl Davis, producing Liverpool Oratorio. The performance featured opera singers Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral.[140] Reviews were negative. The Guardian was especially critical, describing the music as “afraid of anything approaching a fast tempo”, and adding that the piece has “little awareness of the need for recurrent ideas that will bind the work into a whole”.[141] The paper published a letter McCartney submitted in response in which he noted several of the work’s faster tempos and added, “happily, history shows that many good pieces of music were not liked by the critics of the time so I am content to … let people judge for themselves the merits of the work.”[141] The New York Times was slightly more generous, stating, “There are moments of beauty and pleasure in this dramatic miscellany … the music’s innocent sincerity makes it difficult to be put off by its ambitions”.[142] Performed around the world after its London premiere, the Liverpool Oratorio reached number one on the UK classical chart, Music Week.[143]

In 1991, McCartney performed a selection of acoustic-only songs on MTV Unplugged and released a live album of the performance titled Unplugged (The Official Bootleg).[144][nb 27] During the 1990s, McCartney collaborated twice with Youth of Killing Joke as the musical duo “the Fireman”. The two released their first electronica album together, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, in 1993.[146] McCartney released the rock album Off the Ground in 1993.[147][nb 28] The subsequent New World Tour followed, which led to the release of the Paul Is Live album later that year.[149][nb 29][nb 30]

Starting in 1994, McCartney took a four-year break from his solo career to work on Apple’s Beatles Anthology project with Harrison, Starr and Martin. He recorded a radio series called Oobu Joobu in 1995 for the American network Westwood One, which he described as “widescreen radio”.[153] Also in 1995, Prince Charles presented him with an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Music—”kind of amazing for somebody who doesn’t read a note of music”, commented McCartney.[154]

In 1997, McCartney released the rock album Flaming Pie. Starr appeared on drums and backing vocals in “Beautiful Night”.[155][nb 31] Later that year, he released the classical work Standing Stone, which topped the UK and US classical charts.[157] In 1998, he released Rushes, the second electronica album by the Fireman.[158] In 1999, McCartney released Run Devil Run.[159][nb 32] Recorded in one week, and featuring Ian Paice and David Gilmour, it was primarily an album of covers with three McCartney originals. He had been planning such an album for years, having been previously encouraged to do so by Linda, who had died of cancer in April 1998.[160]

McCartney did an unannounced performance at the benefit tribute, “Concert for Linda,” his wife of 29 years who died a year earlier. It was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 10 April 1999, and was organised by two of her close friends, Chrissie Hynde and Carla Lane. Also during 1999, he continued his experimentation with orchestral music on Working Classical.

2000–2009

In 2000, he released the electronica album Liverpool Sound Collage with Super Furry Animals and Youth, using the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that had fascinated him in the mid-1960s.[162] He contributed the song “Nova” to a tribute album of classical, choral music called A Garland for Linda (2000), dedicated to his late wife.[163]

Having witnessed the 11 September 2001 attacks from the JFK airport tarmac, McCartney was inspired to take a leading role in organising the Concert for New York City. His studio album release in November that year, Driving Rain, included the song “Freedom”, written in response to the attacks.[164][nb 33] The following year, McCartney went out on tour with a band that included guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, accompanied by Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums.[166] They began the Driving World Tour in April 2002, which included stops in the US, Mexico and Japan. The tour resulted in the double live album Back in the US, released internationally in 2003 as Back in the World.[167][nb 34][nb 35] The tour earned a reported $126.2 million, an average of over $2 million per night, and Billboard named it the top tour of the year.[169] The group continues to play together; McCartney has played live with Brian Ray, Rusty Anderson, Abe Laboriel Jr. and Wix Wickens longer than he played live with the Beatles.[170]

In July 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills. In November, on the first anniversary of George Harrison’s death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George.[171] He participated in the National Football League’s Super Bowl, performing “Freedom” during the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 and headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005.[172] The English College of Arms honoured McCartney in 2002 by granting him a coat of arms. His crest, featuring a Liver bird holding an acoustic guitar in its claw, reflects his background in Liverpool and his musical career. The shield includes four curved emblems which resemble beetles’ backs. The arms’ motto is Ecce Cor Meum, Latin for “Behold My Heart”.[173] In 2003, the McCartneys had a child, Beatrice Milly.

In July 2005, he performed at the Live 8 event in Hyde Park, London, opening the show with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (with U2) and closing it with “Drive My Car” (with George Michael), “Helter Skelter”, and “The Long and Winding Road”.[175][nb 36] In September, he released the rock album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, for which he provided most of the instrumentation.[177][nb 37][nb 38] In 2006, McCartney released the classical work Ecce Cor Meum.[180][nb 39] The rock album Memory Almost Full followed in 2007.[181][nb 40] In 2008, he released his third Fireman album, Electric Arguments.[183][nb 41] Also in 2008, he performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city’s year as European Capital of Culture. In 2009, after a four-year break, he returned to touring and has since performed over 80 shows.[185] More than forty-five years after the Beatles first appeared on American television during The Ed Sullivan Show, he returned to the same New York theatre to perform on Late Show with David Letterman.[186] On 9 September 2009, EMI reissued the Beatles catalogue following a four-year digital remastering effort, releasing a music video game called The Beatles: Rock Band the same day.[187]

McCartney’s enduring fame has made him a popular choice to open new venues. In 2009, he played to three sold-out concerts at the newly built Citi Field, a venue constructed to replace Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. These performances yielded the double live album Good Evening New York City later that year.

2010–present

In 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; it was his first concert in Pittsburgh since 1990 due to the old Civic Arena being deemed unsuitable for McCartney’s logistical needs.[189][nb 42] In July 2011, McCartney performed at two sold-out concerts at the new Yankee Stadium. A New York Times review of the first concert reported that McCartney was “not saying goodbye but touring stadiums and playing marathon concerts”.[191] McCartney was commissioned by the New York City Ballet, and in September 2011, he released his first score for dance, a collaboration with Peter Martins called Ocean’s Kingdom.[192] Also in 2011, McCartney married Nancy Shevell.[193] He released Kisses on the Bottom, a collection of standards, in February 2012, the same month that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honoured him as the MusiCares Person of the Year, two days prior to his performance at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.[194]

McCartney remains one of the world’s top draws. He played to over 100,000 people during two performances in Mexico City in May, with the shows grossing nearly $6 million.[195][nb 43] In June 2012, McCartney closed Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Concert held outside Buckingham Palace, performing a set that included “Let It Be” and “Live and Let Die”.[197] He closed the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on 27 July, singing “The End” and “Hey Jude” and inviting the audience to join in on the coda.[198] Having donated his time, he received £1 from the Olympic organisers.[199]

On 12 December 2012, McCartney performed with three former members of Nirvana (Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Pat Smear) during the closing act of 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief, seen by approximately two billion people worldwide.[200] On 28 August 2013, McCartney released the title track of his upcoming studio album New, which came out in October 2013.[201] A primetime entertainment special was taped on 27 January 2014 at the Ed Sullivan Theater with a 9 February 2014 CBS airing. The show featured McCartney and Ringo Starr, and celebrated the legacy of the Beatles and their groundbreaking 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The show, titled The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles, featured 22 classic Beatles songs as performed by various artists, including McCartney and Starr.[202]

On 19 May 2014, it was reported that McCartney was bedridden on doctor’s orders due to an unspecified virus, which forced him to cancel a sold-out concert tour of Japan that was scheduled to begin later in the week. The tour would have included a stop at the famed Budokan Hall. McCartney also had to move his June US dates to October, as part of his doctor’s order to rest to make a full recovery.[203] However, he resumed the tour with a high-energy three hour appearance in Albany, New York on 5 July 2014.[204] On 14 August 2014, McCartney performed in the final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California before its demolition. It was the same venue that the Beatles played their final concert in 1966.[205] In 2014, McCartney wrote and performed “Hope for the Future,” the ending song for the video game Destiny.[206][207] In November 2014, a 42-song tribute album titled The Art of McCartney was released, which features a wide range of artists covering McCartney’s solo and Beatles work.[208] Also that year, McCartney collaborated with American recording artist Kanye West on the single “Only One”, released on 31 December.[209] In January 2015, McCartney collaborated with West and Barbadian singer Rihanna on the single “FourFiveSeconds”.[210] They released a music video for the song in January[211] and performed it live at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on 8 February 2015.[212] McCartney is a featured guest on West’s 2015 single “All Day”, which also features Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom.

In February 2015, McCartney appeared and performed with Paul Simon for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special. McCartney and Simon performed the first verse of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” on acoustic guitars, and McCartney later performed “Maybe I’m Amazed”.[214] McCartney shared lead vocals on the Alice Cooper-led Hollywood Vampires supergroup’s cover of his song “Come and Get It”, which appears on their debut album, released on 11 September 2015.[215] On 10 June 2016, McCartney released the career-spanning collection Pure McCartney.[216] The set includes songs from throughout McCartney’s solo career and his work with Wings and the Fireman, and is available in three different formats (2-CD, 4-CD, 4-LP and Digital). The 4-CD version includes 67 tracks, the majority of which were top 40 hits.[217][218] McCartney appeared in the adventure film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which was released in 2017.[219]

In January 2017, McCartney filed a suit in United States district court against Sony/ATV Music Publishing seeking to reclaim ownership of his share of the Lennon–McCartney song catalogue beginning in 2018. Under US copyright law, for works published before 1978 the author can reclaim copyrights a*signed to a publisher after 56 years.[220][221] McCartney and Sony agreed to a confidential settlement in June 2017.[222][223] On 20 June 2018, McCartney released two songs, “I Don’t Know” and “Come On to Me”, from his album Egypt Station, which was released on 7 September through Capitol Records.[224] Egypt Station became McCartney’s first album in 36 years to top the Billboard 200, and his first to debut at number one.[225]

In October 2020, McCartney announced his new album McCartney III, which is set to be released on 11 December via Capitol Records.

Musicianship

McCartney was largely a self-taught musician, and his approach was described by musicologist Ian MacDonald as “by nature drawn to music’s formal aspects yet wholly untutored … [he] produced technically ‘finished’ work almost entirely by instinct, his harmonic judgement based mainly on perfect pitch and an acute pair of ears … [A] natural melodist—a creator of tunes capable of existing apart from their harmony”. McCartney commented, “I prefer to think of my approach to music as … rather like the primitive cave artists, who drew without training.”

Early influences

McCartney’s earliest musical influences include Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and Chuck Berry.[230] When asked why the Beatles did not include Presley on the Sgt. Pepper cover, McCartney replied, “Elvis was too important and too far above the rest even to mention … so we didn’t put him on the list because he was more than merely a … pop singer, he was Elvis the King.”[231] McCartney stated that for his bassline for “I Saw Her Standing There”, he directly quoted Berry’s “I’m Talking About You”.[232]

McCartney called Little Richard an idol, whose falsetto vocalisations inspired McCartney’s own vocal technique.[233] McCartney said he wrote “I’m Down” as a vehicle for his Little Richard impersonation.[234] In 1971, McCartney bought the publishing rights to Holly’s catalogue, and in 1976, on the fortieth anniversary of Holly’s birth, McCartney inaugurated the annual “Buddy Holly Week” in England. The festival has included guest performances by famous musicians, songwriting competitions, drawing contests and special events featuring performances by the Crickets.

Bass guitar

Best known for primarily using a plectrum or pick, McCartney occasionally plays fingerstyle.[236] He does not use slapping techniques.[237] He was strongly influenced by Motown artists, in particular James Jamerson, whom McCartney called a hero for his melodic style. He was also influenced by Brian Wilson, as he commented: “because he went to very unusual places”.[238] Another favourite bassist of his is Stanley Clarke.[239] McCartney’s skill as a bass player has been acknowledged by bassists including Sting, Dr. Dre bassist Mike Elizondo, and Colin Moulding of XTC.

During McCartney’s early years with the Beatles, he primarily used a Höfner 500/1 bass, although from 1965, he favoured his Rickenbacker 4001S for recording. While typically using Vox amplifiers, by 1967, he had also begun using a Fender Bassman for amplification.[242] During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he used a Wal 5-String, which he said made him play more thick-sounding basslines, in contrast to the much lighter Höfner, which inspired him to play more sensitively, something he considers fundamental to his playing style.[237] He changed back to the Höfner around 1990 for that reason.[237] He uses Mesa Boogie bass amplifiers while performing live.[243]

MacDonald identified “She’s a Woman” as the turning point when McCartney’s bass playing began to evolve dramatically, and Beatles biographer Chris Ingham singled out Rubber Soul as the moment when McCartney’s playing exhibited significant progress, particularly on “The Word”.[244] Bacon and Morgan agreed, calling McCartney’s groove on the track “a high point in pop bass playing and … the first proof on a recording of his serious technical ability on the instrument.”[245] MacDonald inferred the influence of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour”, American soul tracks from which McCartney absorbed elements and drew inspiration as he “delivered his most spontaneous bass-part to date”.[246]

Bacon and Morgan described his bassline for the Beatles song “Rain” as “an astonishing piece of playing … [McCartney] thinking in terms of both rhythm and ‘lead bass’ … [choosing] the area of the neck … he correctly perceives will give him clarity for melody without rendering his sound too thin for groove.”[247] MacDonald identified the influence of Indian classical music in “exotic melismas in the bass part” on “Rain” and described the playing as “so inventive that it threatens to overwhelm the track”.[248] By contrast, he recognised McCartney’s bass part on the Harrison-composed “Something” as creative but overly busy and “too fussily extemporised”.[249] McCartney identified Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as containing his strongest and most inventive bass playing, particularly on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.

Acoustic guitar

McCartney primarily flatpicks while playing acoustic guitar, though he also uses elements of fingerpicking.[251] Examples of his acoustic guitar playing on Beatles tracks include “Yesterday”, “I’m Looking Through You”, “Michelle”, “Blackbird”, “I Will”, “Mother Nature’s Son” and “Rocky Raccoon”.[252] McCartney singled out “Blackbird” as a personal favourite and described his technique for the guitar part in the following way: “I got my own little sort of cheating way of [fingerpicking] … I’m actually sort of pulling two strings at a time … I was trying to emulate those folk players.”[251] He employed a similar technique for “Jenny Wren”.[253] He played an Epiphone Texan on many of his acoustic recordings, but also used a Martin D-28.

Electric guitar

McCartney played lead guitar on several Beatles recordings, including what MacDonald described as a “fiercely angular slide guitar solo” on “Drive My Car”, which McCartney played on an Epiphone Casino. McCartney said of the instrument: “if I had to pick one electric guitar it would be this.”[256] He contributed what MacDonald described as “a startling guitar solo” on the Harrison composition “Taxman” and the “shrieking” guitar on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Helter Skelter”. MacDonald also praised McCartney’s “coruscating pseudo-Indian” guitar solo on “Good Morning Good Morning”.[257] McCartney also played lead guitar on “Another Girl”.[258]

During his years with Wings, McCartney tended to leave electric guitar work to other group members,[259] though he played most of the lead guitar on Band on the Run.[260] In 1990, when asked who his favourite guitar players were he included Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton and David Gilmour, stating, “but I still like Hendrix the best”.[251] He has primarily used a Gibson Les Paul for electric work, particularly during live performances.

Vocals

McCartney is known for his belting power, versatility and wide tenor vocal range, spanning over four octaves.[261][262] He was ranked the 11th greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone,[263] voted the 8th greatest singer ever by NME readers[264] and number 10 by Music Radar readers in the list of “the 30 greatest lead singers of all time”.[265] Over the years, McCartney has been named a significant vocal influence by Chris Cornell,[266] Billy Joel,[267] Steven Tyler,[268] Brad Delp,[269] and Axl Rose.[270]

McCartney’s vocals have crossed several music genres throughout his career. On “Call Me Back Again”, according to Benitez, “McCartney shines as a bluesy solo vocalist”, while MacDonald called “I’m Down” “a rock-and-roll classic” that “illustrates McCartney’s vocal and stylistic versatility”.[271] MacDonald described “Helter Skelter” as an early attempt at heavy metal, and “Hey Jude” as a “pop/rock hybrid”, pointing out McCartney’s “use of gospel-style melismas” in the song and his “pseudo-soul shrieking in the fade-out”.[272] Benitez identified “Hope of Deliverance” and “Put It There” as examples of McCartney’s folk music efforts while musicologist Walter Everett considered “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Honey Pie” attempts at vaudeville.[273] MacDonald praised the “swinging beat” of the Beatles’ twenty-four bar blues song, “She’s a Woman” as “the most extreme sound they had manufactured to date”, with McCartney’s voice “at the edge, squeezed to the upper limit of his chest register and threatening to crack at any moment.”[274] MacDonald described “I’ve Got a Feeling” as a “raunchy, mid-tempo rocker” with a “robust and soulful” vocal performance and “Back in the U.S.S.R.” as “the last of [the Beatles’] up-tempo rockers”, McCartney’s “belting” vocals among his best since “Drive My Car”, recorded three years earlier.[275]

McCartney also teasingly tried out classical singing, namely singing various renditions of “Besame Mucho” with the Beatles. He continued experimenting with various musical and vocal styles throughout his post-Beatles career.[276][277][278][text–source integrity?] “Monkberry Moon Delight” was described by Pitchfork’s Jayson Greene as “an absolutely unhinged vocal take, Paul gulping and sobbing right next to your inner ear”, adding that “it could be a latter-day Tom Waits performance”.

Keyboards

McCartney played piano on several Beatles songs, including “She’s a Woman”, “For No One”, “A Day in the Life”, “Hello, Goodbye”, “Lady Madonna”, “Hey Jude”, “Martha My Dear”, “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road”.[280] MacDonald considered the piano part in “Lady Madonna” as reminiscent of Fats Domino, and “Let It Be” as having a gospel rhythm.[281] MacDonald called McCartney’s Mellotron intro on “Strawberry Fields Forever” an integral feature of the song’s character.[282] McCartney played a Moog synthesizer on the Beatles song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and the Wings track “Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)”.[283] Ingham described the Wings songs “With a Little Luck” and “London Town” as being “full of the most sensitive pop synthesizer touches”.

Drums

McCartney played drums on the Beatles’ songs “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “Dear Prudence”, “Martha My Dear”, “Wild Honey Pie” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.[285] He also played all the drum parts on his first and second solo albums McCartney and McCartney II, as well as on the Wings album Band on the Run and most of the drums on his solo LP Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.[286] His other drumming contributions include Paul Jones’ rendition of “And the Sun Will Shine” (1968),[287] Steve Miller Band’s 1969 tracks “Celebration Song” and “My Dark Hour”,[288][289] and “Sunday Rain” from the Foo Fighters’ 2017 album Concrete and Gold.

Tape loops

In the mid-1960s, when visiting artist friend John Dunbar’s flat in London, McCartney brought tapes he had compiled at then-girlfriend Jane Asher’s home. They included mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that Dick James made into a demo for him.[291] Heavily influenced by American avant-garde musician John Cage, McCartney made tape loops by recording voices, guitars and bongos on a Brenell tape recorder and splicing the various loops. He referred to the finished product as “electronic symphonies”.[292] He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create the desired effects, some of which the Beatles later used on the songs “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “The Fool on the Hill”.

Personal life

Creative outlets

While at school during the 1950s, McCartney thrived at art a*signments, often earning top accolades for his visual work. However, his lack of discipline negatively affected his academic grades, preventing him from earning admission to art college.[294] During the 1960s, he delved into the visual arts, explored experimental cinema, and regularly attended film, theatrical and classical music performances. His first contact with the London avant-garde scene was through artist John Dunbar, who introduced McCartney to art dealer Robert Fraser.[295] At Fraser’s flat he first learned about art appreciation and met Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton.[296] McCartney later purchased works by Magritte, whose painting of an apple had inspired the Apple Records logo.[297] McCartney became involved in the renovation and publicising of the Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, London, which Barry Miles had co-founded and where Lennon first met Yoko Ono. Miles also co-founded International Times, an underground paper that McCartney helped to start with direct financial support and by providing interviews to attract advertiser income. Miles later wrote McCartney’s official biography, Many Years from Now (1997).[298]

McCartney became interested in painting after watching artist Willem de Kooning work in de Kooning’s Long Island studio.[299] McCartney took up painting in 1983, and he first exhibited his work in Siegen, Germany, in 1999. The 70-painting show featured portraits of Lennon, Andy Warhol and David Bowie.[300] Though initially reluctant to display his paintings publicly, McCartney chose the gallery because events organiser Wolfgang Suttner showed genuine interest in McCartney’s art.[301] In September 2000, the first UK exhibition of McCartney’s paintings opened, featuring 500 canvases at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, England.[302] In October 2000, McCartney’s art debuted in his hometown of Liverpool. McCartney said, “I’ve been offered an exhibition of my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery … where John and I used to spend many a pleasant afternoon. So I’m really excited about it. I didn’t tell anybody I painted for 15 years but now I’m out of the closet”.[303] McCartney is lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a school in the building formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute for Boys.[304]

When McCartney was a child, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read books. His father invited Paul and his brother Michael to solve crosswords with him, to increase their “word power”, as McCartney said.[305] In 2001, McCartney published Blackbird Singing, a volume of poems and lyrics to his songs for which he gave readings in Liverpool and New York City.[306] In the foreword of the book, he explains: “When I was a teenager … I had an overwhelming desire to have a poem published in the school magazine. I wrote something deep and meaningful—which was promptly rejected—and I suppose I have been trying to get my own back ever since”.[307] His first children’s book was published by Faber & Faber in 2005, High in the Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail, a collaboration with writer Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar. Featuring a squirrel whose woodland home is razed by developers, it had been scripted and sketched by McCartney and Dunbar over several years, as an animated film. The Observer labelled it an “anti-capitalist children’s book”.[308] In 2018, he wrote the children’s book Hey Grandude! together with illustrator Kathryn Durst, which was published by Random House Books in September 2019. The book is about a grandpa and his three grandchildren with a magic compass on an adventure.

In 1981, McCartney asked Geoff Dunbar to direct a short animated film called Rupert and the Frog Song; McCartney was the writer and producer, and he also added some of the character voices.[311] His song “We All Stand Together” from the film’s soundtrack reached No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. In 1992, he worked with Dunbar on an animated film about the work of French artist Honoré Daumier, which won them a BAFTA award.[312] In 2004, they worked together on the animated short film Tropic Island Hum.[313] The accompanying single, “Tropic Island Hum”/”We All Stand Together”, reached number 21 in the UK.[314]

McCartney also produced and hosted The Real Buddy Holly Story, a 1985 documentary featuring interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, the Holly family, and others.[315] In 1995, he made a guest appearance on the Simpsons episode “Lisa the Vegetarian” and directed a short documentary about the Grateful Dead.

Business

Since the Rich List began in 1989, McCartney has been the UK’s wealthiest musician, with an estimated fortune of £730 million in 2015.[317] In addition to an interest in Apple Corps and MPL Communications, an umbrella company for his business interests, he owns a significant music publishing catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights, including the publishing rights to the musicals Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, Annie and Grease.[318] He earned £40 million in 2003, the highest income that year within media professions in the UK.[319] This rose to £48.5 million by 2005.[320] McCartney’s 18-date On the Run Tour grossed £37 million in 2012.[321]

McCartney signed his first recording contract, as a member of the Beatles, with Parlophone Records, an EMI subsidiary, in June 1962. In the United States, the Beatles recordings were distributed by EMI subsidiary Capitol Records. The Beatles re-signed with EMI for another nine years in 1967. After forming their own record label, Apple Records, in 1968, the Beatles’ recordings would be released through Apple although the masters were still owned by EMI.[35] Following the break-up of the Beatles, McCartney’s music continued to be released by Apple Records under the Beatles’ 1967 recording contract with EMI which ran until 1976. Following the formal dissolution of the Beatles’ partnership in 1975, McCartney re-signed with EMI worldwide and Capitol in the US, Canada and Japan, acquiring ownership of his solo catalogue from EMI as part of the deal. In 1979, McCartney signed with Columbia Records in the US and Canada—reportedly receiving the industry’s most lucrative recording contract to date, while remaining with EMI for distribution throughout the rest of the world.[322] As part of the deal, CBS offered McCartney ownership of Frank Music, publisher of the catalogue of American songwriter Frank Loesser. McCartney’s album sales were below CBS’ expectations and reportedly the company lost at least $9 million on the contract.[323] McCartney returned to Capitol in the US in 1985, remaining with EMI until 2006.[324] In 2007, McCartney signed with Hear Music, becoming the label’s first artist. He remains there as of 2012’s Kisses on the Bottom.[325]

In 1963, Dick James established Northern Songs to publish the songs of Lennon–McCartney.[326] McCartney initially owned 20% of Northern Songs, which became 15% after a public stock offering in 1965. In 1969, James sold a controlling interest in Northern Songs to Lew Grade’s Associated Television (ATV) after which McCartney and John Lennon sold their remaining shares although they remained under contract to ATV until 1973. In 1972, McCartney re-signed with ATV for seven years in a joint publishing agreement between ATV and McCartney Music. Since 1979, MPL Communications has published McCartney’s songs.

McCartney and Yoko Ono attempted to purchase the Northern Songs catalogue in 1981, but Grade declined their offer. Soon afterward, ATV Music’s parent company, Associated Communications Corp., was acquired in a takeover by businessman Robert Holmes à Court, who later sold ATV Music to Michael Jackson in 1985. McCartney has criticised Jackson’s purchase and handling of Northern Songs over the years. In 1995, Jackson merged his catalogue with Sony for a reported £59,052,000 ($95 million), establishing Sony/ATV Music Publishing, in which he retained half-ownership.[327] Northern Songs was formally dissolved in 1995, and absorbed into the Sony/ATV catalogue.[328] McCartney receives writers’ royalties which together are 33⅓ percent of total commercial proceeds in the US, and which vary elsewhere between 50 and 55 percent.[329] Two of the Beatles’ earliest songs—”Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You”—were published by an EMI subsidiary, Ardmore & Beechwood, before signing with James. McCartney acquired their publishing rights from Ardmore in 1978, and they are the only two Beatles songs owned by MPL Communications.

Drugs

McCartney first used drugs in the Beatles’ Hamburg days when they often used Preludin to maintain their energy while performing for long periods.[331] Bob Dylan introduced them to marijuana in a New York hotel room in 1964; McCartney recalls getting “very high” and “giggling uncontrollably”.[332] His use of the drug soon became habitual, and according to Miles, McCartney wrote the lyrics “another kind of mind” in “Got to Get You into My Life” specifically as a reference to cannabis.[333] During the filming of Help!, McCartney occasionally smoked a joint in the car on the way to the studio during filming, and often forgot his lines.[334] Director Richard Lester overheard two physically attractive women trying to persuade McCartney to use heroin, but he refused.[334] Introduced to cocaine by Robert Fraser, McCartney used the drug regularly during the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and for about a year in total but stopped because of his dislike of the unpleasant melancholy he felt afterwards.[335]

Initially reluctant to try LSD, McCartney eventually did so in late 1966, and took his second “acid trip” in March 1967 with Lennon after a Sgt. Pepper studio session.[336] He later became the first Beatle to discuss the drug publicly, declaring: “It opened my eyes … [and] made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society.”[337] He made his attitude about cannabis public in 1967, when he, along with the other Beatles and Epstein, added his name to a July advertisement in The Times, which called for its legalisation, the release of those imprisoned for possession, and research into marijuana’s medical uses.[338]

In 1972, a Swedish court fined McCartney £1,000 for cannabis possession. Soon after, Scottish police found marijuana plants growing on his farm, leading to his 1973 conviction for illegal cultivation and a £100 fine. As a result of his drug convictions, the US government repeatedly denied him a visa until December 1973.[339] Arrested again for marijuana possession in 1975 in Los Angeles, Linda took the blame, and the court soon dismissed the charges. In January 1980, when Wings flew to Tokyo for a tour of Japan, customs officials found approximately 8 ounces (200 g) of cannabis in his luggage. They arrested McCartney and brought him to a local jail while the Japanese government decided what to do. After ten days, they released and deported him without charge.[340] In 1984, while McCartney was on holiday in Barbados, authorities arrested him for possession of marijuana and fined him $200.[341] Upon his return to England, he stated: “cannabis is … less harmful than rum punch, whiskey, nicotine and glue, all of which are perfectly legal … I don’t think … I was doing anyone any harm whatsoever.”[342] In 1997, he spoke out in support of decriminalisation of the drug: “People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminals is wrong.”[295] He did, however, decide to quit cannabis in 2015, citing a desire to set a good example for his grandchildren.

