Dogs Who are as Awkward as They are Adorable
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Source:http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Sz5oh/FZfE+g2A:1Ohys4rO/news.distractify.com/megan-mccormick/18-dogs-who-are-as-socially-awkward-as-they-are-adorable/
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Adorable Dogs
Dogs Who are as Awkward as They are Adorable
Source:http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Sz5oh/FZfE+g2A:1Ohys4rO/news.distractify.com/megan-mccormick/18-dogs-who-are-as-socially-awkward-as-they-are-adorable/
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
How To Create Yourself: Rewiring Your Brain
Dec 16, 2013
"Why do you have your beliefs? Who taught them to you and why do you hold it within you? How do you perceive yourself? How do you perceive others? Do you want to learn more about the world you experience and live in? Is there a habit you want to break? Listen to this and get an idea of consciousness. Old knowledge with a new perspective."
Joe Dispenza is the speaker.
"brain frequency create quantum reality"
mind consciousness communication evolution
Joe Dispenza is the speaker.
mind consciousness communication evolution
Link: https://youtu.be/l1NrSvY2lz4
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Manhattan Apartment Bubble Goes Manic
A residential tower at 432 Park Ave., center, in midtown Manhattan. Demand for luxury dwellings is particularly acute in New York, reshaping its skyline to an extent few would have predicted during the real-estate bust. PHOTO: CLAUDIO PAPAPIETRO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Crowded At The Top——Manhattan Apartment Bubble Goes Manic
by Wall Street Journal • May 19, 2015
By ELIOT BROWN And JOSH BARBANEL at The Wall Street Journal
It’s getting crowded at the top of Manhattan’s apartment market.
As condo developers chase billion-dollar paydays through the construction of luxury dwellings, the cranes dotting the city are sparking fears of a supply glut.
Builders are plowing ahead with scores of condominiums priced above $20 million in skinny glass towers throughout Manhattan.
One building, the 66-story tower at 220 Central Park South, is listing more than 60 apartments above $20 million, according to filings made with the New York attorney general’s office. By comparison, in 2008, just 29 new condos sold for $20 million or more across all of Manhattan, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
“There are a finite number of people that will buy these,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel. As for the developers kicking off projects now, “You are going to have haves and have-nots.”
The boom in the upper echelons of residential real estate is touching a handful of cities around the world, including London, Singapore and Dubai, where the global elite are pouring money into top-quality homes. But the demand is particularly acute in New York, reshaping its skyline to an extent few would have predicted during the real-estate bust.
The epicenter is the area surrounding Central Park’s southern tip, where big bets under way include a 1,050-foot tower next to the Museum of Modern Art financed largely by investors from Singapore, the Chetrit Group’s conversion of the upper floors of the former Sony Building on Madison Avenue, and a pencil-thin limestone tower being built by Zeckendorf Development that calls its units “mansions in the sky.”
The buildings, aimed at the world’s wealthiest buyers, are going up even as overall apartment construction lags behind historical norms.
That is skewing Manhattan’s traditional real-estate barometers. The average price of newly developed condos is expected to pass $7.2 million in 2017, up from $4.8 million in 2014 and $1.9 million in 2008, according to New York property-tracking firm CityRealty.
Land, meanwhile, has gotten so pricey that developers buying many new sites must expect to sell units at more than $3,500 a square foot to make a profit, real-estate experts say—three times the break-even level of a few years ago.
There are signs demand for this rarefied product might be nearing its limits. The 1,004-foot green glass tower One57 remained about 25% unsold for much of last year. Its builder, Extell Development Co., lowered its expected total revenue from the building by about 4%, or $100 million, in part because of the slowdown, according to filings made with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in Israel, where Extell has issued $300 million in debt.
With the market hot, pricey condominiums are filling the New York skies. Above, a rendering of a planned building on West 57th Street. ENLARGE
With the market hot, pricey condominiums are filling the New York skies. Above, a rendering of a planned building on West 57th Street.