Vegetarianism and activism

Since 1975, McCartney has been a vegetarian.[344][345] He and his wife Linda were vegetarians for most of their 29-year marriage. They decided to stop consuming meat after Paul saw lambs in a field as they were eating a meal of lamb. Soon after, the couple became outspoken animal rights activists.[346] In his first interview after Linda’s death, he promised to continue working for animal rights, and in 1999, he spent £3,000,000 to ensure Linda McCartney Foods remained free of genetically engineered ingredients.[347] In 1995, he narrated the documentary Devour the Earth, written by Tony Wardle.[348] McCartney is a supporter of the animal-rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has appeared in the group’s campaigns, and in 2009, McCartney narrated a video for them titled “Glass Walls”, which was harshly critical of slaughterhouses, the meat industry, and their effect on animal welfare.[349][350][351] McCartney has also supported campaigns headed by the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, World Animal Protection, and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.[352][353]

Following McCartney’s marriage to Mills, he joined her in a campaign against land mines, becoming a patron of Adopt-A-Minefield.[354] In a 2003 meeting at the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin, ahead of a concert in Red Square, McCartney and Mills urged Russia to join the anti-landmine campaign.[355] In 2006, the McCartneys travelled to Prince Edward Island to raise international awareness of seal hunting. The couple debated with Danny Williams, Newfoundland’s then Premier, on Larry King Live, stating that fishermen should stop hunting seals and start seal-watching businesses instead.[356] McCartney also supports the Make Poverty History campaign.[357]

McCartney has participated in several charity recordings and performances, including the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, Live 8, and the recording of “Ferry Cross the Mersey”.[358] In 2004, he donated a song to an album to aid the “US Campaign for Burma”, in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required’s CD, organised as an effort to raise funds to a*sist with the recovery from the devastation caused in Southeast Asia by the 2004 tsunami.[359]

In 2009, McCartney wrote to Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, asking him why he was not a vegetarian. As McCartney explained, “He wrote back very kindly, saying, ‘my doctors tell me that I must eat meat’. And I wrote back again, saying, you know, I don’t think that’s right … I think he’s now being told … that he can get his protein somewhere else … It just doesn’t seem right—the Dalai Lama, on the one hand, saying, ‘Hey guys, don’t harm sentient beings … Oh, and by the way, I’m having a steak.’”[360] In 2012, McCartney joined the anti-fracking campaign Artists Against Fracking.[361]

Save the Arctic is a campaign to protect the Arctic and an international outcry and a renewed focus concern on oil development in the Arctic, attracting the support of more than five million people. This includes McCartney, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners.[362][363] In 2015, following British prime minister David Cameron’s decision to give Members of Parliament a free vote on amending the law against fox hunting, McCartney was quoted: “The people of Britain are behind this Tory government on many things but the vast majority of us will be against them if hunting is reintroduced. It is cruel and unnecessary and will lose them support from ordinary people and animal lovers like myself.”[364] During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, McCartney called for Chinese wet markets (which sell live animals including wild ones) to be banned. He expressed concern over both the health impacts of the practice as well as its cruelty to animals.

Meditation

In August 1967, McCartney met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton and later went to Bangor in North Wales to attend a weekend initiation conference, where he and the other Beatles learned the basics of Transcendental Meditation.[366] He said, “The whole meditation experience was very good and I still use the mantra … I find it soothing.”[367] In 2009, McCartney and Starr headlined a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall, raising three million dollars for the David Lynch Foundation to fund instruction in Transcendental Meditation for at-risk youth.

Football

McCartney has publicly professed support for Everton and has also shown favour for Liverpool.[369] In 2008, he ended speculation about his allegiance when he said: “Here’s the deal: my father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig and I thought ‘You know what? I am just going to support them both because it’s all Liverpool.’”[

Relationships

Girlfriends

Dot Rhone

McCartney’s first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959.[371] According to Spitz, Rhone felt that McCartney had a compulsion to control situations. He often chose clothes and makeup for her, encouraging her to grow her hair out like Brigitte Bardot’s, and at least once insisting she have it restyled, to disappointing effect.[372] When McCartney first went to Hamburg with the Beatles, he wrote to Rhone regularly, and she accompanied Cynthia Lennon to Hamburg when they played there again in 1962.[373] The couple had a two-and-a-half-year relationship, and were due to marry until Rhone’s miscarriage. According to Spitz, McCartney, now “free of obligation”, ended the engagement.

Jane Asher

McCartney first met British actress Jane Asher on 18 April 1963 when a photographer asked them to pose at a Beatles performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London.[375] The two began a relationship, and in November of that year he took up residence with Asher at her parents’ home at 57 Wimpole Street, London.[376] They had lived there for more than two years before the couple moved to McCartney’s own home in St. John’s Wood in March 1966.[377] He wrote several songs while living at the Ashers’, including “Yesterday”, “And I Love Her”, “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You”, the latter three having been inspired by their romance.[378] They had a five-year relationship and planned to marry, but Asher broke off the engagement after she discovered he had become involved with Francie Schwartz,[379] an American screenwriter who moved to London at age 23 thinking she could sell a script to the Beatles. She met McCartney and he invited her to move into his London house, where events ensued that possibly broke up him and Asher.

Wives

Linda Eastman

Linda Eastman was a music fan who once commented, “all my teen years were spent with an ear to the radio.”[381] At times, she played hooky to see artists such as Fabian, Bobby Darin and Chuck Berry.[381] She became a popular photographer with several rock groups, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, the Doors and the Beatles, whom she first met at Shea Stadium in 1966. She commented, “It was John who interested me at the start. He was my Beatle hero. But when I met him the fascination faded fast, and I found it was Paul I liked.”[382] The pair first met properly in 1967 at a Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O’Nails club, during her UK a*signment to photograph rock musicians in London. As Paul remembers, “The night Linda and I met, I spotted her across a crowded club, and although I would normally have been nervous chatting her up, I realised I had to … Pushiness worked for me that night!”[383] Linda said this about their meeting: “I was quite shameless really. I was with somebody else [that night] … and I saw Paul at the other side of the room. He looked so beautiful that I made up my mind I would have to pick him up.”[382] The pair married in March 1969. About their relationship, Paul said, “We had a lot of fun together … just the nature of how we aren’t, our favourite thing really is to just hang, to have fun. And Linda’s very big on just following the moment.”[384] He added, “We were crazy. We had a big argument the night before we got married, and it was nearly called off … [it’s] miraculous that we made it. But we did.”[385]

After the break-up of the Beatles, the two collaborated musically and formed Wings in 1971.[386] They faced derision from some fans and critics, who questioned her inclusion. She was nervous about performing with Paul, who explained, “she conquered those nerves, got on with it and was really gutsy.”[387] Paul defended her musical ability: “I taught Linda the basics of the keyboard … She took a couple of lessons and learned some bluesy things … she did very well and made it look easier than it was … The critics would say, ‘She’s not really playing’ or ‘Look at her—she’s playing with one finger.’ But what they didn’t know is that sometimes she was playing a thing called a Minimoog, which could only be played with one finger. It was monophonic.”[387] He went on to say, “We thought we were in it for the fun … it was just something we wanted to do, so if we got it wrong—big deal. We didn’t have to justify ourselves.”[387] Former Wings guitarist McCullough said of collaborating with Linda, “trying to get things together with a learner in the group didn’t work as far as I was concerned.”[388]

They had four children—Linda’s daughter Heather (legally adopted by Paul), Mary, Stella and James—and remained married until Linda’s death from breast cancer at age 56 in 1998.[389] After Linda died, Paul said, “I got a counsellor because I knew that I would need some help. He was great, particularly in helping me get rid of my guilt [about wishing I’d been] perfect all the time … a real bugger. But then I thought, hang on a minute. We’re just human. That was the beautiful thing about our marriage. We were just a boyfriend and girlfriend having babies.”

Heather Mills

In 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmine campaigner.[391] In 2003, the couple had a child, Beatrice Milly, named in honour of Mills’s late mother and one of McCartney’s aunts.[174] They separated in April 2006 and divorced acrimoniously in March 2008.[392] In 2004, he commented on media animosity toward his partners: “[the British public] didn’t like me giving up on Jane Asher … I married [Linda], a New York divorcee with a child, and at the time they didn’t like that”.

Nancy Shevell

McCartney married New Yorker Nancy Shevell in a civil ceremony at Marylebone Town Hall, London, on 9 October 2011. The wedding was a modest event attended by a group of about 30 relatives and friends.[193] The couple had been together since November 2007.[394] Shevell is vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owns New England Motor Freight.[395] She is a former member of the board of the New York area’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.[396] Shevell is about 18 years younger than McCartney.[397] They had known each other for about 20 years prior to marrying, having met because both had homes in the Hamptons.

Beatles

John Lennon

Though McCartney had a strained relationship with Lennon, they briefly became close again in early 1974, and played music together on one occasion.[398] In later years, the two grew apart.[399] McCartney often phoned Lennon, but was apprehensive about the reception he would receive. During one call, Lennon told him, “You’re all pizza and fairytales!”[400] In an effort to avoid talking only about business, they often spoke of cats, babies, or baking bread.[401]

On 24 April 1976, McCartney and Lennon were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live at Lennon’s home in the Dakota when Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer for the Beatles to reunite. While they seriously considered going to the SNL studio a few blocks away, they decided it was too late. This was their last time together.[402] VH1 fictionalised this event in the 2000 television film Two of Us.[403] McCartney’s last telephone call to Lennon, days before Lennon and Ono released Double Fantasy, was friendly: “[It is] a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out. But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn’t have any kind of blow-up”, he said.

Reaction to Lennon’s murder

On 9 December 1980, McCartney followed the news that Lennon had been murdered the previous night; Lennon’s death created a media frenzy around the surviving members of the band.[406] McCartney was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio that evening when he was surrounded by reporters who asked him for his reaction; he responded: “It’s a drag”. The press quickly criticised him for what appeared to be a superficial response.[407] He later explained, “When John was killed somebody stuck a microphone at me and said: ‘What do you think about it?’ I said, ‘It’s a dra-a-ag’ and meant it with every inch of melancholy I could muster. When you put that in print it says, ‘McCartney in London today when asked for a comment on his dead friend said, “It’s a drag”.’ It seemed a very flippant comment to make.”[407] He described his first exchange with Ono after the murder, and his last conversation with Lennon:

I talked to Yoko the day after he was killed, and the first thing she said was, “John was really fond of you.” The last telephone conversation I had with him we were still the best of mates. He was always a very warm guy, John. His bluff was all on the surface. He used to take his glasses down, those granny glasses, and say, “it’s only me.” They were like a wall you know? A shield. Those are the moments I treasure.

In 1983, McCartney said: “I would not have been as typically human and standoffish as I was if I knew John was going to die. I would have made more of an effort to try and get behind his ‘mask’ and have a better relationship with him.”[407] He said that he went home that night, watched the news on television with his children and cried most of the evening. In 1997, he said that Lennon’s death made the remaining ex-Beatles nervous that they might also be murdered.[408] He told Mojo magazine in 2002 that Lennon was his greatest hero.[409] In 1981, McCartney sang backup on Harrison’s tribute to Lennon, “All Those Years Ago”, which featured Starr on drums.[410] McCartney released “Here Today” in 1982, a song Everett described as “a haunting tribute” to McCartney’s friendship with Lennon

George Harrison

Discussing his relationship with McCartney, Harrison said: “Paul would always help along when you’d done his ten songs—then when he got ’round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually … There were a lot of tracks, though, where I played bass … because what Paul would do—if he’d written a song, he’d learn all the parts for Paul and then come in the studio and say (sometimes he was very difficult): ‘Do this’. He’d never give you the opportunity to come out with something.”[412]

After Harrison’s death in November 2001, McCartney said he was “a lovely guy and a very brave man who had a wonderful sense of humour”. He went on to say: “We grew up together and we just had so many beautiful times together – that’s what I am going to remember. I’ll always love him, he’s my baby brother.”[413] On the first anniversary of his death, McCartney played Harrison’s “Something” on a ukulele at the Concert for George; he would perform this rendition of the song on many subsequent solo tours.[414] He also performed “For You Blue” and “All Things Must Pass”, and played the piano on Eric Clapton’s rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

Ringo Starr

During a recording session for The Beatles in 1968, the two got into an argument over McCartney’s critique of Starr’s drum part for “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, which contributed to Starr temporarily leaving the band.[416] Starr later commented on working with McCartney: “Paul is the greatest bass player in the world. But he is also very determined … [to] get his own way … [thus] musical disagreements inevitably arose from time to time.”[417]

McCartney and Starr collaborated on several post-Beatles projects, starting in 1973 when McCartney contributed instrumentation and backing vocals for “Six O’Clock”, a song McCartney wrote for Starr’s album Ringo.[418] McCartney played a kazoo solo on “You’re Sixteen” from the same album.[419] Starr appeared (as a fictional version of himself) in McCartney’s 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, and played drums on most tracks of the soundtrack album, which includes re-recordings of several McCartney-penned Beatles songs. Starr played drums and sang backing vocals on “Beautiful Night” from McCartney’s 1997 album Flaming Pie. The pair collaborated again in 1998, on Starr’s Vertical Man, which featured McCartney’s backing vocals on three songs, and instrumentation on one.[420] In 2009, the pair performed “With a Little Help from My Friends” at a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation.[421] They collaborated on Starr’s album Y Not in 2010. McCartney played bass on “Peace Dream”, and sang a duet with Starr on “Walk with You”.[422] On 7 July 2010, Starr was performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York with his All-Starr Band in a concert celebrating his seventieth birthday. After the encores, McCartney made a surprise appearance, performing the Beatles’ song “Birthday” with Starr’s band.[423] On 26 January 2014, McCartney and Starr performed “Queenie Eye” from McCartney’s new album New at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.[424] McCartney inducted Starr into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2015, and played bass on his 2017 album Give More Love. On 16 December 2018, Starr and Ronnie Wood joined McCartney onstage to perform “Get Back” at his concert at London’s O2 Arena. Starr also made an appearance on the final day of McCartney’s Freshen Up tour in July 2019, performing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter”.

Legacy

Achievements

McCartney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and again as a solo artist in 1999. In 1979, the Guinness Book of World Records recognised McCartney as the “most honored composer and performer in music”, with 60 gold discs (43 with the Beatles, 17 with Wings) and, as a member of the Beatles, sales of over 100 million singles and 100 million albums, and as the “most successful song writer”, he wrote jointly or solo 43 songs which sold one million or more records between 1962 and 1978.[426] In 2009, Guinness World Records again recognised McCartney as the “most successful songwriter” having written or co-written 188 charted records in the United Kingdom, of which 91 reached the top 10 and 33 made it to number one.

McCartney has written, or co-written, 32 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100: twenty with the Beatles; seven solo or with Wings; one as a co-writer of “A World Without Love”, a number-one single for Peter and Gordon; one as a co-writer on Elton John’s cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; one as a co-writer on Stars on 45’s “Medley”; one as a co-writer with Michael Jackson on “Say Say Say”; and one as writer on “Ebony and Ivory” performed with Stevie Wonder.[428] As of 2009, he has 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States as a solo artist plus another 10 million with Wings.[429]

Credited with more number ones in the UK than any other artist, McCartney has participated in twenty-four chart topping singles: seventeen with the Beatles, one solo, and one each with Wings, Stevie Wonder, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Band Aid 20 and “The Christians et al.”[430][nb 44] He is the only artist to reach the UK number one as a soloist (“Pipes of Peace”), duo (“Ebony and Ivory” with Wonder), trio (“Mull of Kintyre”, Wings), quartet (“She Loves You”, the Beatles), quintet (“Get Back”, the Beatles with Billy Preston) and as part of a musical ensemble for charity (Ferry Aid).[432]

“Yesterday” is one of the most covered songs in history with more than 2,200 recorded versions, and according to the BBC, “the track is the only one by a UK writer to have been aired more than seven million times on American TV and radio and is third in the all-time list … [and] is the most played song by a British writer [last] century in the US”.[433] His 1968 Beatles composition “Hey Jude” achieved the highest sales in the UK that year and topped the US charts for nine weeks, which is longer than any other Beatles single. It was also the longest single released by the band and, at seven minutes eleven seconds, was at that time the longest number one.[434] “Hey Jude” is the best-selling Beatles single, achieving sales of over five million copies soon after its release.[435][nb 45]

In July 2005, McCartney’s performance of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with U2 at Live 8 became the fastest-released single in history. Available within forty-five minutes of its recording, hours later it had achieved number one on the UK Official Download Chart.

Awards and honours

• 1971: Academy Award winner (as a member of the Beatles)
• 18-time Grammy Award winner:
  • Nine as a member of the Beatles
  • Six as a solo artist
  • Two as a member of Wings
  • One as part of a joint collaboration
• Two-time inductee – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
  • Class of 1988 as a member of the Beatles
  • Class of 1999 as a solo artist
• 1965: Member of the Order of the British Empire
• 1988: Honorary Doctor of the University degree from University of Sussex
• 1997: Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to music
• 2000: Fellowship into the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors
• 2008: BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music
• 2008: Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Yale University
• 2010: Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music
• 2010: Kennedy Center Honors
• 2012: Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• 2012: Légion d’Honneur for his services to music
• 2012: MusiCares Person of the Year
• 2015: 4148 McCartney, asteroid named after him by the (International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center)
• 2017: Appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music

Neil Percival Young OC OM[4][5] (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, musician, and activist. After embarking on a music career in the 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles, joining Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and others. Since his early solo albums and those with his backing band Crazy Horse, Young has been prolific, recording a steady stream of studio and live albums.

Young has received several Grammy and Juno Awards. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him twice: in 1995 as a solo artist and in 1997 as a member of Buffalo Springfield.[6] In 2000, Rolling Stone named Young the 34th greatest rock ‘n roll artist. His guitar work, deeply personal lyrics[7][8][9] and signature tenor singing voice[10][11] define his long career. He also plays piano and harmonica on many albums, which frequently combine folk, rock, country and other musical styles. His often distorted electric guitar playing, especially with Crazy Horse, earned him the nickname “Godfather of Grunge”[12] and led to his 1995 album Mirror Ball with Pearl Jam. More recently he has been backed by Promise of the Real.[13] His 21 albums and singles have been certified Gold and Platinum in U.S by RIAA certification.[14]

Young directed (or co-directed) films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), Greendale (2003), and CSNY/Déjà Vu (2008). He also contributed to the soundtracks of the films Philadelphia (1993) and Dead Man (1995).

Young has lived in California since the 1960s but retains Canadian citizenship.[15] He was awarded the Order of Manitoba on July 14, 2006,[5] and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on December 30, 2009.[4] He became a United States citizen, taking dual citizenship, on January 22, 2020.

Early life (1945–1963)

Neil Young[19] was born on November 12, 1945, in Toronto, Ontario.[20][21] His father, Scott Alexander Young (1918–2005), was a journalist and sportswriter who also wrote fiction.[22] His mother, Edna Blow Ragland “Rassy” Young (1918–1990) was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.[23] Although Canadian, his mother had American and French ancestry.[24] Young’s parents married in 1940 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and their first son, Robert “Bob” Young, was born in 1942. Shortly after Young’s birth in 1945, his family moved to rural Omemee, Ontario, which Young later described fondly as a “sleepy little place”.[25] Young suffered from polio in 1952 during the last major outbreak of the disease in Ontario[26] (the Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, then aged nine, also contracted the virus during this epidemic).[27] After his recovery, the Young family vacationed in Florida. During that period, Young briefly attended Faulkner Elementary School in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. In 1952, upon returning to Canada, Young moved from Omemee to Winnipeg for a year, before relocating to Toronto (1957–1960) and Pickering (1956). Young became interested in popular music he heard on the radio.[28] When Young was twelve, his father, who had had several extramarital affairs, left his mother. His mother asked for a divorce, which was granted in 1960.[29] Young went to live with his mother, who moved back to Winnipeg, while his brother Bob stayed with his father in Toronto.

During the mid-1950s, Young listened to rock ‘n roll, rockabilly, doo-wop, R&B, country, and western pop. He idolized Elvis Presley and later referred to him in a number of his songs.[32] Other early musical influences included Link Wray,[33] Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs, The Ventures, Cliff Richard and the Shadows,[34] Chuck Berry, Hank Marvin, Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Chantels, The Monotones, Ronnie Self, the Fleetwoods, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Gogi Grant.[35] Young first began to play music himself on a plastic ukulele, before, as he would later relate, going on to “a better ukulele to a banjo ukulele to a baritone ukulele – everything but a guitar.”

Career

Early career (1963–1966)

Young and his mother settled into the working-class area of Fort Rouge, Winnipeg, where the shy, dry-humoured youth enrolled at Earl Grey Junior High School. It was there that he formed his first band, the Jades, and met Ken Koblun. While attending Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, he played in several instrumental rock bands, eventually dropping out of school in favour of a musical career.[37] Young’s first stable band was The Squires, with Ken Koblun, Jeff Wuckert and Bill Edmondson on drums, who had a local hit called “The Sultan”. The band played in Fort William (now part of the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario), where they recorded a series of demos produced by a local producer, Ray Dee, who Young called “the original Briggs”.[38] While playing at The Flamingo, Young met Stephen Stills, whose band the Company was playing the same venue, and they became friends.[39] The Squires played in several dance halls and clubs in Winnipeg and Ontario.[40]

After leaving the Squires, Young worked folk clubs in Winnipeg, where he first met Joni Mitchell.[41] Mitchell recalls Young as having been highly influenced by Bob Dylan at the time.[42] Here he wrote some of his earliest and most enduring folk songs such as “Sugar Mountain”, about lost youth. Mitchell wrote “The Circle Game” in response.[43] The Winnipeg band The Guess Who (with Randy Bachman as lead guitarist) had a Canadian Top 40 hit with Young’s “Flying on the Ground is Wrong”, which was Young’s first major success as a songwriter.[44]

In 1965, Young toured Canada as a solo artist. In 1966, while in Toronto, he joined the Rick James-fronted Mynah Birds. The band managed to secure a record deal with the Motown label, but as their first album was being recorded, James was arrested for being AWOL from the Navy Reserve.[45] After the Mynah Birds disbanded, Young and the bass player Bruce Palmer decided to pawn the group’s musical equipment and buy a Pontiac hearse, which they used to relocate to Los Angeles.[46] Young admitted in a 2009 interview that he was in the United States illegally until he received a “green card” (permanent residency permit) in 1970.

Buffalo Springfield (1966–1968)

Once they reached Los Angeles, Young and Palmer met up with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay after a chance encounter in traffic on Sunset Boulevard.[46] Along with Dewey Martin, they formed Buffalo Springfield. A mixture of folk, country, psychedelia, and rock, lent a hard edge by the twin lead guitars of Stills and Young, made Buffalo Springfield a critical success, and their first record Buffalo Springfield (1966) sold well after Stills’ topical song “For What It’s Worth” became a hit, aided by Young’s melodic harmonics played on electric guitar. According to Rolling Stone, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other sources, Buffalo Springfield helped create the genres of folk rock and country rock.[48]

Distrust of their management, as well as the arrest and deportation of Palmer, worsened the already strained relations among the group members and led to Buffalo Springfield’s demise. A second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, was released in late 1967, but two of Young’s three contributions were solo tracks recorded apart from the rest of the group.

From that album, “Mr. Soul” was the only Young song of the three that all five members of the group performed together. “Broken Arrow” features snippets of sound from other sources, including opening the song with a soundbite of Dewey Martin singing “Mr. Soul” and closing it with the thumping of a heartbeat. “Expecting to Fly” featured a string arrangement that Young’s co-producer for the track, Jack Nitzsche, dubbed “symphonic pop”.[citation needed]

In May 1968, the band split up for good, but to fulfill a contractual obligation, a final studio album, Last Time Around, was released. The album was primarily composed of recordings made earlier that year. Young contributed the songs “On the Way Home” and “I Am a Child”, singing lead on the latter. In 1997, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Young did not appear at the ceremony. The three surviving members, Furay, Stills, and Young, appeared together as Buffalo Springfield at Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit on October 23–24, 2010, and at Bonnaroo in the summer of 2011. Young also played as a studio session guitarist for some 1968 recordings by The Monkees which appeared on the Head and Instant Replay albums.

Going solo, Crazy Horse (1968–1969)

After the break-up of Buffalo Springfield, Young signed a solo deal with Reprise Records, home of his colleague and friend Joni Mitchell, with whom he shared a manager, Elliot Roberts, who managed Young until his death in 2019. Young and Roberts immediately began work on Young’s first solo record, Neil Young (January 22, 1969),[50] which received mixed reviews. In a 1970 interview,[51] Young deprecated the album as being “overdubbed rather than played.” The album contains songs that remain a staple of his live shows including “The Loner.”

For his next album, Young recruited three musicians from a band called The Rockets: Danny Whitten on guitar, Billy Talbot on bass guitar, and Ralph Molina on drums. These three took the name Crazy Horse (after the historical figure of the same name), and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (May 1969), is credited to “Neil Young with Crazy Horse.” Recorded in just two weeks, the album includes “Cinnamon Girl”, “Cowgirl in the Sand”, and “Down by the River.” Young reportedly wrote all three songs in bed on the same day while nursing a high fever of 103 °F (39 °C).

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (1969–1970)

Shortly after the release of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Young reunited with Stephen Stills by joining Crosby, Stills & Nash, who had already released one album Crosby, Stills & Nash as a trio in May 1969. Young was originally offered a position as a sideman, but agreed to join only if he received full membership, and the group – winners of the 1969 “Best New Artist” Grammy Award – was renamed Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.[53] The quartet debuted in Chicago on August 16, 1969, and later performed at the famous Woodstock Festival, during which Young skipped the majority of the acoustic set and refused to be filmed during the electric set, even telling the cameramen: “One of you f*ckin’ guys comes near me and I’m gonna f*ckin’ hit you with my guitar”.[54] During the making of their first album, Déjà Vu (March 11, 1970), the musicians frequently argued, particularly Young and Stills, who both fought for control. Stills continued throughout their lifelong relationship to criticize Young, saying that he “wanted to play folk music in a rock band.”[55] Despite the tension, Young’s tenure with CSN&Y coincided with the band’s most creative and successful period, and greatly contributed to his subsequent success as a solo artist.

Young wrote “Ohio” following the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970. The song was quickly recorded by CSN&Y and immediately released as a single, even though CSN&Y’s “Teach Your Children” was still climbing the singles charts.

After the Gold Rush, acoustic tour and Harvest (1970–1972)

Later in the year, Young released his third solo album, After the Gold Rush (August 31, 1970), which featured, among others, Nils Lofgren, Stephen Stills, and CSNY bassist Greg Reeves. Young also recorded some tracks with Crazy Horse, but dismissed them early in the sessions. The eventual recording was less amplified than Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, with a wider range of sounds. Young’s newfound fame with CSNY made the album his commercial breakthrough as a solo artist, and it contains some of his best known work, including “Tell Me Why” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”, the country-influenced singles “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “When You Dance I Can Really Love”, and the title track, “After the Gold Rush”, played on piano, with dream-like lyrics that ran a gamut of subjects from drugs and interpersonal relationships to environmental concerns. Young’s bitter condemnation of racism in the heavy blues-rock song “Southern Man” (along with a later song entitled “Alabama”) was also controversial with southerners in an era of desegregation, prompting Lynyrd Skynyrd to decry Young by name in the lyrics to their hit “Sweet Home Alabama.” However, Young said he was a fan of Skynyrd’s music, and the band’s front man Ronnie Van Zant was later photographed wearing a Tonight’s the Night T-shirt on the cover of an album.

In the autumn of 1970, Young began a solo acoustic tour of North America, during which he played a variety of his Buffalo Springfield and CSNY songs on guitar and piano, along with material from his solo albums and a number of new songs. Some songs premiered by Young on the tour, like “Journey through the Past”, would never find a home on a studio album, while other songs, like “See the Sky About to Rain”, would only be released in coming years. With CSNY splitting up and Crazy Horse having signed their own record deal, Young’s tour, now entitled “Journey Through the Past”, continued into early 1971, and its focus shifted more to newer songs he had been writing; he famously remarked that having written so many, he could not think of anything to do but play them. Many gigs were sold out, including concerts at Carnegie Hall and a pair of acclaimed hometown shows at Toronto’s Massey Hall, which were taped for a planned live album. The shows became legendary among Young fans, and the recordings were officially released nearly 40 years later as an official bootleg in Young’s Archive series.

Near the end of his tour, Young performed one of the new acoustic songs on the Johnny Cash TV show. “The Needle and the Damage Done”, a somber lament on the pain caused by heroin addiction, had been inspired in part by Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten, who eventually died while battling his drug problems.[56][57] While in Nashville for the Cash taping, Young accepted the invitation of Quadrafonic Sound Studios owner Elliot Mazer to record tracks there with a group of country-music session musicians who were pulled together at the last minute. Making a connection with them, he christened them The Stray Gators, and began playing with them. Befitting the immediacy of the project, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor were brought in from the Cash taping to do background vocals. Against the advice of his producer David Briggs, he scrapped plans for the imminent release[58] of the live acoustic recording in favour of a studio album consisting of the Nashville sessions, electric-guitar oriented sessions recorded later in his barn, and two recordings made with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barking (credited as Barking Town Hall and now the Broadway Theatre) during March 1971.[59] The result was Young’s fourth album, Harvest (February 14, 1972). The only remnant left of the original live concept was the album’s live acoustic performance of “Needle and the Damage Done.”

After his success with CSNY, Young purchased a ranch in the rural hills above Woodside and Redwood City in Northern California (“Broken Arrow Ranch”, where he lived until his divorce in 2014.[60]). He wrote the song “Old Man” in honor of the land’s longtime caretaker, Louis Avila. The song “A Man Needs a Maid” was inspired by his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress. “Heart of Gold” was released as the first single from Harvest, the only No. 1 hit in his career. “Old Man” was also popular.

The album’s recording had been almost accidental. Its mainstream success caught Young off guard, and his first instinct was to back away from stardom. In the Decade (1977) compilation, Young chose to include his greatest hits from the period, but his handwritten liner notes famously described “Heart of Gold” as the song that “put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.”

The “Ditch” Trilogy and personal struggles (1972–1974)

Although a new tour with The Stray Gators (now augmented by Danny Whitten) had been planned to follow up on the success of Harvest, it became apparent during rehearsals that Whitten could not function due to drug abuse. On November 18, 1972, shortly after he was fired from the tour preparations, Whitten was found dead of an apparent alcohol/diazepam overdose. Young described the incident to Rolling Stone’s Cameron Crowe in 1975:[61] “[We] were rehearsing with him and he just couldn’t cut it. He couldn’t remember anything. He was too out of it. Too far gone. I had to tell him to go back to L.A. ‘It’s not happening, man. You’re not together enough.’ He just said, ‘I’ve got nowhere else to go, man. How am I gonna tell my friends?’ And he split. That night the coroner called me from L.A. and told me he’d OD’d. That blew my mind. I loved Danny. I felt responsible. And from there, I had to go right out on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and … insecure.”

On the tour, Young struggled with his voice and the performance of drummer Kenny Buttrey, a noted Nashville session musician who was unaccustomed to performing in the hard rock milieu; Buttrey was eventually replaced by former CSNY drummer Johnny Barbata, while David Crosby and Graham Nash contributed rhythm guitar and backing vocals to the final dates of the tour. The album a*sembled in the aftermath of this incident, Time Fades Away (October 15, 1973), has often been described by Young as “[his] least favorite record”, and was not officially released on CD until 2017 (as part of Young’s Official Release Series). Nevertheless, Young and his band tried several new musical approaches in this period. Time Fades Away, for instance, was recorded live, although it was an album of new material, an approach Young would repeat with more success later on. Time was the first of three consecutive commercial failures which would later become known collectively to fans as the “Ditch Trilogy”, as contrasted with the more middle-of-the-road pop of Harvest (1972).[62] These subsequent albums were seen as more challenging expressions of Young’s inner conflicts on achieving success, expressing both the specific struggles of his friends and himself, and the decaying idealism of his generation in America at the time.

In the second half of 1973, Young formed The Santa Monica Flyers, with Crazy Horse’s rhythm section augmented by Nils Lofgren on guitar and piano and Harvest/Time Fades Away veteran Ben Keith on pedal steel guitar. Deeply affected by the drug-induced deaths of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, Young recorded an album specifically inspired by the incidents, Tonight’s the Night (June 20, 1975). The album’s dark tone and rawness led Reprise to delay its release and Young had to pressure them for two years before they would do so.[63] While his record company was stalling, Young recorded another album, On the Beach (July 16, 1974), which presented a more melodic, acoustic sound at times, including a recording of the older song “See the Sky About to Rain”, but dealt with similarly dark themes such as the collapse of 1960s folk ideals, the downside of success and the underbelly of the Californian lifestyle. Like Time Fades Away, it sold poorly but eventually became a critical favorite, presenting some of Young’s most original work. A review of the 2003 re-release on CD of On the Beach described the music as “mesmerizing, harrowing, lucid, and bleary”.[64]

After completing On the Beach, Young reunited with Harvest producer Elliot Mazer to record another acoustic album, Homegrown. Most of the songs were written after Young’s break-up with Carrie Snodgress, and thus the tone of the album was somewhat dark. Though Homegrown was reportedly entirely complete, Young decided, not for the first or last time in his career, to drop it and release something else instead, in this case, Tonight’s the Night, at the suggestion of Band bassist Rick Danko.[65] Young further explained his move by saying: “It was a little too personal … it scared me”.[65] Most of the songs from Homegrown were later incorporated into other Young albums while the original album was not released until 2020. Tonight’s the Night, when finally released in 1975, sold poorly, as had the previous albums of the “ditch” trilogy, and received mixed reviews at the time, but is now regarded as a landmark album. In Young’s own opinion, it was the closest he ever came to art.

Reunions, retrospectives and Rust Never Sleeps (1974–1979)

Young reunited with Crosby, Stills, and Nash after a four-year hiatus in the summer of 1974 for a concert tour which was recorded and released in 2014 as CSNY 1974. It was one of the first ever stadium tours, and the largest tour in which Young has participated to date.[67]

In 1975, Young reformed Crazy Horse with Frank Sampedro on guitar as his backup band for his eighth album, Zuma (November 10, 1975). Many of the songs dealt with the theme of failed relationships; “Cortez the Killer”, a retelling of the Spanish conquest of Mexico from the viewpoint of the Aztecs, may also be heard as an allegory of love lost. Zuma’s closing track, “Through My Sails”, was the only released fragment from aborted sessions with Crosby, Stills and Nash for another group album.

In 1976, Young reunited with Stephen Stills for the album Long May You Run (September 20, 1976), credited to The Stills-Young Band; the follow-up tour was ended midway through by Young, who sent Stills a telegram that read: “Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil.”

In 1976, Young performed with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and numerous other rock musicians in the high-profile all-star concert The Last Waltz, the final performance by The Band. The release of Martin Scorsese’s movie of the concert was delayed while Scorsese unwillingly re-edited it to obscure the lump of cocaine that was clearly visible hanging from Young’s nose during his performance of “Helpless”.[69] American Stars ‘n Bars (June 13, 1977) contained two songs originally recorded for the Homegrown album, “Homegrown” and “Star of Bethlehem”, as well as newer material, including the future concert staple “Like a Hurricane”. Performers on the record included Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Young protégé Nicolette Larson along with Crazy Horse. In 1977, Young also released the compilation Decade, a personally selected set of songs spanning every aspect of his work, including a handful of previously unreleased songs. The record included less commercial album tracks alongside radio hits.

Comes a Time (October 2, 1978), Young’s first entirely new solo recording since the mid-1970s, also featured Larson and Crazy Horse. The album became Young’s most commercially accessible album in quite some time and marked a return to his folk roots, including a cover of Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds”, a song Young a*sociated with his childhood in Canada. Another of the album’s songs, “Lotta Love”, was also recorded by Larson, with her version reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1979. In 1978, much of the filming was done for Young’s film Human Highway, which took its name from a song featured on Comes a Time. Over four years, Young would spend $3,000,000 of his own money on production (US$11,759,694 in 2019 dollars[70]). This also marked the beginning of his brief collaboration with the post-punk band Devo, whose members appeared in the film.[71]

Young set out in 1978 on the lengthy “Rust Never Sleeps” tour, in which he played a wealth of new material. Each concert was divided into a solo acoustic set and an electric set with Crazy Horse. The electric sets, featuring an abrasive style of playing, were influenced by the punk rock zeitgeist of the late 1970s and, provided a stark contrast from Young’s previous, folk-inspired album Comes a Time.[72] Two new songs, the acoustic “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and electric “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” were the centerpiece of the new material. Young had collaborated with the art punk band Devo on a cacophonous version of Hey Hey, My My at the Different Fur studio in San Francisco and, would later introduce the song to Crazy Horse.[73] The lyrics, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” were widely quoted by his peers and by critics.[73] The album has also widely been considered a precursor of grunge music and many grunge artists have said they were inspired by Young’s distorted guitars on the B side to this album. Young also compared the rise of Johnny Rotten with that of the recently deceased “King” Elvis Presley, who himself had once been disparaged as a dangerous influence only to later become an icon. Rotten returned the favour by playing one of Young’s songs, “Revolution Blues” from On the Beach, on a London radio show, an early sign of Young’s eventual embrace by a number of punk-influenced alternative musicians.[74]

Young’s two accompanying albums Rust Never Sleeps (July 2, 1979; new material, culled from live recordings, but featuring studio overdubs) and Live Rust (November 19, 1979) (a mixture of old and new, and a genuine concert recording) captured the two sides of the concerts, with solo acoustic songs on side A, and fierce, uptempo, electric songs on side B. A movie version of the concerts, also called Rust Never Sleeps (1979), was directed by Young under the pseudonym “Bernard Shakey”. Young worked with rock artist Jim Evans to create the poster art for the film, using the Star Wars Jawas as a theme. Young’s work since Harvest (1972) had alternated between being rejected by mass audiences and being seen as backward-looking by critics, sometimes both at once, and now he was suddenly viewed as relevant by a new generation, who began to discover his earlier work. Readers and critics of Rolling Stone voted him Artist of the Year for 1979 (along with The Who), selected Rust Never Sleeps as Album of the Year, and voted him Male Vocalist of the Year as well.[75] The Village Voice named Rust Never Sleeps as the year’s winner in the Pazz & Jop Poll, a survey of nationwide critics, and honored Young as the Artist of the Decade. The Warner Music Vision release on VHS of Rust Never Sleeps in 1987 had a running time of 116 minutes, and although fully manufactured in Germany, was initially imported from there by the markets throughout Europe.

Experimental years (1980–1988)

At the start of the decade, distracted by medical concerns relating to the cerebral palsy of his son, Ben, Young had little time to spend on writing and recording.[76] After providing the incidental music to a 1980 biographical film of Hunter S. Thompson entitled Where the Buffalo Roam, Young released Hawks & Doves (November 3, 1980), a short record pieced together from sessions going back to 1974.[76]

1981’s Re·ac·tor, an electric album recorded with Crazy Horse, also included material from the 1970s.[77] Young did not tour in support of either album; in total, he played only one show, a set at the 1980 Bread and Roses Festival in Berkeley,[78] between the end of his 1978 tour with Crazy Horse and the start of his tour with the Trans Band in mid-1982.[citation needed]

The 1982 album Trans, which incorporated vocoders, synthesizers, and electronic beats, was Young’s first for the new label Geffen Records (distributed at the time by Warner Bros. Records, whose parent Warner Music Group owns most of Young’s solo and band catalogue) and represented a distinct stylistic departure. Young later revealed that an inspiration for the album was the theme of technology and communication with his son Ben, who has severe cerebral palsy and cannot speak.[80] An extensive tour preceded the release of the album, and was documented by the video Neil Young in Berlin, which saw release in 1986. MTV played the video for “Sample and Hold” in light rotation. The entire song contained “robot vocals” by Young and Nils Lofgren.[citation needed] The song “After Berlin” as seen in that video, was the only time Neil Young has ever performed the song.

Young’s next album, 1983’s Everybody’s Rockin’, included several rockabilly covers and clocked in at less than twenty-five minutes in length. Young was backed by the Shocking Pinks for the supporting US tour. Trans (1982) had already drawn the ire of label head David Geffen for its lack of commercial appeal, and with Everybody’s Rockin’ following only seven months later, Geffen Records sued Young for making music “unrepresentative” of himself.[81] The album was also notable as the first for which Young made commercial music videos – Tim Pope directed the videos for “Wonderin’” and “Cry, Cry, Cry”. Also premiered in 1983, though little seen, was Human Highway. Co-directed and co-written by Young, the long-gestating eclectic comedy starred Young, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, David Blue, Sally Kirkland, Charlotte Stewart and members of Devo.[citation needed]

The first year without a Neil Young album since the start of Young’s musical career with Buffalo Springfield in 1966 was in 1984. Young’s lack of productivity was largely due to the ongoing legal battle with Geffen, although he was also frustrated that the label had rejected his 1982 country album Old Ways.[82] It was also the year when Young’s third child was born, a girl named Amber Jean. Later diagnosed with inherited epilepsy, Amber Jean was Neil and Pegi’s second child together.[citation needed]

Young spent most of 1984 and all of 1985 touring for Old Ways (August 12, 1985) with his country band, the International Harvesters. The album was finally released in an altered form midway through 1985. Young also appeared at that year’s Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, collaborating with Crosby, Stills and Nash for the quartet’s first performance for a paying audience in over ten years.[citation needed]

Young’s last two albums for Geffen were more conventional in the genre, although they incorporated production techniques like synthesizers and echoing drums that were previously uncommon in Young’s music. Young recorded 1986’s Landing on Water without Crazy Horse but reunited with the band for the subsequent year-long tour and final Geffen album, Life, which emerged in 1987. Young’s album sales dwindled steadily throughout the eighties; today Life remains his all-time-least successful studio album, with an estimated four hundred thousand sales worldwide.[83]

Switching back to his old label Reprise Records, Young continued to tour relentlessly, a*sembling a new blues band called The Bluenotes in mid-1987 (a legal dispute with musician Harold Melvin forced the eventual rechristening of the band as Ten Men Working midway through the tour). The addition of a brass section provided a new jazzier sound, and the title track of 1988’s This Note’s For You became Young’s first hit single of the decade. Accompanied by a video that parodied corporate rock, the pretensions of advertising, and Michael Jackson, the song was initially unofficially banned by MTV for mentioning the brand names of some of their sponsors. Young wrote an open letter, “What does the M in MTV stand for: music or money?” Despite this, the video was eventually named best video of the year by the network in 1989.[84] By comparison, the major music cable network of Young’s home nation, Muchmusic, ran the video immediately.[citation needed]

Young reunited with Crosby, Stills, and Nash to record the 1988 album American Dream and play two benefit concerts late in the year, but the group did not embark upon a full tour. The album was only the second-ever studio record for the quartet.

Return to prominence (1989–1999)

Young’s 1989 single “Rockin’ in the Free World”, which hit No. 2 on the US mainstream-rock charts, and accompanying the album, Freedom, rocketed him back into the popular consciousness after a decade of sometimes-difficult genre experiments. The album’s lyrics were often overtly political; “Rockin’ in the Free World” deals with homelessness, terrorism, and environmental degradation, implicitly criticizing the government policies of President George H.W. Bush.[85]

The use of heavy feedback and distortion on several Freedom tracks was reminiscent of the Rust Never Sleeps (1979) album and foreshadowed the imminent rise of grunge. The rising stars of the genre, including Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, frequently cited Young as a major influence, contributing to his popular revival. A tribute album called The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young was released in 1989, featuring covers by alternative and grunge acts including Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, Soul Asylum, Dinosaur Jr, and the Pixies.

Young’s 1990 album Ragged Glory, recorded with Crazy Horse in a barn on his Northern California ranch, continued this distortion-heavy esthetic. Young toured for the album with Orange County, California country-punk band Social Distortion and alternative rock pioneers Sonic Youth as support, much to the consternation of many of his old fans.[86] Weld, a two-disc live album documenting the tour, was released in 1991.[86] Sonic Youth’s influence was most evident on Arc, a 35-minute collage of feedback and distortion spliced together at the suggestion of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and originally packaged with some versions of Weld.[86]

1992’s Harvest Moon marked an abrupt return to the country and folk-rock stylings of Harvest (1972) and reunited him with some of the musicians from that album, including singers Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. The title track was a minor hit, and the record was well received by critics, winning the Juno Award for Album of the Year in 1994. Young also contributed to Randy Bachman’s nostalgic 1992 tune “Prairie Town”, and garnered a 1993 Academy Award nomination for his song “Philadelphia”, from the soundtrack of the Jonathan Demme movie of the same name. An MTV Unplugged performance and album emerged in 1993. Later that year, Young collaborated with Booker T. and the M.G.s for a summer tour of Europe and North America, with Blues Traveler, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam also on the bill. Some European shows ended with a rendition of “Rockin’ in the Free World” played with Pearl Jam, foreshadowing their eventual full-scale collaboration two years later.

In 1994 Young again collaborated with Crazy Horse for Sleeps with Angels, a record whose dark, somber mood was influenced by Kurt Cobain’s death earlier that year: the title track in particular dealt with Cobain’s life and death, without mentioning him by name. Cobain had quoted Young’s lyric “It’s better to burn out than fade away” (a line from “My My, Hey Hey”) in his suicide note. Young had reportedly made repeated attempts to contact Cobain prior to his death.[87] Young and Pearl Jam performed “Act of Love” at an abortion rights benefit along with Crazy Horse, and were present at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner, sparking interest in a collaboration between the two.[88] Still enamored with the grunge scene, Young reconnected with Pearl Jam in 1995 for the live-in-the-studio album Mirror Ball and a tour of Europe with the band and producer Brendan O’Brien backing Young. 1995 also marked Young’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he was inducted by Eddie Vedder.

Young has consistently demonstrated the unbridled passion of an artist who understands that self-renewal is the only way to avoid burning out. For this reason, he has remained one of the most significant artists of the rock and roll era.

— Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website.

Leonard Norman Cohen CC GOQ (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death and romantic relationships.[2] Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize.

Cohen pursued a career as a poet and novelist during the 1950s and early 1960s, and did not begin a music career until 1967 at the age of 33. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), was followed by three more albums of folk music: Songs from a Room (1969), Songs of Love and Hate (1971) and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974). His 1977 record Death of a Ladies’ Man, co-written and produced by Phil Spector, was a move away from Cohen’s previous minimalist sound. In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs, which blended his acoustic style with jazz, East Asian, and Mediterranean influences. Perhaps Cohen’s most famous song, “Hallelujah”, was first released on his studio album Various Positions in 1984. I’m Your Man in 1988 marked Cohen’s turn to synthesized productions. In 1992, Cohen released its follow-up, The Future, which had dark lyrics and references to political and social unrest.

Cohen returned to music in 2001 with the release of Ten New Songs, which was a major hit in Canada and Europe. His 11th album, Dear Heather, followed in 2004. Following a successful string of tours between 2008 and 2013, Cohen released three albums in the last five years of his life: Old Ideas (2012), Popular Problems (2014) and You Want It Darker (2016), the last of which was released three weeks before his death. A posthumous album titled Thanks for the Dance was released in November 2019, his fifteenth and final studio album.

Early life

Leonard Cohen was born in the Montreal suburb of Westmount, Quebec on September 21, 1934. His Lithuanian-born mother, Marsha (“Masha”) Klonitsky (1905–1978),[3][4] was the daughter of a Talmudic writer, Rabbi Solomon Klonitsky-Kline, and emigrated to Canada in 1927.[5][6] His paternal grandfather, whose family had moved from Poland to Canada, was Lyon Cohen, the founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. His parents gave him the Jewish name Eliezer, which means ‘God is help’.[7] His father, Nathan Bernard Cohen (1891–1944),[8] who owned a substantial clothing store, died when Cohen was nine years old. The family observed Orthodox Judaism, and belonged to Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, to which Cohen retained connections for the rest of his life.[9] On the topic of being a kohen, Cohen told Richard Goldstein in 1967, “I had a very Messianic childhood. I was told I was a descendant of Aaron, the high priest.”[10]

Cohen attended Roslyn Elementary School and completed grades seven through nine at Herzliah High School, where his literary mentor Irving Layton taught,[11] then transferred in 1948 to Westmount High School, where he studied music and poetry. He became especially interested in the poetry of Federico García Lorca.[12] Cohen involved himself actively beyond Westmount’s curriculum, in photography, on the yearbook staff, as a cheerleader, in the arts and current events clubs, and even served in the position of president of the Students’ Council while “heavily involved in the school’s theater program”. During that time, Cohen taught himself to play the acoustic guitar, and formed a country–folk group that he called the Buckskin Boys. After a young Spanish guitar player taught him “a few chords and some flamenco”, Cohen switched to a classical guitar.[12] He has attributed his love of music to his mother, who sang songs around the house: “I know that those changes, those melodies, touched me very much. She would sing with us when I took my guitar to a restaurant with some friends; my mother would come, and we’d often sing all night.[13]

Cohen frequented Montreal’s Saint Laurent Boulevard for fun and ate at such places as the Main Deli Steak House.[14][15] According to journalist David Sax, Cohen and one of his cousins would go to the Main Deli to “watch the gangsters, pimps, and wrestlers dance around the night”.[16] Cohen enjoyed the formerly raucous bars of Old Montreal as well as Saint Joseph’s Oratory, which had the restaurant nearest to Westmount, for him and his friend Mort Rosengarten to share coffee and cigarettes.[15] When Cohen left Westmount, he purchased a place on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, in the previously working-class neighbourhood of Little Portugal. He would read his poetry at a*sorted nearby clubs. In that period and that place, Cohen wrote the lyrics to some of his most famous songs.

Poetry and novels

In 1951, Cohen enrolled at McGill University, where he became president of the McGill Debating Union and won the Chester MacNaghten Literary Competition for the poems “Sparrows” and “Thoughts of a Landsman”.[18] Cohen published his first poems in March 1954 in the magazine CIV/n. The issue also included poems by Cohen’s poet–professors (who were also on the editorial board) Irving Layton and Louis Dudek.[18] Cohen graduated from McGill the following year with a B.A. degree.[12] His literary influences during this time included William Butler Yeats, Irving Layton (who taught political science at McGill and became both Cohen’s mentor and his friend),[12] Walt Whitman, Federico García Lorca, and Henry Miller.[19] His first published book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), was published by Dudek as the first book in the McGill Poetry Series the year after Cohen’s graduation. The book contained poems written largely when Cohen was between the ages of 15 and 20, and Cohen dedicated the book to his late father.[12] The well-known Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye wrote a review of the book in which he gave Cohen “restrained praise”.[12]

After completing his undergraduate degree, Cohen spent a term in the McGill Faculty of Law and then a year (1956–57) at the Columbia University School of General Studies. Cohen described his graduate school experience as “passion without flesh, love without climax”.[20] Consequently, Cohen left New York and returned to Montreal in 1957, working various odd jobs and focusing on the writing of fiction and poetry, including the poems for his next book, The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), which was the first book that Cohen published through the Canadian publishing company McClelland & Stewart. His father’s will provided him with a modest trust income sufficient to allow him to pursue his literary ambitions for the time, and The Spice-Box of Earth was successful in helping to expand the audience for Cohen’s poetry, helping him reach out to the poetry scene in Canada, outside the confines of McGill University. The book also helped Cohen gain critical recognition as an important new voice in Canadian poetry. One of Cohen’s biographers, Ira Nadel, stated that “reaction to the finished book was enthusiastic and admiring….”The critic Robert Weaver found it powerful and declared that Cohen was ‘probably the best young poet in English Canada right now.’”[12]

Cohen continued to write poetry and fiction throughout much of the 1960s and preferred to live in quasi-reclusive circumstances after he bought a house on Hydra, a Greek island in the Saronic Gulf. While living and writing on Hydra, Cohen published the poetry collection Flowers for Hitler (1964), and the novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966). His novel The Favourite Game was an autobiographical bildungsroman about a young man who discovers his identity through writing. Beautiful Losers received a good deal of attention from the Canadian press and stirred up controversy because of a number of sexually graphic passages.[12] Regarding Beautiful Losers, the Boston Globe stated: “James Joyce is not dead. He is living in Montreal under the name of Cohen.” In 1966 Cohen also published Parasites of Heaven, a book of poems. Both Beautiful Losers and Parasites of Heaven received mixed reviews and sold few copies.[12]

In 1966, CBC-TV producer Andrew Simon produced a local Montreal current affairs program, Seven on Six, and offered Cohen a position as host. “I decided I’m going to be a songwriter. I want to write songs,” Simon recalled Cohen telling him.[21]

Subsequently, Cohen published less, with major gaps, concentrating more on recording songs. In 1978 he published his first book of poetry in many years, Death of a Lady’s Man (not to be confused with the album he released the previous year, the similarly titled Death of a Ladies’ Man). It was not until 1984 that Cohen published his next book of poems, Book of Mercy, which won him the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Poetry. The book contains 50 prose-poems, influenced by the Hebrew Bible and Zen writings. Cohen himself referred to the pieces as “prayers”.[22] In 1993 Cohen published Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, and in 2006, after 10 years of delays, additions, and rewritings, Book of Longing. The Book of Longing is dedicated to the poet Irving Layton. Also, during the late 1990s and 2000s, many of Cohen’s new poems and lyrics were first published on the fan website The Leonard Cohen Files, including the original version of the poem “A Thousand Kisses Deep” (which Cohen later adapted for a song).[23][24]

Cohen’s writing process, as he told an interviewer in 1998, was “like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I’m stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it’s delicious and it’s horrible and I’m in it and it’s not very graceful and it’s very awkward and it’s very painful and yet there’s something inevitable about it.”[25]

In 2011, Cohen was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for literature.[26]

His books have been translated into multiple languages, including Spanish.

Recording career

1960s and 1970s

In 1967, disappointed with his lack of success as a writer, Cohen moved to the United States to pursue a career as a folk music singer–songwriter. During the 1960s, he was a fringe figure in Andy Warhol’s “Factory” crowd. Warhol speculated that Cohen had spent time listening to Nico in clubs and that this had influenced his musical style.[28]

His song “Suzanne” became a hit for Judy Collins (who subsequently covered a number of Cohen’s other songs as well), and was for many years his most-covered song. Collins recalls that when she first met him, he said he couldn’t sing or play the guitar, nor did he think “Suzanne” was even a song:

And then he played me “Suzanne”  … I said, “Leonard, you must come with me to this big fundraiser I’m doing” … Jimi Hendrix was on it. He’d never sung [in front of a large audience] before then. He got out on stage and started singing. Everybody was going crazy—they loved it. And he stopped about halfway through and walked off the stage. Everybody went nuts. … They demanded that he come back. And I demanded; I said, “I’ll go out with you.” So we went out, and we sang it. And of course, that was the beginning.

She first introduced him to television audiences during one of her shows in 1966,[31] where they performed duets of his songs.[32][33] Still new to bringing his poetry to music, he once forgot the words to “Suzanne” while singing to a different audience.[34] Singers such as Joan Baez have sung it during their tours.[35] Cohen stated that he was duped into giving up the rights for the song, but was glad it happened, as it would be wrong to write a song that was so well loved and to get rich for it also. Collins told Bill Moyers, during a television interview, that she felt Cohen’s Jewish background was an important influence on his words and music.[30]

After performing at a few folk festivals, he came to the attention of Columbia Records producer John Hammond, who signed Cohen to a record deal.[36] Cohen’s first album was Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967).[37] He appeared on BBC TV in 1968 where he sang a duet from the album with Julie Felix.[38][a] The album became a cult favorite in the US, as well as in the UK, where it spent over a year on the album charts.[39] Several of the songs on that first album were covered by other popular folk artists, including James Taylor[40] and Judy Collins.[41] Cohen followed up that first album with Songs from a Room (1969, featuring the often-recorded “Bird on the Wire”) and Songs of Love and Hate (1971).

In 1971, film director Robert Altman featured the songs “The Stranger Song”, “Winter Lady”, and “Sisters of Mercy”, originally recorded for Songs of Leonard Cohen, in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The film is now considered a masterpiece by some critics who also note that the songs are integral to the film. Scott Tobias wrote in 2014 that “The film is unimaginable to me without the Cohen songs, which function as these mournful interstitials that unify the entire movie.”[42] Tim Grierson wrote in 2016, shortly after Cohen’s death, that ‘”Altman’s and Cohen’s legacies would forever be linked by McCabe. The movie is inextricably connected to Cohen’s songs. It’s impossible to imagine Altman’s masterpiece without them.”[43]

In 1970, Cohen toured for the first time, in the US, Canada, and Europe, and appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival.[44] In 1972 he toured again in Europe and Israel.[b] When his performance in Israel didn’t seem to be going well, however, he walked off the stage, went to his dressing room, and took some LSD. He then heard the audience clamoring for his reappearance by singing to him in Hebrew, and under the influence of the psychedelic, he returned to finish the show.[46][47] Additionally, in 1973 he played a special performance for a group of Israeli soldiers in the outposts of Sinai during the Yom Kippur War.[48]

In 1973, Columbia Records released “Leonard Cohen: Live Songs”. Then beginning around 1974, Cohen’s collaboration with pianist and arranger John Lissauer created a live sound praised by the critics. They toured together in 1974 in Europe and in US and Canada in late 1974 and early 1975, in support of Cohen’s record New Skin for the Old Ceremony. In late 1975 Cohen and Lissauer performed a short series of shows in the US and Canada with a new band, in support of Cohen’s Best Of release. The tour included new songs from an album in progress, co-written by Cohen and Lissauer and entitled Songs for Rebecca. None of the recordings from these live tours with Lissauer were ever officially released, and the album was abandoned in 1976.

In 1976, Cohen embarked on a new major European tour with a new band and changes in his sound and arrangements, again, in support of his The Best of Leonard Cohen release (in Europe retitled as Greatest Hits). Laura Branigan was one of his backup singers during the tour.[49] From April to July, Cohen gave 55 shows, including his first appearance at the famous Montreux Jazz Festival.

After the European tour of 1976, Cohen again attempted a new change in his style and arrangements: his new 1977 record, Death of a Ladies’ Man was co-written and produced by Phil Spector.[50][c] One year later, in 1978, Cohen published a volume of poetry with the subtly revised title, Death of a Lady’s Man.

In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs,[54] which blended his acoustic style with jazz and East Asian and Mediterranean influences. Beginning with this record, Cohen began to co-produce his albums. Produced by Cohen and Henry Lewy (Joni Mitchell’s sound engineer), Recent Songs included performances by Passenger,[55] an Austin-based jazz–fusion band that met Cohen through Mitchell. The band helped Cohen create a new sound by featuring instruments like the oud, the Gypsy violin, and the mandolin. The album was supported by Cohen’s major tour with the new band, and Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson on the backing vocals, in Europe in late 1979, and again in Australia, Israel, and Europe in 1980. In 2000, Columbia released an album of live recordings of songs from the 1979 tour, entitled Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979.[56]

During the 1970s, Cohen toured twice with Jennifer Warnes as a backup singer (1972 and 1979). Warnes would become a fixture on Cohen’s future albums, receiving full co-vocals credit on Cohen’s 1984 album Various Positions (although the record was released under Cohen’s name, the inside credits say “Vocals by Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes”). In 1987 she recorded an album of Cohen songs, Famous Blue Raincoat.[57] Cohen said that she sang backup for his 1980 tour, even though her career at the time was in much better shape than his. “So this is a real friend”, he said. “Someone who in the face of great derision, has always supported me.”

1980s

In the early 1980s, Cohen co-wrote (with Lewis Furey) the rock musical film Night Magic starring Carole Laure and Nick Mancuso; the LP Various Positions was released in 1984.[d] Cohen supported the release of the album with his biggest tour to date, in Europe and Australia, and with his first tour in Canada and the United States since 1975.[e] The band performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the Roskilde Festival.

They also gave a series of highly emotional and politically controversial concerts in Poland, which had been under martial law just two years before, and performed the song “The Partisan”, regarded as the hymn of the Polish Solidarity movement.[58][f]

In 1987, Jennifer Warnes’s tribute album Famous Blue Raincoat helped restore Cohen’s career in the US. The following year he released I’m Your Man.[g] Cohen supported the record with a series of television interviews and an extensive tour of Europe, Canada, and the US. Many shows were broadcast on European and US television and radio stations, while Cohen performed for the first time in his career on PBS’s Austin City Limits show.

“Hallelujah”

“Hallelujah” was first released on Cohen’s studio album Various Positions in 1984, and he sang it during his Europe tour in 1985.[62][63][64] The song had limited initial success but found greater popularity through a 1991 cover by John Cale which was featured in the 2001 animated film, Shrek.[65] On the soundtrack album of the film, the song was performed by Rufus Wainwright. Cale’s version formed the basis for a later cover by Jeff Buckley.[66] “Hallelujah” has been performed by almost 200 artists in various languages.[67][i]

The song is the subject of the book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’ (2012) by Alan Light. In a New York Times review Janet Maslin praised the book and the song, noting that “Cohen spent years struggling with his song “Hallelujah”, which eventually became one of the most “oft-performed songs in American musical history.”

1990s

1990sThe album track “Everybody Knows” from I’m Your Man and “If It Be Your Will” in the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume helped expose Cohen’s music to a wider audience. He first introduced the song during his world tour in 1988.[70] The song “Everybody Knows” also featured prominently in fellow Canadian Atom Egoyan’s 1994 film, Exotica. In 1992, Cohen released The Future, which urges (often in terms of biblical prophecy) perseverance, reformation, and hope in the face of grim prospects. Three tracks from the album – “Waiting for the Miracle”, “The Future” and “Anthem” – were featured in the movie Natural Born Killers, which also promoted Cohen’s work to a new generation of US listeners.

As with I’m Your Man, the lyrics on The Future were dark, and made references to political and social unrest. The title track is reportedly a response to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Cohen promoted the album with two music videos, for “Closing Time” and “The Future”, and supported the release with the major tour through Europe, United States and Canada, with the same band as in his 1988 tour, including a second appearance on PBS’s Austin City Limits. Some of the Scandinavian shows were broadcast live on the radio. The selection of performances, mostly recorded on the Canadian leg of the tour, was released on the 1994 Cohen Live album.

In 1993, Cohen also published his book of selected poems and songs, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, on which he had worked since 1989. It includes a number of new poems from the late 1980s and early 1990s and major revision of his 1978 book Death of a Lady’s Man.[71]

In 1994, Cohen retreated to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles, beginning what became five years of seclusion at the center.[57] In 1996, Cohen was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and took the Dharma name Jikan, meaning “silence”. He served as personal a*sistant to Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi.

In 1997, Cohen oversaw the selection and release of the More Best of Leonard Cohen album, which included a previously unreleased track, “Never Any Good”, and an experimental piece “The Great Event”. The first was left over from Cohen’s unfinished mid-1990s album, which was announced to include songs like “In My Secret Life” (already recited as a song-in-progress in 1988) and “A Thousand Kisses Deep”,[72] both later re-worked with Sharon Robinson for the 2001 album Ten New Songs.[20]

Although there was a public impression that Cohen would not resume recording or publishing, he returned to Los Angeles in May 1999. He began to contribute regularly to The Leonard Cohen Files fan website, emailing new poems and drawings from Book of Longing and early versions of new songs, like “A Thousand Kisses Deep” in September 1998[73] and Anjani Thomas’s story sent on May 6, 1999, the day they were recording “Villanelle for our Time”[74] (released on 2004’s Dear Heather album). The section of The Leonard Cohen Files with Cohen’s online writings has been titled “The Blackening Pages”.

2000s

Post-monastery records

After two years of production, Cohen returned to music in 2001 with the release of Ten New Songs, featuring a major influence from producer and co-composer Sharon Robinson. The album, recorded at Cohen’s and Robinson’s home studios – Still Life Studios,[75] includes the song “Alexandra Leaving”, a transformation of the poem “The God Abandons Antony”, by the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy. The album was a major hit for Cohen in Canada and Europe, and he supported it with the hit single “In My Secret Life” and accompanying video shot by Floria Sigismondi. The album won him four Canadian Juno Awards in 2002: Best Artist, Best Songwriter, Best Pop Album, and Best Video (“In My Secret Life”).[20] And the following year he was invested with Canada’s highest civilian honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.[20]

In October 2004, Cohen released Dear Heather, largely a musical collaboration with jazz chanteuse (and romantic partner) Anjani Thomas, although Sharon Robinson returned to collaborate on three tracks (including a duet). As light as the previous album was dark, Dear Heather reflects Cohen’s own change of mood – he said in a number of interviews that his depression had lifted in recent years, which he attributed to Zen Buddhism. In an interview following his induction into the Canadian Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, Cohen explained that the album was intended to be a kind of notebook or scrapbook of themes, and that a more formal record had been planned for release shortly afterwards, but that this was put on ice by his legal battles with his ex-manager.

Blue Alert, an album of songs co-written by Anjani and Cohen, was released in 2006 to positive reviews. Sung by Anjani, who according to one reviewer “… sounds like Cohen reincarnated as woman … though Cohen doesn’t sing a note on the album, his voice permeates it like smoke.”[76][j]

Before embarking on his 2008–2010 world tour, and without finishing the new album which had been in work since 2006, Cohen contributed a few tracks to other artists’ albums – a new version of his own “Tower of Song” was performed by him, Anjani Thomas and U2 in the 2006 tribute film Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man[78] (the video and track were included on the film’s soundtrack and released as the B-side of U2’s single “Window in the Skies”, reaching No 1 in the Canadian Singles Chart). In 2007 he recited “The Sound of Silence” on the album Tribute to Paul Simon: Take Me to the Mardi Gras and “The Jungle Line” by Joni Mitchell, accompanied by Herbie Hancock on piano, on Hancock’s Grammy-winning album River: The Joni Letters,[79] while in 2008, he recited the poem “Since You’ve Asked” on the album Born to the Breed: A Tribute to Judy Collins.

Lawsuits and financial troubles

Sylvie Simmons explains in her 2012 biography of Cohen that Kelley Lynch, Cohen’s longtime manager, “took care of Leonard’s business affairs … [and was] not simply his manager but a close friend, almost part of the family.”[82] Simmons notes that in late 2004, Cohen’s daughter Lorca began to suspect Lynch of financial impropriety, and when Cohen checked his bank accounts, he noticed that he had unknowingly paid a credit card bill of Lynch’s for $75,000 and also found that most of the money in his accounts was gone (including money from his retirement accounts and charitable trust funds). Cohen discovered that this had begun as early as 1996 when Lynch started selling Cohen’s music publishing rights despite the fact that Cohen had no financial incentive to do so at the time.[82]

In October 2005, Cohen sued Lynch, alleging that she had misappropriated over US$5 million from Cohen’s retirement fund leaving only $150,000.[83][84] Cohen was sued in turn by other former business a*sociates.[83] These events placed him in the public spotlight, including a cover feature on him with the headline “Devastated!” in Canada’s Maclean’s magazine.[84] In March 2006, Cohen won a civil suit and was awarded US$9 million by a Los Angeles County superior court. Lynch ignored the suit and did not respond to a subpoena issued for her financial records.[85] As a result, it was widely reported that Cohen might never be able to collect the awarded amount.

Book of Longing

Cohen’s book of poetry and drawings, Book of Longing, was published in May 2006. In March a Toronto-based retailer offered signed copies to the first 1,500 orders placed online: all 1,500 sold within hours. The book quickly topped bestseller lists in Canada. On May 13, 2006, Cohen made his first public appearance in 13 years, at an in-store event at a bookstore in Toronto. Approximately 3,000 people turned up, causing the streets surrounding the bookstore to be closed. He sang two of his earliest and best-known songs: “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”, accompanied by the Barenaked Ladies and Ron Sexsmith. Also appearing with him was Anjani, the two promoting her new CD along with his book.[93]

That same year, Philip Glass composed music for Book of Longing. Following a series of live performances which included Glass on keyboards, Cohen’s recorded spoken text, four additional voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and bass-baritone), and other instruments, and as well as screenings of Cohen’s artworks and drawings, Glass’ label Orange Mountain Music released a double CD of the work, entitled Book of Longing. A Song Cycle based on the Poetry and Artwork of Leonard Cohen.

2008–10 World Tour

2008 tour

The tour, Cohen’s first in 15 years, began May 11 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and was extended until late 2010. The schedule of the first leg in mid-2008 encompassed Canada and Europe, including performances at The Big Chill,[95] the Montreal Jazz Festival, and on the Pyramid Stage at the 2008 Glastonbury Festival on June 29, 2008.[96] His performance at Glastonbury was hailed by many as the highlight of the festival,[97] and his performance of “Hallelujah” as the sun went down received a rapturous reception and a lengthy ovation from a packed Pyramid Stage field.[98] He also played two shows in London’s O2 Arena.[99]

In Dublin he was the first performer to play an open-air concert at IMMA (Royal Hospital Kilmainham) ground, performing there on June 13, 14 and 15, 2008. In 2009, the performances were awarded Ireland’s Meteor Music Award as the best international performance of the year.

In September, October and November 2008, Cohen toured Europe, including stops in Austria, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Italy, Germany, France and Scandinavia.

Live in London

In March 2009, Cohen released Live in London, recorded in July 2008 at London’s O2 Arena and released on DVD and as a two-CD set. The album contains 25 songs and is more than two and one-half hours long. It was the first official DVD in Cohen’s recording career.

2009 tour

The third leg of Cohen’s World Tour 2008–2009 encompassed New Zealand and Australia from January 20 to February 10, 2009. In January 2009, The Pacific Tour first came to New Zealand, where the audience of 12,000 responded with five standing ovations.[l]

On February 19, 2009, Cohen played his first American concert in 15 years at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.[103] The show, showcased as the special performance for fans, Leonard Cohen Forum members and press, was the only show in the whole three-year tour which was broadcast on the radio (NPR) and available as a free podcast.

The North American Tour of 2009 opened on April 1, and included the performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Friday, April 17, 2009, in front of one of the largest outdoor theatre crowds in the history of the festival. His performance of Hallelujah was widely regarded as one of the highlights of the festival, thus repeating the major success of the 2008 Glastonbury appearance.

In July 2009, Cohen started his marathon European tour, his third in two years. The itinerary mostly included sport arenas and open air Summer festivals in Germany, UK, France, Spain, Ireland (the show at O2 in Dublin won him the second Meteor Music Award in a row), but also performances in Serbia in the Belgrade Arena, in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, and again in Romania.

On September 18, 2009, on the stage at a concert in Valencia, Spain, Cohen suddenly fainted halfway through performing his song “Bird on the Wire”, the fourth in the two-act set list; Cohen was brought down backstage by his band members and then admitted to local hospital, while the concert was suspended.[104] It was reported that Cohen had stomach problems, and possibly food poisoning.[105] Three days later, on September 21, his 75th birthday, he performed in Barcelona. The show, last in Europe in 2009 and rumoured to be the last European concert ever, attracted many international fans, who lighted the green candles honouring Cohen’s birthday, leading Cohen to give a special speech of thanks for the fans and the Leonard Cohen Forum.

The last concert of this leg was held in Tel Aviv, Israel on September 24 at Ramat Gan Stadium. The event was surrounded by public discussion due to a cultural boycott of Israel proposed by a number of musicians.[106] Nevertheless, tickets for the Tel Aviv concert, Cohen’s first performance in Israel since 1980, sold out in less than 24 hours.[107] It was announced that the proceeds from the sale of the 47,000 tickets would go into a charitable fund in partnership with Amnesty International and would be used by Israeli and Palestinian peace groups.[108][m]

The sixth leg of the 2008–2009 world tour went again to the US, with 15 shows. The 2009 world tour earned a reported $9.5 million, putting Cohen at number 39 on Billboard magazine’s list of the year’s top musical “money makers”.

Live releases

On September 14, 2010, Sony Music released a live CD/DVD album, Songs from the Road, showcasing Cohen’s 2008 and 2009 live performances. The previous year, Cohen’s performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Music Festival was released as a CD/DVD combo.

2010 tour

Cohen’s 2008–2009 world tour was prolonged into 2010. Originally scheduled to start in March, it began in September due to his back injury.[112] Officially billed as the “World Tour 2010”, the tour started on July 25, 2010 in Arena Zagreb, Croatia.[n] The third leg of the 2010 tour started on October 28 in New Zealand and continued in Australia.

2010s

In 2011, Cohen’s poetical output was represented in Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, in a selection Poems and Songs edited by Robert Faggen. The collection included a selection from all Cohen’s books, based on his 1993 books of selected works, Stranger Music, and as well from Book of Longing, with addition of six new song lyrics. Nevertheless, three of those songs, “A Street”, recited in 2006, “Feels So Good”, performed live in 2009 and 2010, and “Born in Chains”, performed live in 2010, were not released on Cohen’s 2012 album Old Ideas, with him being unhappy with the versions of the songs in the last moment; the song “Lullaby”, as presented in the book and performed live in 2009, was completely re-recorded for the album, presenting new lyrics on the same melody.[citation needed]

A biography, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, written by Sylvie Simmons, was published in October 2012. The book is the second major biography of Cohen (Ira Nadel’s 1997 biography Various Positions was the first).

In 2011, Cohen’s poetical output was represented in Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, in a selection Poems and Songs edited by Robert Faggen. The collection included a selection from all Cohen’s books, based on his 1993 books of selected works, Stranger Music, and as well from Book of Longing, with addition of six new song lyrics. Nevertheless, three of those songs, “A Street”, recited in 2006, “Feels So Good”, performed live in 2009 and 2010, and “Born in Chains”, performed live in 2010, were not released on Cohen’s 2012 album Old Ideas, with him being unhappy with the versions of the songs in the last moment; the song “Lullaby”, as presented in the book and performed live in 2009, was completely re-recorded for the album, presenting new lyrics on the same melody.[citation needed]

A biography, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, written by Sylvie Simmons, was published in October 2012. The book is the second major biography of Cohen (Ira Nadel’s 1997 biography Various Positions was the first).

Old Ideas

Leonard Cohen’s 12th studio album, Old Ideas, was released worldwide on January 31, 2012, and it soon became the highest charting album of his entire career, reaching No. 1 positions in Canada, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, New Zealand, and top ten positions in United States, Australia, France, Portugal, UK, Scotland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland, competing for number one position with Lana Del Rey’s debut album Born to Die, released the same day.[116]

The lyrics for the song “Going Home” were published as a poem in The New Yorker magazine in January 2012, prior to the record’s release.[117] The entire album was streamed online by NPR on January 22[118] and on January 23 by The Guardian.[119]

The album received uniformly positive reviews from Rolling Stone,[120] the Chicago Tribune,[121] and The Guardian.[122] At a record release party for the album in January 2012, Cohen spoke with The New York Times reporter Jon Pareles who states that “mortality was very much on his mind and in his songs [on this album].” Pareles goes to characterize the album as “an autumnal album, musing on memories and final reckonings, but it also has a gleam in its eye. It grapples once again with topics Mr. Cohen has pondered throughout his career: love, desire, faith, betrayal, redemption. Some of the diction is biblical; some is drily sardonic.”

2012–2013 World Tour

On August 12, 2012, Cohen embarked on a new European tour in support of Old Ideas, adding a violinist to his 2008–2010 tour band, now nicknamed Unified Heart Touring Band, and following the same three-hour set list structure as in 2008–2012 tour, with the addition of a number of songs from Old Ideas. The European leg ended on October 7, 2012, after concerts in Belgium, Ireland (Royal Hospital), France (Olympia in Paris), England (Wembley Arena in London), Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy (Arena in Verona), Croatia (Arena in Pula), Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Romania and Turkey.[124]

The second leg of the Old Ideas World Tour took place in the US and Canada in November and December, with 56 shows altogether on both legs.[125]

Cohen returned to North America in the spring of 2013 with concerts in the United States and Canada. A summer tour of Europe happened shortly afterwards.[126]

Cohen then toured Australia and New Zealand in November and December 2013. His final concert was performed at the Vector Arena in Auckland.

Popular Problems and You Want It Darker

Cohen released his 13th album, Popular Problems, on September 24, 2014.[129] The album includes “A Street”, which he had previously recited in 2006, during promotion of his book of poetry Book of Longing, and later printed twice, as “A Street” in the March 2, 2009 issue of The New Yorker magazine,[130] and appeared as “Party’s Over” in Everyman’s Library edition of Poems and Songs in 2011.

Cohen’s 14th and final album, You Want It Darker, was released on October 21, 2016.[131] Cohen’s son Adam Cohen has a production credit on the album.[132] On February 23, 2017, Cohen’s son and his final album collaborator Sammy Slabbinck released a special, posthumous tribute video set to the album track “Traveling Light”, featuring never before seen archival footage of Cohen from his career.[133] The title track was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance in January 2018.

Thanks for the Dance and other posthumous releases

Before his death, Cohen had begun working on a new album with his son Adam, a musician and singer-songwriter.[134] The album, titled Thanks for the Dance, was released on November 22, 2019.[135] One posthumous track, “Necropsy of Love”, appeared on the 2018 compilation album The Al Purdy Songbook and another track named “The Goal” was also published on September 20, 2019 on Leonard Cohen’s official YouTube channel.

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist. Widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture for more than 50 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963) and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defied pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture.

Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which mainly comprised traditional folk songs, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan the following year. The album features “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the thematically complex “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”. For many of these songs, he adapted the tunes and phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin’ and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Commenting on the six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965), Rolling Stone wrote: “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.”

In July 1966, Dylan withdrew from touring after a motorcycle accident. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative album The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes in John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out of Mind marked the beginning of a renaissance for his career. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since then, the most recent being Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a series of three albums in the 2010s comprising versions of traditional American standards, especially songs recorded by Frank Sinatra. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour.

Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power”. In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

Life and career

1941–1959: Origins and musical beginnings

Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew:שבתאי זיסל בן אברהם‎ Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham) in St. Mary’s Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range west of Lake Superior. Dylan’s paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905. His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902. In his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother’s family originated from the Kağızman district of Kars Province in northeastern Turkey.

Dylan’s father Abram Zimmerman and mother Beatrice “Beatty” Stone were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six, when his father contracted polio and the family returned to his mother’s hometown, Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan’s childhood, and his father and paternal uncles ran a furniture and appliances store. In his early years he listened to the radio—first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later, when he was a teenager, to rock and roll.

Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Their performance of Danny & the Juniors’ “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay” at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone. In 1959, Dylan’s high school yearbook carried the caption “Robert Zimmerman: to join ‘Little Richard’.” That year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping. In September 1959, Dylan moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music, as he explained in a 1985 interview:

The thing about rock’n’roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough… There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms… but the songs weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.

Living at the Jewish-centric fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu house, Dylan began to perform at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus, and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit. During this period, he began to introduce himself as “Bob Dylan.” In his memoir, he said he had considered adopting the surname Dillon before he unexpectedly saw poems by Dylan Thomas, and decided upon that less common variant. Explaining his change of name in a 2004 interview, he said, “You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

1960s

Relocation to New York and record deal

In May 1960, Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill with Huntington’s disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and influenced his early performances. Describing Guthrie’s impact, he wrote: “The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them… [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie’s greatest disciple.” As well as visiting Guthrie in hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie’s protégé Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie’s repertoire was channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles: Volume One. Dylan later said he was influenced by African-American poets he heard on the New York streets, especially Big Brown.

From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village, befriending and picking up material from folk singers there, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers and Irish musicians the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. On April 11, Dylan commenced a two-week engagement at Gerde’s Folk City, supporting John Lee Hooker. In September, New York Times critic Robert Shelton boosted Dylan’s career with a very enthusiastic review of his performance at Gerde’s Folk City: “Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Folk-Song Stylist”. That month, Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester’s third album. This brought him to the attention of the album’s producer, John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia Records.

Dylan’s first album, Bob Dylan, released March 19, 1962, consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel with two original compositions. The album sold only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. Within Columbia Records, some referred to Dylan as “Hammond’s Folly” and suggested dropping his contract, but Hammond defended him and was supported by songwriter Johnny Cash. In March 1962, Dylan contributed harmonica and backup vocals to the album Three Kings and the Queen, accompanying Victoria Spivey and Big Joe Williams on a recording for Spivey Records. While working for Columbia, Dylan recorded under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt for Broadside, a folk magazine and record label. Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on The Blues Project, a 1964 anthology album by Elektra Records. As Tedham Porterhouse, Dylan played harmonica on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s 1964 album Jack Elliott.

Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962: he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan, and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. (In June 1961, Dylan had signed an agreement with Roy Silver. In 1962, Grossman paid Silver $10,000 to become sole manager.) Grossman remained Dylan’s manager until 1970, and was known for his sometimes confrontational personality and protective loyalty. Dylan said, “He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure … you could smell him coming.” Tension between Grossman and John Hammond led to the latter suggesting Dylan work with the young African-American jazz producer Tom Wilson, who produced several tracks for the second album without formal credit. Wilson produced the next three albums Dylan recorded.

Dylan made his first trip to the United Kingdom from December 1962 to January 1963. He had been invited by television director Philip Saville to appear in a drama, Madhouse on Castle Street, which Saville was directing for BBC Television. At the end of the play, Dylan performed “Blowin’ in the Wind”, one of its first public performances. The film recording of Madhouse on Castle Street was discarded by the BBC in 1968. While in London, Dylan performed at London folk clubs, including the Troubadour, Les Cousins, and Bunjies. He also learned material from UK performers, including Martin Carthy.

By the release of Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as a singer-songwriter. Many songs on the album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger’s passion for topical songs. “Oxford Town”, for example, was an account of James Meredith’s ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi. The first song on the album, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song, “No More Auction Block”, while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded by other artists and became a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. Another song, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, was based on the folk ballad “Lord Randall”. With veiled references to an impending apocalypse, it gained resonance when the Cuban Missile Crisis developed a few weeks after Dylan began performing it. Like “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” marked a new direction in songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form.

Dylan’s topical songs led to his being viewed as more than just a songwriter. Janet Maslin wrote in 1980 of Freewheelin’: “These were the songs that established [Dylan] as the voice of his generation—someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt about nuclear disarmament and the growing Civil Rights Movement: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes.” Freewheelin’ also included love songs and surreal talking blues. Humor was an important part of Dylan’s persona, and the range of material on the album impressed listeners, including the Beatles. George Harrison said of the album: “We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude—it was incredibly original and wonderful.”

The rough edge of Dylan’s singing was unsettling to some but an attraction to others. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying.”[ Many early songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan’s advocate and lover. Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him on stage during her concerts. “It didn’t take long before people got it, that he was pretty damned special,” says Baez.

Others who had hits with Dylan’s songs in the early 1960s included the Byrds, Sonny & Cher, the Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Association, Manfred Mann and the Turtles. Most attempted a pop feel and rhythm, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk songs. The covers became so ubiquitous that CBS promoted him with the slogan “Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan”.

“Mixed-Up Confusion”, recorded during the Freewheelin’ sessions with a backing band, was released as Dylan’s first single in December 1962, but then swiftly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as “a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records.”

Protest and Another Side

In May 1963, Dylan’s political profile rose when he walked out of The Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, Dylan had been told by CBS television’s head of program practices that “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with censorship, Dylan refused to appear.

By this time, Dylan and Baez were prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. Dylan’s third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, reflected a more politicized Dylan. The songs often took as their subject matter contemporary stories, with “Only a Pawn in Their Game” addressing the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers; and the Brechtian “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zantzinger. On a more general theme, “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “North Country Blues” addressed despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities. This political material was accompanied by two personal love songs, “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings”.

By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements. Accepting the “Tom Paine Award” from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the a*sassination of John F. Kennedy, an intoxicated Dylan questioned the role of the committee, characterized the members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself and of every man in Kennedy’s a*sassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded in a single evening on June 9, 1964, had a lighter mood. The humorous Dylan reemerged on “I Shall Be Free No. 10” and “Motorpsycho Nightmare”. “Spanish Harlem Incident” and “To Ramona” are passionate love songs, while “Black Crow Blues” and “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan’s music. “It Ain’t Me Babe”, on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a rejection of the role of political spokesman thrust upon him.[81] His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic “Chimes of Freedom”, which sets social commentary against a metaphorical landscape in a style characterized by Allen Ginsberg as “chains of flashing images,”  and “My Back Pages”, which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.

In the latter half of 1964 and into 1965, Dylan moved from folk songwriter to folk-rock pop-music star. His jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointed “Beatle boots”. A London reporter wrote: “Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.” Dylan began to spar with interviewers. Appearing on the Les Crane television show and asked about a movie he planned, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, “No, I play my mother.”

Going electric

Dylan’s late March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was another leap,[85] featuring his first recordings with electric instruments, under producer Tom Wilson’s guidance.[86] One influence on Dylan’s decision to go electric was The Animals’ version of “The House of the Rising Sun”. Drummer John Steel states Dylan told him when he first heard this version on his car radio, he stopped to listen, “jumped out of his car” and “banged on the bonnet”. The first single, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, owed much to Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business”;[ its free-association lyrics described as harking back to the energy of beat poetry and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop. The song was provided with an early music video, which opened D. A. Pennebaker’s cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan’s 1965 tour of Great Britain, Dont Look Back. Instead of miming, Dylan illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground. Pennebaker said the sequence was Dylan’s idea, and it has been imitated in music videos and advertisements.

The second side of Bringing It All Back Home contained four long songs on which Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. “Mr. Tambourine Man” became one of his best-known songs when the Byrds recorded an electric version that reached number one in the US and UK. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” were two of Dylan’s most important compositions.

In 1965, headlining the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ. Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 met with cheering and booing and left the stage after three songs. One version has it that the boos were from folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. Murray Lerner, who filmed the performance, said: “I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric.” An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set. This account is supported by Kooper and one of the directors of the festival who claims his recording proves the only boos were in response to MC Peter Yarrow’s flustered announcement that there was only enough time for a short set.

Nevertheless, Dylan’s performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment. In the September issue of Sing Out!, Ewan MacColl wrote: “Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside disciplines formulated over time …’But what of Bobby Dylan?’ scream the outraged teenagers … Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel.” On July 29, four days after Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording “Positively 4th Street”. The lyrics contained images of vengeance and paranoia, and have been interpreted as Dylan’s put-down of former friends from the folk community he had known in clubs along West 4th Street.

Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde

In July 1965, Dylan’s six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” peaked at number two in the U.S. chart. In 2004 and in 2011, Rolling Stone listed it as number one of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech for Dylan’s inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said that on first hearing the single, “that snare shot sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” The song opened Dylan’s next album, Highway 61 Revisited, named after the road that led from Dylan’s Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans. The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield’s blues guitar and Al Kooper’s organ riffs. “Desolation Row”, backed by acoustic guitar and understated bass, offers the sole exception, with Dylan alluding to figures in Western culture in a song described by Andy Gill as “an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of celebrated characters, some historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictional (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary (T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), and some who fit into none of the above categories, notably Dr. Filth and his dubious nurse”.

In support of the album, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts with Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, former members of Ronnie Hawkins’s backing band the Hawks. On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan’s electric sound. The band’s reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.

From September 24, 1965, in Austin, Texas, Dylan toured the U.S. and Canada for six months, backed by the five musicians from the Hawks who became known as The Band. While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences, their studio efforts foundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with top-notch session men. At Dylan’s insistence, Robertson and Kooper came from New York City to play on the sessions. The Nashville sessions produced the double album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan called “that thin wild mercury sound”. Kooper described it as “taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion”: the musical world of Nashville and the world of the “quintessential New York hipster” Bob Dylan.

On November 22, 1965, Dylan quietly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds. Robertson has described how he received a phone call that morning to accompany the couple to a courthouse on Long Island, and then to a reception hosted by Albert and Sally Grossman at the Algonquin Hotel. Some of Dylan’s friends, including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, say that, immediately after the event, Dylan denied he was married. Journalist Nora Ephron made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline “Hush! Bob Dylan is wed.”

Dylan toured Australia and Europe in April and May 1966. Each show was split in two. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second, backed by the Hawks, he played electrically amplified music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow handclapped. The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966. A recording of this concert was released in 1998: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966. At the climax of the evening, a member of the audience, angered by Dylan’s electric backing, shouted: “Judas!” to which Dylan responded, “I don’t believe you … You’re a liar!” Dylan turned to his band and said, “Play it f*cking loud!” as they launched into the final song of the night—”Like a Rolling Stone”.

During his 1966 tour, Dylan was described as exhausted and acting “as if on a death trip”. D. A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as “taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else”. In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan said, “I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things … just to keep going, you know?” In 2011, BBC Radio 4 reported that, in an interview that Robert Shelton taped in 1966, Dylan said he had kicked heroin in New York City: “I got very, very strung out for a while … I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it.” Some journalists questioned the validity of this confession, pointing out that Dylan had “been telling journalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career”.

Motorcycle accident and reclusion

After his tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures increased. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show. His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had scheduled a concert tour for the latter part of the year.

On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500 cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle near his home in Woodstock, New York, and was thrown to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized. Dylan’s biographers have written that the crash offered Dylan the chance to escape the pressures around him. Dylan confirmed this interpretation in his autobiography: “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race.”Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years.

Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker’s film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television, which rejected it as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. The film was subsequently titled Eat the Document on bootleg copies, and it has been screened at a handful of film festivals.[135] In 1967 he began recording with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks’ nearby house, “Big Pink”. These songs, initially demos for other artists to record, provided hits for Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity (“This Wheel’s on Fire”), the Byrds (“You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, “Nothing Was Delivered”) and Manfred Mann (“Mighty Quinn”). Columbia released selections in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, many more songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on bootleg recordings, culminating in the 2014 official Columbia release The Basement Tapes Complete which contained 138 songs and alternative takes. In the coming months, the Hawks recorded the album Music from Big Pink using songs they worked on in their basement in Woodstock, and renamed themselves the Band, beginning a long recording and performing career of their own.

In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the studio after 19 months, he was accompanied by Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums, and Pete Drake on steel guitar.The result was John Wesley Harding, a contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, departed from Dylan’s own work and from the psychedelic fervor of the 1960s. It included “All Along the Watchtower”, with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive. Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, where he was backed by the Band.

Dylan’s next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was mainstream country featuring Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single “Lay Lady Lay”. Variety wrote, “Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing. Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range.” During one recording session, Dylan and Cash recorded a series of duets but only their version of Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” was released on the album.

In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash’s television show and sang a duet with Cash of “Girl from the North Country”, with solos of “Living the Blues” and “I Threw It All Away.” Dylan next traveled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival closer to his home.

1970s

In the early 1970s, critics charged that Dylan’s output was varied and unpredictable. Rolling Stone writer Greil Marcus asked “What is this shit?” on first listening to Self Portrait, released in June 1970. It was a double LP including few original songs, and was poorly received. In October 1970, Dylan released New Morning, considered a return to form. This album included “Day of the Locusts”, a song in which Dylan gave an account of receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University on June 9, 1970. In November 1968, Dylan had co-written “I’d Have You Anytime” with George Harrison; Harrison recorded “I’d Have You Anytime” and Dylan’s “If Not for You” for his 1970 solo triple album All Things Must Pass. Dylan’s surprise appearance at Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh attracted media coverage, reflecting that Dylan’s live appearances had become rare.

Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock, a small studio in Greenwich Village, to record with Leon Russell. These sessions resulted in “Watching the River Flow” and a new recording of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. On November 4, 1971, Dylan recorded “George Jackson”, which he released a week later. For many, the single was a surprising return to protest material, mourning the killing of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin State Prison that year. Dylan contributed piano and harmony to Steve Goodman’s album, Somebody Else’s Troubles, under the pseudonym Robert Milkwood Thomas (referencing Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and his own previous name) in September 1972.

In 1972, Dylan signed to Sam Peckinpah’s film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing songs and backing music for the movie, and playing “Alias”, a member of Billy’s gang with some historical basis. Despite the film’s failure at the box office, the song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” became one of Dylan’s most covered songs.

Also in 1972, Dylan protested the move to deport John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had been convicted of possessing cannabis, by sending a letter to the U.S. Immigration Service, in part: “Hurray for John & Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!”

Return to touring

Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label, David Geffen’s Asylum Records when his contract with Columbia Records expired. His next album, Planet Waves, was recorded in the fall of 1973, using the Band as his backing group as they rehearsed for a major tour. The album included two versions of “Forever Young”, which became one of his most popular songs. As one critic described it, the song projected “something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan”, and Dylan himself commented: “I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental.” Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes, widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan’s signing with a rival record label.

In January 1974, Dylan, backed by the Band, embarked on a North American tour of 40 concerts—his first tour for seven years. A live double album, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum Records. Soon, according to Clive Davis, Columbia Records sent word they “will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold.” Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, unhappy that Geffen had sold only 600,000 copies of Planet Waves despite millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour; he returned to Columbia Records, which reissued his two Asylum albums.

After the tour, Dylan and his wife became estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about relationships and ruptures, and recorded an album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974. Dylan delayed the release and re-recorded half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production a*sistance from his brother, David Zimmerman.

Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described “the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes.”[174] In Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote that “the record has been made with typical shoddiness.” Over the years critics came to see it as one of Dylan’s greatest achievements. For the Salon website, journalist Bill Wyman wrote: “Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years.” Novelist Rick Moody called it “the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape.”

In the middle of that year, Dylan wrote a ballad championing boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote “Hurricane”, presenting the case for Carter’s innocence. Despite its length—over eight minutes—the song was released as a single, peaking at 33 on the U.S. Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan’s next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour featured about one hundred performers and supporters from the Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell, David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez and Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered walking down the street, her violin case on her back.

Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire, with many of Dylan’s new songs featuring a travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy.  The 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from first half of the tour was released until 2002’s Live 1975.

he 1975 tour with the Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan’s nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received poor, sometimes scathing, reviews.  Later in that year, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released. More than forty years later, a documentary about the 1975 leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese was released by Netflix on June 12, 2019.

In November 1976, Dylan appeared at the Band’s “farewell” concert, with Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese’s 1978 cinematic chronicle of the concert, The Last Waltz, included about half of Dylan’s set.  In 1976, Dylan wrote and duetted on “Sign Language” for Eric Clapton’s No Reason To Cry.

In 1978, Dylan embarked on a year-long world tour, performing 114 shows in Japan, the Far East, Europe and North America, to a total audience of two million. Dylan a*sembled an eight-piece band and three backing singers. Concerts in Tokyo in February and March were released as the live double album, Bob Dylan at Budokan.  Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating, giving the album a derisory review,  while Janet Maslin defended it in Rolling Stone, writing: “These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals.”  When Dylan brought the tour to the U.S. in September 1978, the press described the look and sound as a ‘Las Vegas Tour’.  The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan told the Los Angeles Times that he had debts because “I had a couple of bad years. I put a lot of money into the movie, built a big house … and it costs a lot to get divorced in California.”

In April and May 1978, Dylan took the same band and vocalists into Rundown Studios in Santa Monica, California, to record an album of new material: Street-Legal.  It was described by Michael Gray as, “after Blood On The Tracks, arguably Dylan’s best record of the 1970s: a crucial album documenting a crucial period in Dylan’s own life.” However, it had poor sound and mixing (attributed to Dylan’s studio practices), muddying the instrumental detail until a remastered CD release in 1999 restored some of the songs’ strengths.

Christian period

n the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Evangelical Christianity, undertaking a three-month discipleship course run by the Association of Vineyard Churches; and released three albums of contemporary gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler said that Dylan had tried to evangelize him during the recording. He replied: “Bob, you’re dealing with a 62-year-old Jewish atheist. Let’s just make an album.” Dylan won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song “Gotta Serve Somebody.” His second Christian-themed album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, described by Michael Gray as “the nearest thing to a follow-up album Dylan has ever made, Slow Train Coming II and inferior”. His third overtly Christian album was Shot of Love in 1981. When touring in late 1979 and early 1980, Dylan would not play his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage, such as:

Years ago they … said I was a prophet. I used to say, “No I’m not a prophet”, they say “Yes you are, you’re a prophet.” I said, “No it’s not me.” They used to say “You sure are a prophet.” They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, “Bob Dylan’s no prophet.” They just can’t handle it.

Dylan’s Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians. Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded “Serve Yourself” in response to Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody.” By 1981, Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times that “neither age (he’s now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament.”

1980s

In late 1980, Dylan briefly played concerts billed as “A Musical Retrospective”, restoring popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded early the next year, featured his first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with Christian songs. “Every Grain of Sand” reminded some of William Blake’s verses.

In the 1980s, reception of Dylan’s recordings varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Michael Gray condemned Dylan’s 1980s albums for carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs. As an example of the latter, the Infidels recording sessions, which again employed Knopfler on lead guitar and also as the album’s producer, resulted in several notable songs that Dylan left off the album. Best regarded of these were “Blind Willie McTell”, a tribute to the dead blues musician and an evocation of African American history,  “Foot of Pride” and “Lord Protect My Child.” These three songs were released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.

Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded Empire Burlesque.[213] Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker said he felt he was hired to make Dylan’s album sound “a little bit more contemporary.”

In 1985 Dylan sang on USA for Africa’s famine relief single “We Are the World”. He also joined Artists United Against Apartheid providing vocals for their single “Sun City”. On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the climax at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, he performed a ragged version of “Hollis Brown”, his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to the worldwide audience exceeding one billion people: “I hope that some of the money … maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe … one or two million, maybe … and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.”[215] His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organize a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.

In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into rap music when he added vocals to the opening verse of “Street Rock”, featured on Kurtis Blow’s album Kingdom Blow. Dylan’s next studio album, Knocked Out Loaded, in July 1986 contained three covers (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the gospel hymn “Precious Memories”), plus three collaborations (with Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. One reviewer commented that “the record follows too many detours to be consistently compelling, and some of those detours wind down roads that are indisputably dead ends. By 1986, such uneven records weren’t entirely unexpected by Dylan, but that didn’t make them any less frustrating.” It was the first Dylan album since The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) to fail to make the Top 50. Since then, some critics have called the 11-minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, “Brownsville Girl”, a work of genius.

In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This received negative reviews; AllMusic said it was “Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead.”Dylan then initiated what came to be called the Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would continue to tour with a small, changing band for the next 30 years.

In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquand’s movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation played by Rupert Everett. Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—”Night After Night”, and “I Had a Dream About You, Baby”, as well as a cover of John Hiatt’s “The Usual”. The film was a critical and commercial flop.

Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988, with Bruce Springsteen’s introduction declaring, “Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual.”

The album Down in the Groove in May 1988 sold even more poorly than his previous studio album.[226] Michael Gray wrote: “The very title undercuts any idea that inspired work may lie within. Here was a further devaluing of the notion of a new Bob Dylan album as something significant.” The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of the Traveling Wilburys. Dylan co-founded the band with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, and in late 1988 their multi-platinum Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached three on the US album chart,  featuring songs that were described as Dylan’s most accessible compositions in years.  Despite Orbison’s death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990 with the title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lanois. Michael Gray wrote that the album was: “Attentively written, vocally distinctive, musically warm, and uncompromisingly professional, this cohesive whole is the nearest thing to a great Bob Dylan album in the 1980s.” The track “Most of the Time”, a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while “What Was It You Wanted?” has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans. The religious imagery of “Ring Them Bells” struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.

1990s

Dylan’s 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. It contained several apparently simple songs, including “Under the Red Sky” and “Wiggle Wiggle”. The album was dedicated to “Gabby Goo Goo”, a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four.  Musicians on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N’ Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. The record received bad reviews and sold poorly.

In 1990 and 1991 Dylan was described by his biographers as drinking heavily, impairing his performances on stage. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan dismissed allegations that drinking was interfering with his music: “That’s completely inaccurate. I can drink or not drink. I don’t know why people would a*sociate drinking with anything I do, really.”

Defilement and remorse were themes Dylan addressed when he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from American actor Jack Nicholson in February 1991.  The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein and Dylan performed “Masters of War”. He then made a short speech: “My daddy once said to me, he said, ‘Son, it is possible for you to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. If that happens, God will believe in your ability to mend your own ways.’”  The sentiment was subsequently revealed to be a quote from 19th-century German Jewish intellectual Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.

Over the next few years Dylan returned to his roots with two albums covering traditional folk and blues songs: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), backed solely by his acoustic guitar.  Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song “Lone Pilgrim”,  written by a 19th-century teacher. In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He said his wish to perform traditional songs was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on hits. The album from it, MTV Unplugged, included “John Brown”, an unreleased 1962 song of how enthusiasm for war ends in mutilation and disillusionment.

With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami’s Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension.[246] Before the album’s release Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, “I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.” He was back on the road by mid-year, and performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a homily based on Dylan’s lyric “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

In September Dylan released the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter a*sessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan’s first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. One critic wrote: “the songs themselves are uniformly powerful, adding up to Dylan’s best overall collection in years.” This collection of complex songs won him his first solo “Album of the Year” Grammy Award.

In December 1997, U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: “He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven’t always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He’s disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful.”

2000s

Dylan commenced the 2000s by winning the Polar Music Prize in May 2000 and his first Oscar; his song “Things Have Changed”, written for the film Wonder Boys, won an Academy Award for Best Song in 2001.  The Oscar, by some reports a facsimile, tours with him, presiding over shows atop an amplifier.

“Love and Theft” was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. The album was critically well received and earned nominations for several Grammy awards.  Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.  “Love and Theft” generated controversy when The Wall Street Journal pointed out similarities between the album’s lyrics and Japanese author Junichi Saga’s book Confessions of a Yakuza.

In 2003, Dylan revisited the evangelical songs from his Christian period and participated in the CD project Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. That year Dylan also released the film Masked & Anonymous, which he co-wrote with director Larry Charles under the alias Sergei Petrov.[261] Dylan played the central character in the film, Jack Fate, alongside a cast that included Jeff Bridges, Penélope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarised critics: many dismissed it as an “incoherent mess”;  a few treated it as a serious work of art.

In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. Confounding expectations,  Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times’ Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.[

No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed film biography of Dylan,[268] was first broadcast on September 26–27, 2005, on BBC Two in the UK and PBS in the US.  The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006  and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007.[  The accompanying soundtrack featured unreleased songs from Dylan’s early career.

Dylan earned another distinction when a 2007 study of US legal opinions found his lyrics were quoted by judges and lawyers more than those of any other songwriter, 186 times versus 74 by the Beatles, who were second. Among those quoting Dylan were US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, both conservatives. The most widely cited lines included “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose” from “Like a Rolling Stone”.

Modern Times

Dylan’s career as a radio presenter commenced on May 3, 2006, with his weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections on chosen themes. Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1920s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J and the Streets. The show was praised by fans and critics, as Dylan told stories and made eclectic references, commenting on his musical choices. In April 2009, Dylan broadcast the 100th show in his radio series; the theme was “Goodbye” and the final record played was Woody Guthrie’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”.

Dylan resurrected his Theme Time Radio Hour format when he broadcast a two-hour special on the theme of “Whiskey” on Sirius Radio on September 21, 2020.

Dylan released his Modern Times album in August 2006. Despite some coarsening of Dylan’s voice (a critic for The Guardian characterised his singing on the album as “a catarrhal death rattle” ) most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and “Love and Theft”.  Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan’s first album to reach that position since 1976’s Desire.[  The New York Times published an article exploring similarities between some of Dylan’s lyrics in Modern Times and the work of the Civil War poet Henry Timrod.

Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for “Someday Baby.” Modern Times was named Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine,  and by Uncut in the UK.  On the same day that Modern Times was released the iTunes Music Store released Bob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.

In August 2007, the award-winning film biography of Dylan I’m Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released—bearing the tagline “inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan.”[ The movie used six different actors to represent different aspects of Dylan’s life: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. Dylan’s previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name was released for the first time on the film’s original soundtrack; all other tracks are covers of Dylan songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Mason Jennings, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Karen O, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens and Tom Verlaine.

On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo.  The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan’s commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This became evident in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria’s Secret lingerie.  Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade. Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII.  The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of “Forever Young” followed by will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song’s third and final verse.

The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs was released in October 2008, as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley.  The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about “rip-off packaging” from some fans and commentators.  The release was widely acclaimed by critics.  The abundance of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to one reviewer that this volume of old outtakes “feels like a new Bob Dylan record, not only for the astonishing freshness of the material, but also for the incredible sound quality and organic feeling of everything here.”
Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart

Bob Dylan released his album Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan’s website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song; initially only intending to record a single track, “Life Is Hard,” “the record sort of took its own direction.” Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter. The album received largely favorable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan’s canon of work.

In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S.,  making Bob Dylan (67 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.[ It also reached number one on the UK album chart, 39 years after Dylan’s previous UK album chart topper New Morning. This meant that Dylan currently holds the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK chart.

Dylan’s album, Christmas in the Heart, was released in October 2009, comprising such Christmas standards as “Little Drummer Boy”, “Winter Wonderland” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”[310] Critics pointed out that Dylan was “revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers.” Dylan’s royalties from the sale of this album were donated to the charities Feeding America in the USA, Crisis in the UK, and the World Food Programme.

The album received generally favorable reviews.  The New Yorker wrote that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to “some of his croakiest vocals in a while”, and speculated that his intentions might be ironic: “Dylan has a long and highly publicized history with Christianity; to claim there’s not a wink in the childish optimism of ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ or ‘Winter Wonderland’ is to ignore a half-century of biting satire.” In an interview published in The Big Issue, journalist Bill Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and Dylan responded: “There wasn’t any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too.”

2010s

Tempest

Volume 9 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, The Witmark Demos was issued in October 18, 2010. It comprised 47 demo recordings of songs taped between 1962 and 1964 for Dylan’s earliest music publishers: Leeds Music in 1962, and Witmark Music from 1962 to 1964. One reviewer described the set as “a hearty glimpse of young Bob Dylan changing the music business, and the world, one note at a time.”[316] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a Metascore of 86, indicating “universal acclaim.”[317] In the same week, Sony Legacy released Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, a box set that for the first time presented Dylan’s eight earliest albums, from Bob Dylan (1962) to John Wesley Harding (1967), in their original mono mix in the CD format. The CDs were housed in miniature facsimiles of the original album covers, replete with original liner notes. The set was accompanied by a booklet featuring an essay by music critic Greil Marcus.[318][319]

On April 12, 2011, Legacy Recordings released Bob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963, taped at Brandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks prior to the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The tape was discovered in the archive of music writer Ralph J. Gleason, and the recording carries liner notes by Michael Gray, who says it captures Dylan “from way back when Kennedy] was President and the Beatles hadn’t yet reached America. It reveals him not at any Big Moment but giving a performance like his folk club sets of the period… This is the last live performance we have of Bob Dylan before he becomes a star.”[320]

The extent to which his work was studied at an academic level was demonstrated on Dylan’s 70th birthday on May 24, 2011, when three universities organized symposia on his work. The University of Mainz,[321] the University of Vienna,[322] and the University of Bristol[323] invited literary critics and cultural historians to give papers on aspects of Dylan’s work. Other events, including tribute bands, discussions and simple singalongs, took place around the world, as reported in The Guardian: “From Moscow to Madrid, Norway to Northampton and Malaysia to his home state of Minnesota, self-confessed ‘Bobcats’ will gather today to celebrate the 70th birthday of a giant of popular music.”

On May 29, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Dylan a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House. At the ceremony, Obama praised Dylan’s voice for its “unique gravelly power that redefined not just what music sounded like but the message it carried and how it made people feel.”[325]

Dylan’s 35th studio album, Tempest was released on September 11, 2012.[326] The album features a tribute to John Lennon, “Roll On John”, and the title track is a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic.[327] Reviewing Tempest for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes gave the album five out of five stars, writing: “Lyrically, Dylan is at the top of his game, joking around, dropping wordplay and allegories that evade pat readings and quoting other folks’ words like a freestyle rapper on fire.”[328] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a score of 83 out of 100, indicating “universal acclaim.”[329]

Volume 10 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait (1969–1971), was released in August 2013.[330] The album contained 35 previously unreleased tracks, including alternative takes and demos from Dylan’s 1969–1971 recording sessions during the making of the Self Portrait and New Morning albums. The box set also included a live recording of Dylan’s performance with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. Another Self Portrait received favorable reviews, earning a score of 81 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim.”[331] AllMusic critic Thom Jurek wrote, “For fans, this is more than a curiosity, it’s an indispensable addition to the catalog.”[332]

Columbia Records released a boxed set containing all 35 Dylan studio albums, six albums of live recordings, and a collection, entitled Sidetracks, of non-album material, Bob Dylan: Complete Album Collection: Vol. One, in November 2013.[333][334] To publicize the 35 album box set, an innovative video of the song “Like a Rolling Stone” was released on Dylan’s website. The interactive video, created by director Vania Heymann, allowed viewers to switch between 16 simulated TV channels, all featuring characters who are lip-synching the lyrics of the 48-year-old song.[335][336]

Dylan appeared in a commercial for the Chrysler 200 car which was screened during the 2014 Super Bowl American football game played on February 2, 2014. At the end of the commercial, Dylan says: “So let Germany brew your beer, let Switzerland make your watch, let Asia a*semble your phone. We will build your car.” Dylan’s Super Bowl commercial generated controversy and op-ed pieces discussing the protectionist implications of his words, and whether the singer had “sold out” to corporate interests.[337][338][339][340][341]

In 2013 and 2014, auction house sales demonstrated the high cultural value attached to Dylan’s mid-1960s work and the record prices that collectors were willing to pay for artefacts from this period. In December 2013, the Fender Stratocaster which Dylan had played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fetched $965,000, the second highest price paid for a guitar.[342][343] In June 2014, Dylan’s hand-written lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone”, his 1965 hit single, fetched $2 million dollars at auction, a record for a popular music manuscript.[344][345]

A massive 960 page, thirteen and a half pound edition of Dylan’s lyrics, The Lyrics: Since 1962 was published by Simon & Schuster in the fall of 2014. The book was edited by literary critic Christopher Ricks, Julie Nemrow and Lisa Nemrow, to offer variant versions of Dylan’s songs, sourced from out-takes and live performances. A limited edition of 50 books, signed by Dylan, was priced at $5,000. “It’s the biggest, most expensive book we’ve ever published, as far as I know,” said Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher.[346][347]

A comprehensive edition of the Basement Tapes, songs recorded by Dylan and the Band in 1967, was released as The Basement Tapes Complete in November 2014. These 138 tracks in a six-CD box form Volume 11 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series. The 1975 album, The Basement Tapes, had contained just 24 tracks from the material which Dylan and the Band had recorded at their homes in Woodstock, New York in 1967. Subsequently, over 100 recordings and alternate takes had circulated on bootleg records. The sleeve notes for the new box set are by Sid Griffin, author of Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes.[348][349] The box set earned a score of 99 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic.

Shadows in the Night, Fallen Angels and Triplicate

In February 2015, Dylan released Shadows in the Night, featuring ten songs written between 1923 and 1963,[351][352] which have been described as part of the Great American Songbook.[353] All the songs on the album were recorded by Frank Sinatra but both critics and Dylan himself cautioned against seeing the record as a collection of “Sinatra covers.”[351][354] Dylan explained, “I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”[355] In an interview, Dylan said he had been thinking about making this record since hearing Willie Nelson’s 1978 album Stardust.[356] Dylan’s first foray into this material was in 2001 when he recorded Dean Martin’s “Return to Me” for the third season of The Sopranos.[357]

Shadows In the Night received favorable reviews, scoring 82 on the critical aggregator Metacritic, which indicates “universal acclaim”.[358] Critics praised the restrained instrumental backings and the quality of Dylan’s singing.[353][359] Bill Prince in GQ commented: “A performer who’s had to hear his influence in virtually every white pop recording made since he debuted his own self-titled album back in 1962 imagines himself into the songs of his pre-rock’n’roll early youth.”[354] The album debuted at number one in the UK Albums Chart in its first week of release.[360]

The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966, consisting of previously unreleased material from the three albums Dylan recorded between January 1965 and March 1966: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde was released in November 2015. The set was released in three formats: a 2-CD “Best Of” version, a 6-CD “Deluxe edition”, and an 18-CD “Collector’s Edition” in a limited edition of 5,000 units. On Dylan’s website the “Collector’s Edition” was described as containing “every single note recorded by Bob Dylan in the studio in 1965/1966.”[361][362] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded Cutting Edge a score of 99, indicating universal acclaim.[363] The Best of the Cutting Edge entered the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart at number one on November 18, based on its first-week sales.[364]

The sale of Dylan’s extensive archive of about 6,000 items of memorabilia to the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa was announced on March 2, 2016. It was reported the sale price was “an estimated $15 million to $20 million”. The archive comprises notebooks, drafts of Dylan lyrics, recordings, and correspondence.[365] The archive will be housed at Helmerich Center for American Research, a facility at the Gilcrease Museum.[366]

Dylan released Fallen Angels—described as “a direct continuation of the work of ‘uncovering’ the Great Songbook that he began on last year’s Shadows In the Night”—in May.[367] The album contained twelve songs by classic songwriters such as Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn and Johnny Mercer, eleven of which had been recorded by Sinatra.[367] Jim Farber wrote in Entertainment Weekly: “Tellingly, [Dylan] delivers these songs of love lost and cherished not with a burning passion but with the wistfulness of experience. They’re memory songs now, intoned with a present sense of commitment. Released just four days ahead of his 75th birthday, they couldn’t be more age-appropriate.”[368] The album received a score of 79 on critical aggregator website Metacritic, denoting “generally favorable reviews”.[369]

A massive 36-CD collection, The 1966 Live Recordings, including every known recording of Bob Dylan’s 1966 concert tour was released in November 2016.[370] The recordings commence with the concert in White Plains New York on February 5, 1966, and end with the Royal Albert Hall concert in London on May 27.[371][372] The New York Times reported most of the concerts had “never been heard in any form”, and described the set as “a monumental addition to the corpus”.[373]

Dylan released a triple album of a further 30 recordings of classic American songs, Triplicate, in March 2017. Dylan’s 38th studio album was recorded in Hollywood’s Capitol Studios and features his touring band.[374] Dylan posted a long interview on his website to promote the album, and was asked if this material was an exercise in nostalgia. “Nostalgic? No I wouldn’t say that. It’s not taking a trip down memory lane or longing and yearning for the good old days or fond memories of what’s no more. A song like “Sentimental Journey” is not a way back when song, it doesn’t emulate the past, it’s attainable and down to earth, it’s in the here and now.”[375] The album was awarded a score of 84 on critical aggregator website Metacritic, signifying “universal acclaim”. Critics praised the thoroughness of Dylan’s exploration of the great American songbook, though, in the opinion of Uncut: “For all its easy charms, Triplicate labours its point to the brink of overkill. After five albums’ worth of croon toons, this feels like a fat full stop on a fascinating chapter.”[376]

The next edition of Dylan’s Bootleg Series revisited Dylan’s “Born Again” Christian period of 1979 to 1981, which was described by Rolling Stone as “an intense, wildly controversial time that produced three albums and some of the most confrontational concerts of his long career”.[377] Reviewing the box set, The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981, comprising 8 CDs and 1 DVD.[377] in The New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote, “Decades later, what comes through these recordings above all is Mr. Dylan’s unmistakable fervor, his sense of mission. The studio albums are subdued, even tentative, compared with what the songs became on the road. Mr. Dylan’s voice is clear, cutting and ever improvisational; working the crowds, he was emphatic, committed, sometimes teasingly combative. And the band tears into the music.”[378] Trouble No More includes a DVD of a film directed by Jennifer Lebeau consisting of live footage of Dylan’s gospel performances interspersed with sermons delivered by actor Michael Shannon. The box set album received an aggregate score of 84 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[379]

Dylan made a contribution to the compilation EP Universal Love, a collection of reimagined wedding songs for the LGBT community in April 2018.[380] The album was funded by MGM Resorts International and the songs are intended to function as “wedding anthems for same-sex couples”.[381] Dylan recorded the 1929 song “She’s Funny That Way”, changing the gender pronoun to “He’s Funny That Way”. The song has previously been recorded by Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.[381][382]

Also in April 2018, The New York Times announced that Dylan was launching Heaven’s Door, a range of three whiskeys: a straight rye, a straight bourbon and a “double-barreled” whiskey. Dylan has been involved in both the creation and the marketing of the range. The Times described the venture as “Mr. Dylan’s entry into the booming celebrity-branded spirits market, the latest career twist for an artist who has spent five decades confounding expectations.”[383]

On November 2, 2018, Dylan released More Blood, More Tracks as Volume 14 in the Bootleg Series. The set comprises all Dylan’s recordings for his 1975 album Blood On the Tracks, and was issued as a single CD and also as a six-CD Deluxe Edition.[384] The box set album received an aggregate score of 93 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[385]

Netflix released the movie Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese on June 12, 2019, describing the film as “Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream”.[386][187] The Scorsese film received an aggregate score of 88 on critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[387] The film sparked controversy because of the way it deliberately mixed documentary footage filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue in the fall of 1975 with fictitious characters and invented stories.[388]

Coinciding with the film release, a box set of 14 CDs, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, was released by Columbia Records. The set comprises five full Dylan performances from the tour and recently discovered tapes from Dylan’s tour rehearsals.[389] The box set received an aggregate score of 89 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[390]

The next instalment of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Bob Dylan (featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15, was released on November 1. The 3-CD set comprises outtakes from Dylan’s albums John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, and songs that Dylan recorded with Johnny Cash in Nashville in 1969 and with Earl Scruggs in 1970.[391][392] Travelin’ Thru received an aggregate score of 88 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.

2020s

Rough and Rowdy Ways

On March 26, 2020, Dylan released a seventeen-minute track “Murder Most Foul” on his YouTube channel, revolving around the a*sassination of President Kennedy.[394] Dylan posted a statement: “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.”[395] Billboard reported on April 8 that “Murder Most Foul” had topped the Billboard Rock Digital Song Sales Chart. This was the first time that Dylan had scored a number one song on a pop chart under his own name.[396] Three weeks later, on April 17, 2020, Dylan released another new song, “I Contain Multitudes”.[397][398] The title is a quote from Section 51 of Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”.[399] On May 7, Dylan released a third single, “False Prophet”, accompanied by the news that “Murder Most Foul”, “I Contain Multitudes” and “False Prophet” would all appear on a forthcoming double album.

Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan’s 39th studio album and his first album of original material since 2012, was released on June 19 to favorable reviews.[400] Alexis Petridis wrote in The Guardian, “For all its bleakness, Rough and Rowdy Ways might well be Bob Dylan’s most consistently brilliant set of songs in years: the die-hards can spend months unravelling the knottier lyrics, but you don’t need a PhD in Dylanology to appreciate its singular quality and power.”[401] Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield wrote: “While the world keeps trying to celebrate him as an institution, pin him down, cast him in the Nobel Prize canon, embalm his past, this drifter always keeps on making his next escape. On Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan is exploring terrain nobody else has reached before—yet he just keeps pushing on into the future.”[402] Critical aggregator Metacritic gave the album a score of 95, indicating “universal acclaim”.[400] In its first week of release Rough and Rowdy Ways reached number one on the U.K. album chart, making Dylan “the oldest artist to score a No. 1 of new, original material”.[403]

To accompany the album, Dylan gave a rare interview to historian Douglas Brinkley, published in The New York Times on June 12. Dylan commented on the killing of George Floyd: “It was beyond ugly. Let’s hope that justice comes swift for the Floyd family and for the nation.” He said of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Maybe we are on the eve of destruction. There are numerous ways you can think about this virus. I think you just have to let it run its course.”

Never Ending Tour

The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988,[405] and Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and 2000s—a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s.[406] By April 2019, Dylan and his band had played more than 3,000 shows,[407] anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron and guitarist Charlie Sexton.[408] In October 2019, drummer Matt Chamberlain joined the band.[408] To the dismay of some of his audience,[409] Dylan’s performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night.[410] Critical opinion about Dylan’s shows remains divided. Critics such as Richard Williams and Andy Gill have argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material.[411][412] Others have criticized his live performances for mangling and spitting out “the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognisable”, and giving so little to the audience that “it is difficult to understand what he is doing on stage at all.”[413]

Dylan’s performances in China in April 2011 generated controversy. Some criticised him for not making any explicit comment on the political situation in China, and for, allegedly, allowing the Chinese authorities to censor his set list.[414][415] Others defended Dylan’s performances, arguing that such criticism represented a misunderstanding of Dylan’s art, and that no evidence for the censorship of Dylan’s set list existed.[416][417] In response to these allegations, Dylan posted a statement on his website: “As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.”[418]

In 2019, Dylan undertook two tours in Europe. The first commenced in Düsseldorf, Germany, on March 31, and ended in Valencia, Spain, on May 7. He played his 3000th show of the Never Ending Tour on April 19, 2019, in Innsbruck, Austria.[419] Dylan’s second tour began in Bergen, Norway, on June 21, and ended in Kilkenny, Ireland, on July 14.[420][421] In the fall of 2019 Dylan toured the USA, commencing in Irvine, California on October 11 and ending in Washington D.C. on December 8.[422]

In October 2019, Dylan’s touring company indicated that he would play 14 concerts in Japan in April 2020.[423] However, on March 12, 2020, it was announced that these scheduled shows had been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Visual art

The cover of Dylan’s album Self Portrait (1970) is a reproduction of a painting of a face by Dylan.[425] Another of his paintings is reproduced on the cover of the 1974 album Planet Waves. In 1994 Random House published Drawn Blank, a book of Dylan’s drawings.[426] In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan’s paintings, The Drawn Blank Series, opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany;[427] it showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.[427][428] From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.[429]

In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan’s paintings.[430] An exhibition of Dylan’s art, The Asia Series, opened at the Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20, displaying Dylan’s paintings of scenes in China and the Far East.[431] The New York Times reported that “some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on the singer’s own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and were not taken by Mr. Dylan.” The Times pointed to close resemblances between Dylan’s paintings and historic photos of Japan and China, and photos taken by Dmitri Kessel and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[432] Art critic Blake Gopnik has defended Dylan’s artistic practice, arguing: “Ever since the birth of photography, painters have used it as the basis for their works: Edgar Degas and Edouard Vuillard and other favorite artists—even Edvard Munch—all took or used photos as sources for their art, sometimes barely altering them.”[433] The Magnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs.[434]

Dylan’s second show at the Gagosian Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened in November 2012. The show consisted of thirty paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines, including Playboy and Babytalk.[435][436] In February 2013, Dylan exhibited the New Orleans Series of paintings at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.[437] In August 2013, Britain’s National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan’s first major UK exhibition, Face Value, featuring twelve pastel portraits.[438]

In November 2013, the Halcyon Gallery in London mounted Mood Swings, an exhibition in which Dylan displayed seven wrought iron gates he had made. In a statement released by the gallery, Dylan said, “I’ve been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country, where you could breathe it and smell it every day. Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.”[439][440]

In November 2016, the Halcyon Gallery featured a collection of drawings, watercolors and acrylic works by Dylan. The exhibition, The Beaten Path, depicted American landscapes and urban scenes, inspired by Dylan’s travels across the USA.[441] The show was reviewed by Vanity Fair and Asia Times Online.[442][443][444] In October 2018, the Halcyon Gallery mounted an exhibition of Dylan’s drawings, Mondo Scripto. The works consisted of Dylan hand-written lyrics of his songs, with each song illustrated by a drawing.[445]

Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of paintings and drawings.

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known simply as Elvis, was an American singer, musician and actor. He is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century and is often referred to as the “King of Rock and Roll” or simply “the King”. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to great success—and initial controversy.

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley’s classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for more than two decades. Presley’s first RCA single, “Heartbreak Hotel”, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, he became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll.

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He held few concerts, however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. Years of prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

With his rise from poverty to significant fame, Presley’s success seemed to epitomize the American Dream. He is the best-selling solo music artist of all time, and was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, R&B, adult contemporary, and gospel. He won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. Presley holds several records; the most RIAA certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, and the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart. In 2018, Presley was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Life and career

1935–1953: Early years

Childhood in Tupelo

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi to Vernon Elvis (April 10, 1916 – June 26, 1979) and Gladys Love (née Smith; April 25, 1912 – August 14, 1958) Presley in a two-room shotgun house that his father built for the occasion. Elvis’s identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley’s father, Vernon, was of German[8] or Scottish origin.[9] Through his mother, Presley was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman.[10] His mother, Gladys, and the rest of the family, apparently believed that her great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was Cherokee; this was confirmed by Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough in 2017. Elaine Dundy, in her biography, supports the belief – although one genealogy researcher has contested it on multiple grounds. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family.

Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evincing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food a*sistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by his landowner and sometime-employer. He was jailed for eight months, while Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his teachers regarded him as “average”. He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley’s country song “Old Shep” during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance. The ten-year-old Presley was dressed as a cowboy; he stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang “Old Shep”. He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family’s church. Presley recalled, “I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it.”

In September 1946, Presley entered a new school, Milam, for sixth grade; he was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar to school on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime, and was often teased as a “trashy” kid who played hillbilly music. By then, the family was living in a largely black neighborhood. Presley was a devotee of Mississippi Slim’s show on the Tupelo radio station WELO. He was described as “crazy about music” by Slim’s younger brother, who was one of Presley’s classmates and often took him into the station. Slim supplemented Presley’s guitar instruction by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was twelve years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.
Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Lauderdale Courts. Enrolled at L. C. Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him that he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, “Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me”, to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher “agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn’t appreciate his kind of singing”. He was usually too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a “mama’s boy”. In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Lee Denson, a neighbor two and a half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began working as an usher at Loew’s State Theater. Other jobs followed: Precision Tool, Loew’s again, and MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. In his free time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis’s thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing those clothes. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Lauderdale Courts, he competed in Humes’ Annual “Minstrel” show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with “Till I Waltz Again with You”, a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: “I wasn’t popular in school … I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show … when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, ’cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became in school after that.”

Presley, who received no formal music training and could not read music, studied and played by ear. He also frequented record stores that provided jukeboxes and listening booths to customers. He knew all of Hank Snow’s songs, and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills.[38] The Southern gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African-American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.[38] Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations, such as WDIA-AM, that played “race records”: spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African-American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he had known Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

1953–1956: First recordings

Sam Phillips and Sun Records

In August 1953, Presley checked into the offices of Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. He later claimed that he intended the record as a birthday gift for his mother, or that he was merely interested in what he “sounded like”, although there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argued that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, “I sing all kinds.” When she pressed him on who he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, “I don’t sound like nobody.” After he recorded, Sun boss Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man’s name, which she did along with her own commentary: “Good ballad singer. Hold.”

In January 1954, Presley cut a second acetate at Sun Records—”I’ll Never Stand in Your Way” and “It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You”—but again nothing came of it. Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, “They told me I couldn’t sing.” Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver.[ His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith’s professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving “because you’re never going to make it as a singer”.

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring to a broader audience the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused. As Keisker reported, “Over and over I remember Sam saying, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.’” In June, he acquired a demo recording by Jimmy Sweeney of a ballad, “Without You”, that he thought might suit the teenage singer. Presley came by the studio but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield “Scotty” Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session.

The session held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to abort and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right”. Moore recalled, “All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open … he stuck his head out and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And we said, ‘We don’t know.’ ‘Well, back up,’ he said, ‘try to find a place to start, and do it again.’” Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played “That’s All Right” on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the remaining two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended to clarify his color for the many callers who had a*sumed that he was black. During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, again in a distinctive style and employing a jury rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed “slapback”. A single was pressed with “That’s All Right” on the A-side and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the reverse.

Early live performances and RCA Victor contract

The trio played publicly for the first time on July 17 at the Bon Air club—Presley still sporting his child-size guitar. At the end of the month, they appeared at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming.[63] Moore recalled, “During the instrumental parts, he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild”. Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as “really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something”. Soon after, Moore and Black left their old band, the Starlite Wranglers, to play with Presley regularly, and DJ/promoter Bob Neal became the trio’s manager. From August through October, they played frequently at the Eagle’s Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions, and Presley quickly grew more confident on stage. According to Moore, “His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He’d do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick.” Presley made what would be his only appearance on Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry stage on October 2; after a polite audience response, Opry manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was “not bad” but did not suit the program.

Louisiana Hayride, radio commercial, and first television performances

In November 1954, Presley performed on Louisiana Hayride—the Opry’s chief, and more adventurous, rival. The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states. Presley had another attack of nerves during the first set, which drew a muted reaction. A more composed and energetic second set inspired an enthusiastic response. House drummer D. J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley’s movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. Soon after the show, the Hayride engaged Presley for a year’s worth of Saturday-night appearances. Trading in his old guitar for $8 (and seeing it promptly dispatched to the garbage), he purchased a Martin instrument for $175, and his trio began playing in new locales, including Houston, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas.

Many fledgling performers, like Minnie Pearl, Johnny Horton, and Johnny Cash, sang the praises of Louisiana Hayride sponsor, The Southern Maid Donut Flour Company (Texas), including Elvis Presley, who developed a lifelong love of doughnuts. Presley made his singular product endorsement commercial for the doughnut company, which was never released, recording a radio jingle, “in exchange for a box of hot glazed doughnuts.”

Elvis made his first television appearance on the KSLA-TV television broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on the CBS television network. By early 1955, Presley’s regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought him to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—who claimed to be from West Virginia (he was actually Dutch)—had acquired an honorary colonel’s commission from country singer turned Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold, Parker was working with the new number-one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow’s February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: “His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. … I just didn’t know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it.” By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to “Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill”; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like “That’s All Right”, were in what one Memphis journalist described as the “R&B idiom of negro field jazz”; others, like “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, were “more in the country field”, “but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both”. This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley’s music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country-music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm-and-blues stations would touch him because “he sounded too much like a hillbilly.” The blend came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as “The King of Western Bop”, “The Hillbilly Cat”, and “The Memphis Flash”.

Presley renewed Neal’s management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, “It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we’d have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody’d always try to take a crack at him. They’d get a gang and try to waylay him or something.” The trio became a quartet when Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose “Rock Around the Clock” track had been a number-one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.

At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year’s most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley’s Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract.[86] Parker arranged with the owners of Hill & Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forgo one-third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month’s end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

1956–1958: Commercial breakout and controversy

First national TV appearances and debut album

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending Presley’s by-now customary backup of Moore, Black, Fontana, and Hayride pianist Floyd Cramer—who had been performing at live club dates with Presley—RCA enlisted guitarist Chet Atkins and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill in the sound.[94] The session produced the moody, unusual “Heartbreak Hotel”, released as a single on January 27. Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS’s Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA’s New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins’ rockabilly anthem “Blue Suede Shoes”. In February, Presley’s “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”, a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal’s contract was terminated, and, on March 2, Parker became Presley’s manager.

RCA released Presley’s self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: “Blue Suede Shoes”—”an improvement over Perkins’ in almost every way”, according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presley’s stage repertoire for some time, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these “were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists … who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the ’50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases.” It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks. While Presley was not an innovative guitarist like Moore or contemporary African-American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argued that the album’s cover image, “of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar … as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music.

Milton Berle Show and “Hound Dog”

On April 3, Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC’s Milton Berle Show. His performance, on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, California, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas. Twelve weeks after its original release, “Heartbreak Hotel” became Presley’s first number-one pop hit. In late April, Presley began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests—”like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party”, wrote a critic for Newsweek. Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in 15 cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas and was struck by their cover of “Hound Dog”, a hit in 1953 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act. After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese’s newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that “Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. … [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. … After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley’s room at the auditorium. … Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls … whose abdomen and thigh had Presley’s autograph.”

The second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC’s Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Berle persuaded Presley to leave his guitar backstage, advising, “Let ’em see you, son.” During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of “Hound Dog” with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements. Presley’s gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. … His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner’s aria in a bathtub. … His one specialty is an accented movement of the body … primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway.” Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music “has reached its lowest depths in the ‘grunt and groin’ antics of one Elvis Presley. … Elvis, who rotates his pelvis … gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos”. Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation’s most popular, declared him “unfit for family viewing”. To Presley’s displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as “Elvis the Pelvis”, which he called “one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin’ from an adult.”

Steve Allen Show and first Sullivan appearance

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC’s Steve Allen Show in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, introduced a “new Elvis” in a white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang “Hound Dog” for less than a minute to a basset hound wearing a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, “Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd … [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition”. Allen later wrote that he found Presley’s “strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing” and simply worked him into the customary “comedy fabric” of his program.[113] Just before the final rehearsal for the show, Presley told a reporter, “I’m holding down on this show. I don’t want to do anything to make people dislike me. I think TV is important so I’m going to go along, but I won’t be able to give the kind of show I do in a personal appearance.” Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local TV show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, “No, I haven’t, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. … I don’t see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it’s only music. … I mean, how would rock ‘n’ roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?”

The next day, Presley recorded “Hound Dog”, along with “Any Way You Want Me” and “Don’t Be Cruel”. The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, Presley made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis, at which he announced, “You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I’m gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight.”[116] In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order.[117] The single pairing “Don’t Be Cruel” with “Hound Dog” ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley’s second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Leiber and Stoller, the writers of “Hound Dog”, contributed “Love Me”.

Allen’s show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS’s Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked Presley for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan was recovering from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Los Angeles. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley “got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants—so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. … I think it’s a Coke bottle. … We just can’t have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!” Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, “As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots.” In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming.[ Presley’s performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad “Love Me Tender”, prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Accompanying Presley’s rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. Igniting the “biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra … Presley brought rock’n’roll into the mainstream of popular culture”, writes historian Marty Jezer. “As Presley set the artistic pace, other artists followed. … Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture.”

Crazed crowds and film debut

The audience response at Presley’s live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, “He’d start out, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,’ and they’d just go to pieces. They’d always react the same way. There’d be a riot every time.” At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, 50 National Guardsmen were added to the police security to ensure that the crowd would not cause a ruckus. Elvis, Presley’s second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one on the billboard. The album includes “Old Shep”, which he sang at the talent show in 1945, and which now marked the first time he played piano on an RCA session. According to Guralnick, one can hear “in the halting chords and the somewhat stumbling rhythm both the unmistakable emotion and the equally unmistakable valuing of emotion over technique.” Assessing the musical and cultural impact of Presley’s recordings from “That’s All Right” through Elvis, rock critic Dave Marsh wrote that “these records, more than any others, contain the seeds of what rock & roll was, has been and most likely what it may foreseeably become.”

Presley returned to the Sullivan show at its main studio in New York, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy. His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top-billed, the film’s original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on his latest number-one record: “Love Me Tender” had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley’s popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The film was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and had an impromptu jam session, along with Johnny Cash. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure that the session was captured on tape. The results, none officially released for 25 years, became known as the “Million Dollar Quartet” recordings. The year ended with a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and Billboard’s declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted.[134] In his first full year at RCA, one of the music industry’s largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label’s singles sales.

Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957—on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity. In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley “did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, with all stops out.” To close, displaying his range and defying Sullivan’s wishes, Presley sang a gentle black spiritual, “Peace in the Valley”. At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley “a real decent, fine boy”.[136] Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1-A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.

Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: “Too Much”, “All Shook Up”, and “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”. Already an international star, he was attracting fans even where his music was not officially released. Under the headline “Presley Records a Craze in Soviet”, The New York Times reported that pressings of his music on discarded X-ray plates were commanding high prices in Leningrad. Between film shoots and recording sessions, Presley also found time to purchase an 18-room mansion eight miles (13 km) south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland. Loving You—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley’s third straight number-one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were then retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley’s next film. The songwriting team effectively produced the Jailhouse sessions and developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his “good-luck charm”. “He was fast,” said Leiber. “Any demo you gave him he knew by heart in ten minutes.” The title track was yet another number-one hit, as was the Jailhouse Rock EP.

Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that “the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you’re liable to get killed.” Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia,[143] and in Vancouver the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage. Frank Sinatra, who had inspired the swooning of teenage girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as “brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. … It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. … This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.” Asked for a response, Presley said, “I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn’t have said it. … This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago.”

Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis’ Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley’s request: “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”, an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley’s string of number-one albums to four and would become the best-selling Christmas album ever in the United States, with eventual sales of over 20 million worldwide. After the session, Moore and Black—drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley’s massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley’s inner circle for some time. On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming King Creole, in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis. A couple of weeks into the new year, “Don’t”, another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley’s tenth number-one seller. It had been only 21 months since “Heartbreak Hotel” had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood in mid-January 1958. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time they and Presley worked closely together. As Stoller recalled, Presley’s manager and entourage sought to wall him off: “He was removed. … They kept him separate.” A brief soundtrack session on February 11 marked another ending—it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.

1958–1960: Military service and mother’s death

On March 24, 1958, Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army as a private at Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, Arkansas. His arrival was a major media event. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers then accompanied him into the fort. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying that he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: “The Army can do anything it wants with me.”

Presley commenced basic training at Fort Hood, Texas. During a two-week leave in early June, he recorded five songs in Nashville. In early August, his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis, and her condition rapidly worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her and arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure at the age of 46. Presley was devastated and never the same; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

After training, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1.[161] While on maneuvers, Presley was introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant. He became “practically evangelical about their benefits”, not only for energy but for “strength” and weight loss as well, and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, training with Jürgen Seydel. It became a lifelong interest, which he later included in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley’s wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased TV sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.

While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla said that Presley was concerned that his 24-month spell as a GI would ruin his career. In Special Services, he would have been able to give musical performances and remain in touch with the public, but Parker had convinced him that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier. Media reports echoed Presley’s concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck”, the best-selling “Hard Headed Woman”, and “One Night” in 1958, and “(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such as I” and the number-one “A Big Hunk o’ Love” in 1959. RCA also generated four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis’ Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

1960–1968: Focus on films

Elvis Is Back

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged three days later with the rank of sergeant. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. On the night of March 20, he entered RCA’s Nashville studio to cut tracks for a new album along with a single, “Stuck on You”, which was rushed into release and swiftly became a number-one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of his best-selling singles, the ballads “It’s Now or Never” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, along with the rest of Elvis Is Back! The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues “menace, driven by Presley’s own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis’ singing wasn’t sexy, it was pornographic.” As a whole, the record “conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things”, according to music historian John Robertson: “a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer;  raucous rocker”. Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special—ironic for both stars, given Sinatra’s earlier excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley’s first film since his return, was a number-one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in the UK, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records.[181] A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley’s next studio album, Something for Everybody. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely “a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis’ birthright”. It would be his sixt

h number-one LP. Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii. It was to be Presley’s last public performance for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy film making schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical comedies. Presley, at first, insisted on pursuing higher roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the 27 films he made during the 1960s, there were a few further exceptions. His films were almost universally panned; critic Andrew Caine dismissed them as a “pantheon of bad taste”. Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, “A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood.”[

Of Presley’s films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The films’ rapid production and release schedules—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: “three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie”. As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew “progressively worse”.[189] Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that he disliked many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires’ Gordon Stoker describes how Presley would retreat from the studio microphone: “The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn’t sing it.” Most of the film albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be “written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll”. Regardless of the songs’ quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: “Presley isn’t trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like ‘No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car’ and ‘Rock-A-Hula Baby’.”

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley’s soundtrack albums were ranked number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (1961) and “Return to Sender” (1962). (“Viva Las Vegas”, the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top-ten hit: “Crying in the Chapel” (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-film albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was “arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs”.

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic films and a*sembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. “By then, of course, the damage had been done”, as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. “Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans.

1968–1973: Comeback

Elvis: the ’68 Comeback Special

Presley’s only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career. Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28. His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would rank at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker had already shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra Timex show in 1960. He maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a Christmas special.

Recorded in late June in Burbank, California, the special, simply called Elvis, aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the ’68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience—Presley’s first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley dressed in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and co-producer Steve Binder had worked hard to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC’s highest-rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, “There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock ‘n’ roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy.” Dave Marsh calls the performance one of “emotional grandeur and historical resonance”.

By January 1969, the single “If I Can Dream”, written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album rose into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what “he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. … He was out of prison, man.” Binder said of Presley’s reaction, “I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, ‘Steve, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don’t believe in.’”

From Elvis in Memphis and the International

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Dave Marsh, it is “a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement.” The album featured the hit single “In the Ghetto”, issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley’s first non-gospel top ten hit since “Bossa Nova Baby” in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: “Suspicious Minds”, “Don’t Cry Daddy”, and “Kentucky Rain”.[208]

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, “That’s fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?” In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley a*sembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations. Costume designer Bill Belew, responsible for the intense leather styling of the Comeback Special, created a new stage look for Presley, inspired by Presley’s passion for karate. Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal. Parker, who intended to make Presley’s return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.[

Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s).[ At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as “The King”, Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. “No,” Presley said, “that’s the real king of rock and roll.” The next day, Parker’s negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. Newsweek commented, “There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.” Rolling Stone called Presley “supernatural, his own resurrection.” In November, Presley’s final non-concert film, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. “Suspicious Minds” reached the top of the charts—Presley’s first U.S. pop number-one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television’s Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as a showgirl. She recalled of their encounter, “He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’” Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

Back on tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year’s two-month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome. In April, the single “The Wonder of You” was issued—a number one hit in the UK, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary Elvis: That’s the Way It Is. Presley was performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless $50,000 was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts succeeded without any incidents.

The album, That’s the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson noted, “The authority of Presley’s singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis.” After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and explained how he believed he could reach out to the hippies to help combat the drug culture he and the president abhorred. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was, therefore, important that he “retain his credibility”. Presley told Nixon that The Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism. Presley and his friends previously had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles at his home in Bel Air, California in August 1965. On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he “felt a bit betrayed. … The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him”, a reference to Presley’s early death, linked to prescription drug abuse.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located “Elvis Presley Boulevard”. The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three new, non-film Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, “the truest statement of all”, according to Greil Marcus. “In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of ‘Merry Christmas Baby,’ a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. … If [Presley’s] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life”.

Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second competitive Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance. A 14-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in an LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden became one of Presley’s biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single “Burning Love” was released—Presley’s last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. “The most exciting single Elvis has made since ‘All Shook Up’,” wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. “Who else could make ‘It’s coming closer, the flames are now licking my body’ sound like an a*signation with James Brown’s backup band?”
High-collared white jumpsuit resplendent with red, blue, and gold eagle motif in sequins
Presley came up with his outfit’s eagle motif, as “something that would say ‘America’ to the world”.

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving into Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla related that when she told him, Presley “grabbed … and forcefully made love to” her, declaring, “This is how a real man makes love to his woman.” She later stated in an interview that she regretted her choice of words in describing the incident, and said it had been an overstatement. Five months later, Presley’s new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley’s marriage “was a blow from which he never recovered.” At a rare press conference that June, a reporter had asked Presley whether he was satisfied with his image. Presley replied, “Well, the image is one thing and the human being another … it’s very hard to live up to an image.”

In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii, which would be the first concert by a solo artist to be aired globally. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. On January 14, Aloha from Hawaii aired live via satellite to prime-time audiences in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as to U.S. servicemen based across Southeast Asia. In Japan, where it capped a nationwide Elvis Presley Week, it smashed viewing records. The next night, it was simulcast to 28 European countries, and in April an extended version finally aired in the U.S., where it won a 57 percent share of the TV audience.[248] Over time, Parker’s claim that it was seen by one billion or more people would be broadly accepted, but that figure appeared to have been sheer invention. Presley’s stage costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely a*sociated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, “At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure.”[254] The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley’s last U.S. number-one pop album during his lifetime.

At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men came to Presley’s defense, and he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Mike Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, “There’s too much pain in me … Stone [must] die.” His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, “Aw hell, let’s just leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy.”

1973–1977: Health deterioration and death

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley’s divorce was finalized on October 9, 1973. By then, his health was in major and serious decline. Twice during the year, he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Towards the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semi-comatose from the effects of a pethidine addiction. According to his primary care physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley “felt that by getting drugs from a doctor, he wasn’t the common everyday junkie getting something off the street”. Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, in 1974, he undertook another intensive touring schedule.

Presley’s condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembered Presley’s arrival at a University of Maryland concert: “He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, ‘Don’t help me.’ He walked on stage and held onto the mic for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody’s looking at each other like, ‘Is the tour gonna happen’?” Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, “He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so f*cked up. … It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. … I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions.” Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, “I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, ‘Boss, why don’t you just cancel this tour and take a year off …?’ I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, ‘It’ll be all right. Don’t you worry about it.’” Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. Cultural critic Marjorie Garber wrote that he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: “In effect, he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers.”

On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son’s financial affairs—fired “Memphis Mafia” bodyguards Red West (Presley’s friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to “cut back on expenses”. Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggested that he was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another a*sociate of Presley’s, John O’Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits.[268] However, Presley’s stepbrother, David Stanley, claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley’s drug dependency.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974. Parker sold RCA yet another concert record, Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of “How Great Thou Art” that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker’s attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley’s home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process became a struggle for him.

Despite concerns from his label and manager, between July 1973 and October 1976 Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977).[278] Similarly, his singles in this era did not prove to be major pop hits, but Presley remained a significant force in the country and adult contemporary markets. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. “My Boy” was a number-one adult contemporary hit in 1975, and “Moody Blue” topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the adult contemporary chart in 1976. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his “apocalyptic attack” on the soul classic “Hurt”. “If he felt the way he sounded”, Dave Marsh wrote of Presley’s performance, “the wonder isn’t that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long.”

Final months and death

Presley and Linda Thompson split in November 1976, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden.[282] He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again. Journalist Tony Scherman wrote that by early 1977, “Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts.”[284] In Alexandria, Louisiana, he was on stage for less than an hour, and “was impossible to understand”.[ On March 31, Presley failed to perform in Baton Rouge, unable to get out of his hotel bed; a total of four shows had to be canceled and rescheduled. Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments. According to Guralnick, fans “were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Presley, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books.” A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes.

“Way Down”, Presley’s last single issued during his career, was released on June 6. That month, CBS filmed two concerts for a TV special, Elvis in Concert, to be aired in October. In the first, shot in Omaha on June 19, Presley’s voice, Guralnick writes, “is almost unrecognizable, a small, childlike instrument in which he talks more than sings most of the songs, casts about uncertainly for the melody in others, and is virtually unable to articulate or project”. Two days later, in Rapid City, South Dakota, “he looked healthier, seemed to have lost a little weight, and sounded better, too”, though, by the conclusion of the performance, his face was “framed in a helmet of blue-black hair from which sweat sheets down over pale, swollen cheeks”. His final concert was held in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena, on June 26.

he book Elvis: What Happened?, co-written by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley’s years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each magnified—and possibly caused—by drug abuse.

On the evening of Tuesday, August 16, 1977, Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis to begin another tour. That afternoon, Ginger Alden discovered him in an unresponsive state on a bathroom floor. According to her eyewitness account, “Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it. … It was clear that, from the time whatever hit him to the moment he had landed on the floor, Elvis hadn’t moved.” Attempts to revive him failed, and his death was officially pronounced the next day at 3:30 p.m. at the Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having “permanently changed the face of American popular culture”. Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley’s cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer’s biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley’s funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. About 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few weeks, “Way Down” topped the country and UK pop charts. Following an attempt to steal Presley’s body in late August, the remains of both Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland’s Meditation Garden on October 2.

Cause of death

While an autopsy, undertaken the same day Presley died, was still in progress, Memphis medical examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco announced that the immediate cause of death was cardiac arrest. Asked if drugs were involved, he declared that “drugs played no role in Presley’s death”.[301] In fact, “drug use was heavily implicated” in Presley’s death, writes Guralnick. The pathologists conducting the autopsy thought it possible, for instance, that he had suffered “anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills he had gotten from his dentist, to which he was known to have had a mild allergy”. A pair of lab reports filed two months later strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported “fourteen drugs in Elvis’ system, ten in significant quantity”. In 1979, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht conducted a review of the reports and concluded that a combination of central nervous system depressants had resulted in Presley’s accidental death.[301] Forensic historian and pathologist Michael Baden viewed the situation as complicated: “Elvis had had an enlarged heart for a long time. That, together with his drug habit, caused his death. But he was difficult to diagnose; it was a judgment call.”

The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Dr. Francisco had offered a cause of death before the autopsy was complete; claimed the underlying ailment was cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive; and denied drugs played any part in Presley’s death before the toxicology results were known. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread.[303] While a 1981 trial of Presley’s main physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, exonerated him of criminal liability for his death, the facts were startling: “In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines, and narcotics: all in Elvis’ name.” His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.

In 1994, the Presley autopsy report was reopened. Dr. Joseph Davis, who had conducted thousands of autopsies as Miami-Dade County coroner, declared at its completion, “There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack.” More recent research has revealed that Dr. Francisco did not speak for the entire pathology team. Other staff “could say nothing with confidence until they got the results back from the laboratories, if then. That would be a matter of weeks.” One of the examiners, Dr. E. Eric Muirhead “could not believe his ears. Francisco had not only presumed to speak for the hospital’s team of pathologists, he had announced a conclusion that they had not reached. … Early on, a meticulous dissection of the body … confirmed [that] Elvis was chronically ill with diabetes, glaucoma, and constipation. As they proceeded, the doctors saw evidence that his body had been wracked over a span of years by a large and constant stream of drugs. They had also studied his hospital records, which included two admissions for drug detoxification and methadone treatments.” Writer Frank Coffey thought Elvis’s death was due to “a phenomenon called the Valsalva maneuver (essentially straining on the toilet leading to heart stoppage—plausible because Elvis suffered constipation, a common reaction to drug use)”. In similar terms, Dr. Dan Warlick, who was present at the autopsy, “believes Presley’s chronic constipation—the result of years of prescription drug abuse and high-fat, high-cholesterol gorging—brought on what’s known as Valsalva’s maneuver. Put simply, the strain of attempting to defecate compressed the singer’s abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart.”

However, in 2013, Dr. Forest Tennant, who had testified as a defense witness in Nichopoulos’ trial, described his own analysis of Presley’s available medical records. He concluded that Presley’s “drug abuse had led to falls, head trauma, and overdoses that damaged his brain”, and that his death was due in part to a toxic reaction to codeine—exacerbated by an undetected liver enzyme defect—which can cause sudden cardiac arrhythmia. DNA analysis in 2014 of a hair sample purported to be Presley’s found evidence of genetic variants that can lead to glaucoma, migraines, and obesity; a crucial variant a*sociated with the heart-muscle disease hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was also identified.

Later developments

Between 1977 and 1981, six of Presley’s posthumously released singles were top-ten country hits.

Graceland was opened to the public in 1982. Attracting over half a million visitors annually, it became the second most-visited home in the United States, after the White House.[310] It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Presley has been inducted into five music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001), the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (2007), and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (2012). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music’s first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards’ Award of Merit.

A Junkie XL remix of Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” (credited as “Elvis Vs JXL”) was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over 20 countries and was included in a compilation of Presley’s number-one hits, ELV1S, which was also an international success. The album returned Presley to the Billboard summit for the first time in almost three decades.

In 2003, a remix of “Rubberneckin’”, a 1969 recording of Presley’s, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of “That’s All Right” the following year. The latter was an outright hit in Britain, debuting at number three on the pop chart; it also made the top ten in Canada. In 2005, another three reissued singles, “Jailhouse Rock”, “One Night”/”I Got Stung”, and “It’s Now or Never”, went to number one in the United Kingdom. They were part of a campaign that saw the re-release of all 18 of Presley’s previous chart-topping UK singles. The first, “All Shook Up”, came with a collectors’ box that made it ineligible to chart again; each of the other 17 reissues hit the British top five.

In 2005, Forbes named Presley the top-earning deceased celebrity for the fifth straight year, with a gross income of $45 million. He was placed second in 2006, returned to the top spot the next two years, and ranked fourth in 2009. The following year, he was ranked second, with his highest annual income ever—$60 million—spurred by the celebration of his 75th birthday and the launch of Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show in Las Vegas. In November 2010, Viva Elvis: The Album was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks. As of mid-2011, there were an estimated 15,000 licensed Presley products, and he was again the second-highest-earning deceased celebrity. Six years later, he ranked fourth with earnings of $35 million, up $8 million from 2016 due in part to the opening of a new entertainment complex, Elvis Presley’s Memphis, and hotel, The Guest House at Graceland.

For much of his adult life, Presley, with his rise from poverty to riches and massive fame, had seemed to epitomize the American Dream. In his final years and even more so after his death, and the revelations about its circumstances, he became a symbol of excess and gluttony. Increasing attention, for instance, was paid to his appetite for the rich, heavy Southern cooking of his upbringing, foods such as chicken-fried steak and biscuits and gravy. In particular, his love of calorie-laden fried peanut butter, banana, and (sometimes) bacon sandwiches, now known as “Elvis sandwiches”, came to stand for this aspect of his persona. But the Elvis sandwich represents more than just unhealthy overindulgence—as media and culture scholar Robert Thompson describes, the unsophisticated treat also signifies Presley’s enduring all-American appeal: “He wasn’t only the king, he was one of us.”

Since 1977, there have been numerous alleged sightings of Presley. A long-standing conspiracy theory among some fans is that he faked his death. Adherents cite alleged discrepancies in the death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin, and accounts of Presley planning a diversion so he could retire in peace.An unusually large number of fans have domestic shrines devoted to Presley and journey to sites with which he is connected, however faintly. Every August 16, the anniversary of his death, thousands of people gather outside Graceland and celebrate his memory with a candlelight ritual. “With Elvis, it is not just his music that has survived death”, writes Ted Harrison. “He himself has been raised, like a medieval saint, to a figure of cultic status. It is as if he has been canonized by acclamation.”

Artistry

Influences

Presley’s earliest musical influence came from gospel. His mother recalled that from the age of two, at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, “he would slide down off my lap, run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir and trying to sing with them.” In Memphis, Presley frequently attended all-night gospel singings at the Ellis Auditorium, where groups such as the Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style that, Guralnick suggests, sowed the seeds of Presley’s future stage act:

The Statesmen were an electric combination … featuring some of the most thrillingly emotive singing and daringly unconventional showmanship in the entertainment world … dressed in suits that might have come out of the window of Lansky’s. … Bass singer Jim Wetherington, known universally as the Big Chief, maintained a steady bottom, ceaselessly jiggling first his left leg, then his right, with the material of the pants leg ballooning out and shimmering. “He went about as far as you could go in gospel music,” said Jake Hess. “The women would jump up, just like they do for the pop shows.” Preachers frequently objected to the lewd movements … but audiences reacted with screams and swoons.

As a teenager, Presley’s musical interests were wide-ranging, and he was deeply informed about both white and African-American musical idioms. Though he never had any formal training, he had a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable by the time he made his first professional recordings aged 19 in 1954. When Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met him two years later, they were astonished at his encyclopedic understanding of the blues, and, as Stoller put it, “He certainly knew a lot more than we did about country music and gospel music.” At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, “I know practically every religious song that’s ever been written.”

Musicianship

Presley received his first guitar when he was 11 years old. He learned to play and sing; he gained no formal musical training but had an innate natural talent and could easily pick up music. Presley played guitar, bass, and piano. While he couldn’t read or write music and had no formal lessons, he was a natural musician and played everything by ear. Presley often played an instrument on his recordings and produced his own music. Presley played rhythm acoustic guitar on most of his Sun recordings and his 1950s RCA albums. He played electric bass guitar on “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” after his bassist Bill Black had trouble with the instrument.[348] Presley played the bass line including the intro. Presley played piano on songs such as “Old Shep” and “First in Line” from his 1956 album Elvis.[349] He is credited with playing piano on later albums such as From Elvis in Memphis and Moody Blue, and on “Unchained Melody” which was one of the last songs that he recorded.[350] Presley played lead guitar on one of his successful singles called “One Night”. Presley also played guitar on one of his successful singles called “Are You Lonesome Tonight”. In the 68 Comeback Special, Elvis took over on lead electric guitar, the first time he had ever been seen with the instrument in public, playing it on songs such as “Baby What You Want Me to Do” and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”. Elvis played the back of his guitar on some of his hits such as “All Shook Up”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, and “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”, providing percussion by slapping the instrument to create a beat. The album Elvis is Back! features Presley playing a lot of acoustic guitar on songs such as “I Will Be Home Again” and “Like a Baby”.

Musical styles and genres

Presley was a central figure in the development of rockabilly, according to music historians. “Rockabilly crystallized into a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley’s first release, on the Sun label”, writes Craig Morrison. Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as “essentially … an Elvis Presley construction”: “the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country”. In “That’s All Right”, the Presley trio’s first record, Scotty Moore’s guitar solo, “a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion.” While Katherine Charlton likewise calls Presley “rockabilly’s originator”, Carl Perkins has explicitly stated that “[Sam] Phillips, Elvis, and I didn’t create rockabilly” and, according to Michael Campbell, “Bill Haley recorded the first big rockabilly hit.” In Moore’s view, too, “It had been there for quite a while, really. Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson, and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old.”

At RCA, Presley’s rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard “Blue Moon” at Sun to the country ballad “How’s the World Treating You?” on his second LP to the blues of “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”. In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as a million-seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life.

After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number-one hit “Stuck on You”, is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its “mild rock beat”; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it “upbeat pop”. The number five “She’s Not You” (1962) “integrates the Jordanaires so completely, it’s practically doo-wop”. The modern blues/R&B sound captured with success on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67 recordings as “Down in the Alley” and “Hi-Heel Sneakers”. Presley’s output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, a number-one in 1960. “It’s Now or Never”, which also topped the chart that year, was a classically influenced variation of pop based on the Neapolitan “‘O sole mio” and concluding with a “full-voiced operatic cadence”. These were both dramatic numbers, but most of what Presley recorded for his many film soundtracks was in a much lighter vein.

While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the ’68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-ahead rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were “hard to find”. A significant exception was “Burning Love”, his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley’s subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul and funk. Much of Elvis in Memphis, as well as “Suspicious Minds”, cut at the same sessions, reflected his new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on country radio, the field where he first became a star.

Vocal style and range

The developmental arc of Presley’s singing voice, as described by critic Dave Marsh, goes from “high and thrilled in the early days, [to] lower and perplexed in the final months.” Marsh credits Presley with the introduction of the “vocal stutter” on 1955’s “Baby Let’s Play House”. When on “Don’t Be Cruel”, Presley “slides into a ‘mmmmm’ that marks the transition between the first two verses,” he shows “how masterful his relaxed style really is.” Marsh describes the vocal performance on “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as one of “gentle insistence and delicacy of phrasing”, with the line “‘Shall I stay’ pronounced as if the words are fragile as crystal”.

Jorgensen calls the 1966 recording of “How Great Thou Art” “an extraordinary fulfillment of his vocal ambitions”, as Presley “crafted for himself an ad-hoc arrangement in which he took every part of the four-part vocal, from [the] bass intro to the soaring heights of the song’s operatic climax”, becoming “a kind of one-man quartet”. Guralnick finds “Stand By Me” from the same gospel sessions “a beautifully articulated, almost nakedly yearning performance,” but, by contrast, feels that Presley reaches beyond his powers on “Where No One Stands Alone”, resorting “to a kind of inelegant bellowing to push out a sound” that Jake Hess of the Statesmen Quartet had in his command. Hess himself thought that while others might have voices the equal of Presley’s, “he had that certain something that everyone searches for all during their lifetime.” Guralnick attempts to pinpoint that something: “The warmth of his voice, his controlled use of both vibrato technique and natural falsetto range, the subtlety and deeply felt conviction of his singing were all qualities recognizably belonging to his talent but just as recognizably not to be achieved without sustained dedication and effort.”

Marsh praises his 1968 reading of “U.S. Male”, “bearing down on the hard guy lyrics, not sending them up or overplaying them but tossing them around with that astonishingly tough yet gentle a*surance that he brought to his Sun records.” The performance on “In the Ghetto” is, according to Jorgensen, “devoid of any of his characteristic vocal tricks or mannerisms”, instead relying on the exceptional “clarity and sensitivity of his voice”. Guralnick describes the song’s delivery as of “almost translucent eloquence … so quietly confident in its simplicity”. On “Suspicious Minds”, Guralnick hears essentially the same “remarkable mixture of tenderness and poise”, but supplemented with “an expressive quality somewhere between stoicism (at suspected infidelity) and anguish (over impending loss)”.

Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that “Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass … and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion.” He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range as two octaves and a third, “from the baritone low G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D-flat. Presley’s best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extra full step up or down.” In Pleasants’ view, his voice was “variable and unpredictable” at the bottom, “often brilliant” at the top, with the capacity for “full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy”. Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley’s range as two-and-a-quarter octaves, emphasizes that “his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles, and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all.” Presley was always “able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers”, writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable ability to a*similate many other vocal styles.

Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop group formed in Staten Island, New York City in 1992, originally composed of RZA, GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, and Masta Killa. An important act in the East Coast hip hop and hardcore hip hop styles, Wu-Tang Clan are regarded as a highly influential group in hip hop. Their debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), released in 1993, is considered one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time.

Wu-Tang Clan has released four gold and platinum studio albums. The group has introduced and launched the careers of a number of affiliated artists and groups, collectively known as the Wu-Tang Killa Bees. In 2008, About ranked them “the No. 1 greatest hip hop group of all time”.[10] Kris Ex of Rolling Stone called Wu-Tang Clan “the best rap group ever”. In 2004, NME hailed them as one of the most influential groups of the last ten years.

History

Founding

In the late 1980s, cousins Robert Diggs, Gary Grice, and Russell Jones formed a group named Force of the Imperial Master, also known as the All in Together Now Crew. Each member recorded under an alias: Grice as The Genius, Diggs as Prince Rakeem or The Scientist, and Jones as The Specialist.[citation needed] The group never signed to a major label, but caught the attention of the New York City rap scene and was recognized by rapper Biz Markie. By 1991, The Genius and Prince Rakeem were signed to separate record labels. The Genius released Words from the Genius (1991) on Cold Chillin’ Records and Prince Rakeem released Ooh I Love You Rakeem (1991) on Tommy Boy Records.[citation needed] Both were soon dropped by their labels. Embittered but unbowed, they refocused their efforts and on new monikers; The Genius became GZA (pronounced “jizza”), while Prince Rakeem became RZA (pronounced “rizza”).

RZA began collaborating with Dennis Coles, later known as Ghostface Killah, another rapper from the Stapleton Houses in Staten Island. The duo decided to create a hip hop group whose ethos would be a blend of “Eastern philosophy picked up from kung fu movies, Five Percent Nation teachings picked up on the New York streets, and comic books.” Wu-Tang Clan a*sembled in late 1992, with RZA as the de facto leader and the group’s producer. RZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard adopted the name for the group after the film Shaolin and Wu Tang.[16] Their debut album loosely adopted a Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang theme, dividing the album into Shaolin and Wu-Tang sections.

The group developed backronyms for the name (as hip hop pioneers such as KRS-One and Big Daddy Kane did with their names), including “We Usually Take All Niggas’ Garments”, “Witty Unpredictable Talent And Natural Game”, and “Wisdom of the Universe, and the Truth of Allah for the Nation of the Gods”.

1992–96: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and solo albums

Wu-Tang Clan became known in 1993 following the release of the independent single “Protect Ya Neck”, which helped gain the group a sizable underground following. Though there was some difficulty in finding a record label that would sign Wu-Tang Clan while still allowing each member to record solo albums with other labels, Loud/RCA finally agreed, releasing their debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), in November 1993. The album received critical acclaim, and to date is regarded as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time.[18][19][20] The success of Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers established the group as a creative and influential force in mid-1990s hip hop, allowing Ol’ Dirty Bastard, GZA, RZA, Raekwon, U-God, Method Man, and Ghostface Killah to negotiate solo contracts. RZA spoke on the Wu-Tang Clan’s unorthodox business model:

We reinvented the way hip hop was structured, and what I mean is, you have a group signed to a label, yet the infrastructure of our deal was like anyone else’s […] We still could negotiate with any label we wanted, like Meth went with Def Jam, Rae stayed with Loud, Ghost went with Sony, GZA went with Geffen Records, feel me? […] And all these labels still put “Razor Sharp Records” on the credits […] Wu Tang was a financial movement. So what do you wanna diversify…? […] Your a*sets?

— RZA

Clint Patrick Black (born February 4, 1962) is an American country music singer, songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and actor. Signed to RCA Nashville in 1989, Black’s debut album Killin’ Time produced four straight number one singles on the US Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts. Although his momentum gradually slowed throughout the 1990s, Black consistently charted hit songs into the 2000s. He has had more than 30 singles on the US Billboard country charts, twenty-two of which have reached number one, in addition to having released twelve studio albums and several compilation albums. In 2003, Black founded his own record label, Equity Music Group. Black has also ventured into acting, having made appearances in a 1993 episode of the TV series Wings and in the 1994 film Maverick, as well as a starring role in 1998’s Still Holding On: The Legend of Cadillac Jack.

Early life

Clinton Patrick Black was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, the youngest of four children born to G.A.[Note 1] and Ann Black, and lived in nearby Red Bank. The family moved back to Texas, where G.A. Black had been raised, before Clint was one year old. He was raised in Katy, Texas. Music was always present in the house. Black taught himself to play harmonica before he was 13, and at 14 wrote his first song. His father remarked that it was at that age that the parents “first noticed that he had a great voice”. By 15, Black had learned to play guitar. As a teenager Black joined his elder brothers, Mark, Kevin and Brian, in their small band. On Saturday afternoons, the family would host backyard barbecues and invite the neighborhood to listen to the boys sing. Some weekends would attract up to 70 people. Black eventually dropped out of high school to play with his brothers, before becoming a solo act.

Music career

1983–88: Early career

Black was initially drawn to a variety of musical genres. According to his father, he chose to focus on country music in the early 1980s, after singers George Strait and Reba McEntire moved the genre back toward the more traditional; in the style kept alive by George Jones and Merle Haggard. For six years, Black supported himself as a construction worker, bait cutter, and fishing guide, while singing at various lounges as a solo singer and guitarist. In 1987, at one of the gigs he met another guitarist, Hayden Nicholas. The two men connected musically and began a song writing partnership that would last decades. In the late 1980s, Black delivered a demo of their collaboration “Nobody’s Home” to record promoter Sammy Alfano. Within two days of that delivery, Black was invited to a meeting with Bill Ham, who managed ZZ Top.

1989–91: Breakthrough

Black soon signed with RCA at that time considered one of the “most aggressive” labels in country music. His first album, Killin’ Time, was released in 1989. Each song on the album was penned at least in part by Black; four of them were attributed solely to him, while the rest were collaborations with Nicholas. In a departure from most other country albums, Black used his road band instead of session musicians to record Killin’ Time. The album was a critical and commercial success, reaching number one on the Billboard Country Albums chart and certified platinum in 1990. He made his debut in 1989 with the single, “A Better Man”, which reached number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs in early June. This marked the first time in 14 years that a debut single by a male artist had peaked at the top of the chart.

In total, five singles off of his debut album reached number one, the first time any country artist had accomplished this feat. Black won the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award for best newcomer in 1989. At the end of the year, his singles, “A Better Man” and “Killin’ Time” place number one and number two on the year-end country singles charts. It had been 36 years since another artist had claimed both top spots in a single year. Looking back at the early stages of his career, Black recalled: “‘At one point, I knew I crossed this line out of obscurity and I felt like no matter what happened from that point on I would always be remembered for “Killin’ Time.” There was this kind of mixed feeling of remorse and excitement.’”

In late 1990, the Los Angeles Times surveyed country music industry insiders to determine which acts could be expected to sell the most records over the next seven years.[Note 2] Black placed second in the poll, two votes behind Garth Brooks. The survey results were surprising in that 10 of the top 20 artists named were relative newcomers to the industry; in the past, country music had been dominated by artists with several decades experience. The plethora of new acts confused some reviewers, however. Many reviewers lumped many of the new acts together; as Newsweek’s David Gates wrote: “Good song, good voice, hot band: who cares which one it is this time?” Black soon became known as one of Nashville’s “hat acts”; like other country artists such as Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, and Mark Chesnutt, Black was a relative newcomer who wore a hat, and had “clean, neotraditional sound with pop appeal”.

Killin’ Time was certified platinum in 1990. Black’s second album, Put Yourself in My Shoes, was released in November 1990. It reached number two on the country chart and was in the top 20 on the pop album charts. This success on the pop charts resulted from a change in the way Billboard calculated album sales; a new reliance on Nielsen SoundScan instead of information from selected record stores showed that sales of country albums had previously been under counted. The album did not meet with as much critical acclaim as his debut, but nonetheless still included several hit singles. He began touring with Alabama.

Black began dating actress Lisa Hartman in 1990. The couple kept their relationship very quiet. The first picture of the two of them together was not published until the week they were engaged. The couple married in Katy, Texas, in October 1991.

Black has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1991.

1992: Lawsuits and The Hard Way

In March 1992, Black sued his manager, Bill Ham, for breach of contract; Black sought $2 million in damages and requested that Ham return $4 million in royalties. Under the terms of their initial contract, Ham controlled all publishing royalties for any song that Black wrote or co-wrote for his first eight albums. Because Black wrote all of his own music, this amounted to a fee of 20 to 30 cents per album sold. Industry standards generally counseled songwriters to form their own publication companies, so they would be able to retain more of the royalties.

Ham promptly countersued, blaming the initial lawsuit on poor advice Black received from his new personal a*sistant, his mother-in-law Jonni Hartman. His lawyer told the press that “Mr. Ham invested $1 million of his own money in Clint Black’s career at a time when nobody else would do so. For that commitment, Mr. Black should show a little gratitude and honor his contracts”.

By mid-1992, Black’s first two albums had sold a combined 5 million copies. The difficulties with Ham caused a delay in the release of Black’s third album, The Hard Way, which was released on July 14. The album had been expected the year previously, and during the delay the country music scene changed. Both Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt achieved greater success, and Billy Ray Cyrus became a teen idol. The competition that Black faced was now much stiffer than with his earlier albums.

According to Black, he and producer James Stroud spent more time putting this album together than either of those preceding and were “a lot more aggressive in the way we cut and mixed the album”. Black was also more satisfied with the vocals on this album. Several of the songs on The Hard Way, including “Burn One Down”, were initially reported to be Black’s responses to his situation with Ham. Co writer Nicholas refuted the rumors, maintaining that most of those songs were written in the late 1980s.

To promote the album, Black launched The Hard Way Tour on June 26, 1992. The tour ran for 11 months. Reviewers noticed that with this album Black presented a “new, sexier image”, wearing tighter clothing and in many cases leaving behind his trademark hat. Black commented simply that he was bored wearing the hat all the time.

1993–99: Continued success

Black’s fourth album, No Time to Kill was released almost a year after The Hard Way. The album received mixed reviews. The Houston Chronicle noted that Black’s duet with Wynonna Judd, “A Bad Goodbye”, was “precisely the kind of radio-ready, big-production ballad that record companies tend to force on their artists when they sense that their careers are in trouble….[I]t sticks out like a sore thumb in his body of work.” On the other hand, a review in Time magazine thought the duet helped Black show his emotions more intensely. Some reviewers also noted that in some of the more serious songs on the album, Black’s voice sounded strained.

One Emotion followed in late 1994. Also a platinum certified album in the US, this album accounted for five straight top five hits. First was the number four “Untanglin’ My Mind”, a Merle Haggard co-write. After it came the number three “Wherever You Go”, three-week number one “Summer’s Comin’”, the number two title track and finally the number four “Life Gets Away.” The latter two were also number one country hits in Canada.

In 1996, Black became the fourth country music singer to earn a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[Note 3] Later that year, he released his first greatest-hits package. This was led off by the chart-topper “Like the Rain”, which spent three weeks at number one. After it came the number six “Half Way Up”, his first single since “One More Payment” to miss the top five.

Black’s next album, 1997’s Nothin’ but the Taillights, was released to mediocre reviews. Thom Owens of AllMusic said that the album made no attempt to change his sound, and was “sturdy” but less country than his previous efforts. Lead-off single “Still Holding On”, a duet with labelmate Martina McBride, became his first single to land outside the top 10, with a number 11 peak that year. He soon recovered his chart momentum with the number two “Something That We Do” followed by two straight chart-toppers in the album’s Steve Wariner-penned title track and “The Shoes You’re Wearing”. The next two singles – the number 12 “Loosen Up My Strings” and number 29 “You Don’t Need Me Now” – were less successful.

In 1998, he ventured slightly into Big Band Jazz when he recorded a cover of the Christmas song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for the soundtrack of the animated movie of the same name.

In 1999, Black released D’lectrified, which relied completely on acoustic instruments. Nevertheless, USAToday thought the “album sounds as full and brash as an electric album since he used creative arrangements and horn sections”. Three of the songs on the albums were remakes of previous Black singles. Several others featured guest appearances by some of Black’s idols, including Waylon Jennings, Kenny Loggins, and Eric Idle. The songs tended to be longer than most of those played on country radio, with many stretching more than five minutes.

1999–2013: Later career

Black and Hartman welcomed their first child, Lily Pearl Black, in May 2001. Black took a three-year break from the music industry to stay home with his daughter. He explained that “it ended up not being a smart career move, but it was a real smart dad move. … I wouldn’t go back and try to do anything for my career in exchange for that.”

During his sabbatical, Black spent time reassessing his career. After deciding he was unwilling to work within the current recording industry system, he formed his own record label, Equity Music Group. Black admitted that it was difficult to leave RCA. In his 14 years with the label, he had sold over 20 million records.

The new label operated under very different rules than those Black had begun his own career under. Artists were guaranteed ownership of their songs and were granted an equity stake in the label. The first release from the new label was Black’s next album, Spend My Time; his eighth studio album was Black’s first release in five years . The Houston Chronicle called it “arguably the most adventurous of his career”.

In 2005 Black released Drinkin’ Songs and Other Logic. Black chose the title of the album to limit himself to simple topics in his past. He explained: “I went out and bought all the music I grew up on that I didn’t already have and spent three months listening to only that. Only stuff from before I started making records, so it was pre-1989—Waylon, Willie, Buck Owens, Haggard, Don Williams, Jim Croce. And what I discovered was a simplicity in song that I had moved away from. It was quite an emotional journey because these were all the songs that moved me and inspired me to do what I’ve been doing ever since.”

Black has continued to record new material, however. In 2007, he released the single “The Strong One” the first original song he has recorded that he did not write. The song was included on his first digital EP, released on March 11, 2008. Titled “The Long Cool EP,” the collection features Black’s single, “Long Cool Woman”, “The Strong One” and a duet with his wife titled “You Still Get to Me”. Equity Music Group closed its doors in December 2008 due to economic difficulties.

Black was also a judge for the 8th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists.

2013–present: Return to music

Since the closure of his label in 2008, Black had intermittently hinted at a new album that never materialized. In 2013, he issued a Cracker Barrel-exclusive album which featured re-recorded versions of some of his biggest hits as well as three new songs. Black stated that he hired the same musicians that had played on the original versions to perform the new ones, and that some songs were approached from a “fresh angle” while others were made to be as close to the originals as possible. He and his wife Lisa were in season 4 of the masked singer and were eliminated during the 7th episode

In early 2015, Black appeared with Joe Nichols on the ACM Superstar Duets special, which featured modern artists teaming up with older icons that had influenced their music. In July 2015, it was reported that Black had signed a new record deal with independent label Thirty Tigers to release an album of new studio material in the Fall. The record title was revealed shortly thereafter as On Purpose, with a release date of September 25. Black’s next album, Out of Sane, was released in 2020.

Songwriting

Few country singers fill their albums primarily with their own material, and although RCA Records often pushed Black to record the material of other artists, he refused. Black recorded only his own songs until 2007, when he released the single “The Strong One”. Many of his songs were the result of a collaboration with Hayden Nicholas. Their first collaboration, “Straight From the Factory”, took them only 20 minutes to write, although Nicholas would later comment that “most of ’em weren’t that easy”.

Many listeners were incredulous that such a young man (27 at the release of his first album) could have such “a remarkably mature perspective”.[ According to Black, “To me, a song is more than just something to sing. It’s something to learn from. It’s somebody else’s true feeling. I’m always trying to get at the meaning. … When I write a line, I’m doing the same thing. I’m looking at it from the perspective of if I was driving down the road listening to it, what am I gonna get out of it?”

Many of his songs make clever use of puns and other creative turns of phrase. While the wordplay in many of the songs on his earlier albums was widely appreciated, by the fourth album reviewers felt that the songs were not as high in quality. Rick Mitchell of the Houston Chronicle stated his opinion that The Hard Way “clever wordplay is no substitute for heartfelt emotion”.

Film and television

Shortly after his music career took off, he began receiving offers for acting roles. He turned down every request until 1994, when he was offered a bit part in the star-studded comedy film Maverick. Although the part required very little actual acting, after the movie’s release Black received an increasing number of calls from directors who thought he would be perfect for a particular role. Black has appeared in several television shows, including Wings and The Larry Sanders Show. He has since starred in the 1998 television film, Still Holding On: The Legend of Cadillac Jack, based on the rodeo star Jack Favor, who was falsely accused of double murders in Haughton, Louisiana in 1967. Lisa Hartman Black portrayed Ponder I. Favor, Jack’s wife. Black had a major role in another television movie Going Home, and appeared briefly in the 2003 film Anger Management.

He has also had a presence on various reality television shows. In 2003, Black appeared on Nashville Star, where he acted as a mentor to the contestants. Later that year, Clint also appeared on the ABC sitcom Hope & Faith in the episode “Hope and Faith Get Randy”. He later produced the debut album of series winner Buddy Jewell. In 2004, Clint appeared as himself in the TV show Las Vegas. In 2008, Black was a contestant on a short-lived CBS reality show, Secret Talents of the Stars, in which he practiced stand-up comedy. The following year, he competed on the second season of Celebrity Apprentice. He was fired after the eleventh task, placing himself in fifth place, although he returned as a member of Joan Rivers’s victorious team in the season finale.[39] In 2009, Black appeared on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Black has enjoyed his television experiences, describing acting as “another way for me to expand my creative canvas. … I love to challenge myself.” He believes that most of his fans “just see me as a musician who is stepping into [television and film] temporarily and either doing it alright or not”. More recently, he appeared in the movies Flicka 2 in 2010 and Flicka: Country Pride in 2012.

On July 4, 2012, Black appeared on an episode of Lifetime’s reality series, Coming Home, which documents servicemen and women returning to their loved ones in surprise reunions. In the episode, he is featured helping two children write a song about their Army captain father, who is returning from Afghanistan to surprise his family.

On July 24, 2012, Black is surprised by History Detectives on PBS. In the episode, the show pays a visit to his Nashville residence, to uncover the story behind an artifact given to him by his wife decades ago.

In 2020, Black and Lisa appeared on the fourth season of The Masked Singer as Snow Owls, notably competing as the series’ first duet competitors.

Musical styles and legacy

Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, George Strait, and Willie Nelson are Black’s biggest musical influences. His style is traditional country. His voice is described as a smooth baritone and was initially compared to Merle Haggard’s. Black was self-taught on harmonica, guitar and bass at an early age. On his studio albums he plays acoustic and electric guitars as well as harmonica. In concert he plays primarily guitar, but does play drums and harmonica.

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often a*sociated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career.

Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook.

While Fitzgerald appeared in movies and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century, her musical collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots were some of her most notable acts outside of her solo career. These partnerships produced some of her best-known songs such as “Dream a Little Dream of Me”, “Cheek to Cheek”, “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall”, and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”.

In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. Her accolades included fourteen Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Early life

Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia.She was the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Henry. Her parents were unmarried but lived together in the East End section of Newport News for at least two and a half years after she was born. In the early 1920s, Fitzgerald’s mother and her new partner, a Portuguese immigrant named Joseph Da Silva, moved to Yonkers, in Westchester County, New York. Her half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. By 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, a poor Italian area. She began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student, moving through a variety of schools before attending Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1929.

Starting in third grade, Fitzgerald loved dancing and admired Earl Snakehips Tucker. She performed for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. The church provided Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in music.

Fitzgerald listened to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters. She loved the Boswell Sisters’ lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, “My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it…I tried so hard to sound just like her.”

In 1932, when Fitzgerald was fifteen, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Her stepfather took care of her until April 1933 when she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. This seemingly swift change in her circumstances, reinforced by what Fitzgerald biographer Stuart Nicholson describes as rumors of “ill treatment” by her stepfather, leaves him to speculate that Da Silva might have abused her.

Fitzgerald began skipping school, and her grades suffered. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. She never talked publicly about this time in her life. When the authorities caught up with her, she was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale in the Bronx. When the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls, a state reformatory school in Hudson, New York.

Early career

While she seems to have survived during 1933 and 1934 in part from singing on the streets of Harlem, Fitzgerald made her most important debut at age 17 on November 21, 1934, in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater. She had intended to go on stage and dance, but she was intimidated by a local dance duo called the Edwards Sisters and opted to sing instead. Performing in the style of Connee Boswell, she sang “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection” and won first prize. She won the chance to perform at the Apollo for a week but, seemingly because of her disheveled appearance, the theater never gave her that part of her prize.

In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She was introduced to drummer and bandleader Chick Webb, who had asked his recently signed singer Charlie Linton to help find him a female singer. Although Webb was “reluctant to sign her…because she was gawky and unkempt, a ‘diamond in the rough,’” he offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University.

Met with approval by both audiences and her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald was asked to join Webb’s orchestra and gained acclaim as part of the group’s performances at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs, including “Love and Kisses” and “(If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)”. But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”, a song she co-wrote, that brought her public acclaim. “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” became a major hit on the radio and was also one of the biggest-selling records of the decade.

Webb died of spinal tuberculosis on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra with Fitzgerald taking on the role of bandleader. She recorded nearly 150 songs with Webb’s orchestra between 1935 and 1942. In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight.

Decca years

In 1942, with increasing dissent and money concerns in Fitzgerald’s band, Ella and Her Famous Orchestra, she started to work as lead singer with The Three Keys, and in July her band played their last concert at Earl Theatre in Philadelphia. While working for Decca Records, she had hits with Bill Kenny & the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys. Producer Norman Granz became her manager in the mid-1940s after she began singing for Jazz at the Philharmonic, a concert series begun by Granz.

With the demise of the swing era and the decline of the great touring big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald’s vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. It was in this period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, “I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing.”

Her 1945 scat recording of “Flying Home” arranged by Vic Schoen would later be described by The New York Times as “one of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade….Where other singers, most notably Louis Armstrong, had tried similar improvisation, no one before Miss Fitzgerald employed the technique with such dazzling inventiveness.” Her bebop recording of “Oh, Lady Be Good!” (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.

Verve years

Fitzgerald made her first tour of Australia in July 1954 for the Australian-based American promoter Lee Gordon.This was the first of Gordon’s famous “Big Show” promotions and the ‘package’ tour also included Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw and comedian Jerry Colonna.

Although the tour was a big hit with audiences and set a new box office record for Australia, it was marred by an incident of racial discrimination that caused Fitzgerald to miss the first two concerts in Sydney, and Gordon had to arrange two later free concerts to compensate ticket holders. Although the four members of Fitzgerald’s entourage – Fitzgerald, her pianist John Lewis, her a*sistant (and cousin) Georgiana Henry, and manager Norman Granz – all had first-class tickets on their scheduled Pan-American Airlines flight from Honolulu to Australia, they were ordered to leave the aircraft after they had already boarded and were refused permission to re-board the aircraft to retrieve their luggage and clothing. As a result, they were stranded in Honolulu for three days before they could get another flight to Sydney. Although a contemporary Australian press report quoted an Australian Pan-Am spokesperson who denied that the incident was racially based, Fitzgerald, Henry, Lewis and Granz filed a civil suit for racial discrimination against Pan-Am in December 1954 and in a 1970 television interview Fitzgerald confirmed that they had won the suit and received what she described as a “nice settlement”.

Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts by 1955. She left Decca, and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her. She later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, “I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was ‘it’, and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman … felt that I should do other things, so he produced Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book with me. It was a turning point in my life.”

On March 15, 1955, Ella Fitzgerald opened her initial engagement at the Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood, after Marilyn Monroe lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald’s career. Bonnie Greer dramatized the incident as the musical drama, Marilyn and Ella, in 2008. It had previously been widely reported that Fitzgerald was the first black performer to play the Mocambo, following Monroe’s intervention, but this is not true. African-American singers Herb Jeffries, Eartha Kitt, and Joyce Bryant all played the Mocambo in 1952 and 1953, according to stories published at the time in Jet magazine and Billboard.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, released in 1956, was the first of eight Song Book sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the Great American Songbook. Her song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience. The sets are the most well-known items in her discography.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book was the only Song Book on which the composer she interpreted played with her. Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set’s 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: “The E and D Blues” and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald. The Song Book series ended up becoming the singer’s most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. The New York Times wrote in 1996, “These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration.”

Days after Fitzgerald’s death, The New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that in the Song Book series Fitzgerald “performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis’ contemporaneous integration of white and African American soul. Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians.” Frank Sinatra, out of respect for Fitzgerald, prohibited Capitol Records from re-releasing his own recordings in separate albums for individual composers in the same way.[citation needed]

Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devoted to the songs of Porter and Gershwin in 1972 and 1983; the albums being, respectively, Ella Loves Cole and Nice Work If You Can Get It. A later collection devoted to a single composer was released during her time with Pablo Records, Ella Abraça Jobim, featuring the songs of Antônio Carlos Jobim.

While recording the Song Books and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage of Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers. In 1961 Fitzgerald bought a house in the Klampenborg district of Copenhagen, Denmark, after she began a relationship with a Danish man. Though the relationship ended after a year, Fitzgerald regularly returned to Denmark over the next three years and even considered buying a jazz club there. The house was sold in 1963, and Fitzgerald permanently returned to the United States.

There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics. At the Opera House shows a typical Jazz at the Philharmonic set from Fitzgerald. Ella in Rome and Twelve Nights in Hollywood display her vocal jazz canon. Ella in Berlin is still one of her best-selling albums; it includes a Grammy-winning performance of “Mack the Knife” in which she forgets the lyrics but improvises magnificently to compensate.

Verve Records was sold to MGM in 1963 for $3 million and in 1967 MGM failed to renew Fitzgerald’s contract. Over the next five years she flitted between Atlantic, Capitol and Reprise. Her material at this time represented a departure from her typical jazz repertoire. For Capitol she recorded Brighten the Corner, an album of hymns, Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas, an album of traditional Christmas carols, Misty Blue, a country and western-influenced album, and 30 by Ella, a series of six medleys that fulfilled her obligations for the label. During this period, she had her last US chart single with a cover of Smokey Robinson’s “Get Ready”, previously a hit for the Temptations, and some months later a top-five hit for Rare Earth.

The surprise success of the 1972 album Jazz at Santa Monica Civic ’72 led Granz to found Pablo Records, his first record label since the sale of Verve. Fitzgerald recorded some 20 albums for the label. Ella in London recorded live in 1974 with pianist Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Keter Betts and drummer Bobby Durham, was considered by many to be some of her best work. The following year she again performed with Joe Pass on German television station NDR in Hamburg. Her years with Pablo Records also documented the decline in her voice. “She frequently used shorter, stabbing phrases, and her voice was harder, with a wider vibrato”, one biographer wrote. Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993.

Film and television

In her most notable screen role, Fitzgerald played the part of singer Maggie Jackson in Jack Webb’s 1955 jazz film Pete Kelly’s Blues. The film costarred Janet Leigh and singer Peggy Lee. Even though she had already worked in the movies (she had sung briefly in the 1942 Abbott and Costello film Ride ‘Em Cowboy),[46] she was “delighted” when Norman Granz negotiated the role for her, and, “at the time … considered her role in the Warner Brothers movie the biggest thing ever to have happened to her.” Amid The New York Times pan of the film when it opened in August 1955, the reviewer wrote, “About five minutes (out of ninety-five) suggest the picture this might have been. Take the ingenious prologue … [or] take the fleeting scenes when the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald, allotted a few spoken lines, fills the screen and sound track with her strong mobile features and voice.”

After Pete Kelly’s Blues, she appeared in sporadic movie cameos, in St. Louis Blues (1958) and Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960).

She made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on The Frank Sinatra Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and alongside other greats Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé, and many others. She was also frequently featured on The Ed Sullivan Show. Perhaps her most unusual and intriguing performance was of the “Three Little Maids” song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta The Mikado alongside Joan Sutherland and Dinah Shore on Shore’s weekly variety series in 1963. A performance at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London was filmed and shown on the BBC. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Karen Carpenter on the Carpenters’ television program Music, Music, Music.

Fitzgerald also appeared in TV commercials, her most memorable being an ad for Memorex. In the commercials, she sang a note that shattered a glass while being recorded on a Memorex cassette tape. The tape was played back and the recording also broke another glass, asking: “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” She also appeared in a number of commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, singing and scatting to the fast-food chain’s longtime slogan, “We do chicken right!” Her last commercial campaign was for American Express, in which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

Ella Fitzgerald Just One of Those Things is a film about her life including interviews with many famous singers and musicians who worked with her and her son. It was directed by Leslie Woodhead and produced by Reggie Nadelson. It was released in the UK in 2019.

-7 -8 +8 +9 +8 -8 -7 -7 -6 +6
If the su—-n re-fuse to shi-ne,

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5
I don’t mi-n-d, I don’t mi-n-d,

-7 -8 +8+9 +8 -8 -7 -7 -6+6
If the moun-tains fell in the sea,

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5
let it be—– it ain’t me—–

-10 -10 +9 +9 +9 +9 +8
got my own world to look through

-7 -7 +9 +9 +9 +9+9 +8
And I ain’t gonna copy you.

-7 -8 +8 -8 -7 -7 -7 -7 -6 +6
Now if six turned out to be ni–ne

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5
I don’t mi-n-d, I don’t mi-n-d,

-7 -8 -8 +8 +8 -8 -7 -7 -7 -6 +6
If all the hippies cut off all their ha-ir,

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5 +5
I don’t ca-r-e, I don’t ca-r-e.—-Dig,

(SPOKEN)
White collared conservative flashing down the street,
Pointing their plastic finger at me.
They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, high.
Wave on, wave on
Fall mountains, just don’t fall on me
Go ahead on Mr. Business man, you can’t dress like me.

Nobody know what i’m talkin’ about.
i’ve got my own life to live
i’m the one that’s going to have to die
when it’s time for me to die.
So let me live my life,
the way i want to
Yeah.
Sing on Brother, play on drummer

-7 -8 +8 +9 +8 -8 -7 -7 -6 +6
If the su—-n re-fuse to shi-ne,

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5
I don’t mi-n-d, I don’t mi-n-d,

-7 -8 +8+9 +8 -8 -7 -7 -6+6
If the moun-tains fell in the sea,

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5
let it be—– it ain’t me—–

-10 -10 +9 +9 +9 +9 +8
got my own world to look through

-7 -7 +9 +9 +9 +9+9 +8
And I ain’t gonna copy you.

-7 -8 +8 -8 -7 -7 -7 -7 -6 +6
Now if six turned out to be ni–ne

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5
I don’t mi-n-d, I don’t mi-n-d,

-7 -8 -8 +8 +8 -8 -7 -7 -7 -6 +6
If all the hippies cut off all their ha-ir,

-8 -7 -6 +6 +5 -8 -7 -6 +6 +5 +5
I don’t ca-r-e, I don’t ca-r-e.—-Dig,

(SPOKEN)
White collared conservative flashing down the street,
Pointing their plastic finger at me.
They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, high.
Wave on, wave on
Fall mountains, just don’t fall on me
Go ahead on Mr. Business man, you can’t dress like me.

Nobody know what i’m talkin’ about.
i’ve got my own life to live
i’m the one that’s going to have to die
when it’s time for me to die.
So let me live my life,
the way i want to
Yeah.
Sing on Brother, play on drummer