But for now, times are good for developers. Last week, Vornado Realty Trust Chief Executive Steven Roth told investors his project at 220 Central Park South secured $1.1 billion in sales commitments in just six weeks on the market. With just one-third of the building committed, then, it has already paid for itself, according to calculations based on securities filings.
“We are doing beyond well,” Mr. Roth said.
At One57, Extell founder Gary Barnett said sales have picked up substantially in the past couple months. He declined to discuss specifics but said he hoped to fully sell out the tower by the end of the year.
Already, One57 is one for the record books. The building’s penthouse fetched $100 million in January, the most expensive sale for a single unit ever in New York City. The nearly 11,000-square-foot duplex on the 89th and 90th floors boasts 24-foot-high walls of glass on three sides and sweeping views of Central Park, New Jersey, Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean. It features six bedrooms, six baths, a curved staircase, two powder rooms and access to a pool at a Hyatt hotel in the building, according to offering documents.
All told, Extell expects the 1,004-foot building just south of Central Park to deliver a profit of about $1 billion to Extell and its partners from Abu Dhabi, according to filings.
Mr. Barnett plans an even larger tower just west on 57th Street, termed “billionaires row” given the rash of development. Anchored by a Nordstrom department store at its base, the building is projected to generate $4.4 billion in total sales proceeds, versus estimated construction costs of $2 billion, according to Extell’s filings.
While those costs could easily change, construction of the foundation is under way, and Mr. Barnett said he expects to secure financing in the coming months. The well of buyers is deep, he believes, at least for the best towers.
“Although supply is increasing, demand is increasing, too,” Mr. Barnett said of New York’s luxury market, adding he didn’t expect all projects to do well. “There is sufficient demand for projects that have everything going for them.”
But the precise factors driving demand for superluxury properties aren’t always clear. Developers and brokers attribute the soaring prices to a range of factors including the growing ranks of the superrich, a turn by the globally wealthy toward residential real estate, and low interest rates that have made investors look for higher returns than they can get from bonds. Many apartments go unoccupied, used only as investments.
Details on buyers are scant, since wealthy purchasers typically shield their names. That makes the fundamentals of the market more difficult to understand than the typical drivers of housing demand, like local income or population growth. Specifics on condo pricing also aren’t always easily accessible, making it difficult for developers to gauge their competition. Real-estate markets that lack transparency are prone to overbuilding, because developers don’t know the depth of the pool of buyers or when they will stop buying.
“There’s a problem when no one knows what housing demand really is,” said Charles Nathanson, a finance professor at Northwestern University who has studied real-estate pricing. “Very little information is actually getting into the market—everyone’s just copying each other,” he said. A frequent result: “You get an overshooting” as companies build more than the market can bear.
Even brokers who generally are bullish predict many units are likely to sit vacant despite an economy that could stay strong, given the flood of supply and the finite number of superwealthy individuals.
“Wealth creation has to keep abreast of the apartment creation,” said Leonard Steinberg, president of Compass, a New York-based brokerage. “The bottom line is everyone is going to have to expect that the time to sell will take much longer.”
Source: With Manhattan Luxury Property Hitting Highs, Some Fear Air Is Getting Thin – WSJ
The boom in the upper echelons of residential real estate is touching a handful of cities around the world, including London, Singapore and Dubai, where the global elite are pouring money into top-quality homes. But the demand is particularly acute in New York, reshaping its skyline to an extent few would have predicted during the real-estate bust.
The epicenter is the area surrounding Central Park’s southern tip, where big bets under way include a 1,050-foot tower next to the Museum of Modern Art financed largely by investors from Singapore, the Chetrit Group’s conversion of the upper floors of the former Sony Building on Madison Avenue, and a pencil-thin limestone tower being built by Zeckendorf Development that calls its units “mansions in the sky.”
The buildings, aimed at the world’s wealthiest buyers, are going up even as overall apartment construction lags behind historical norms.
That is skewing Manhattan’s traditional real-estate barometers. The average price of newly developed condos is expected to pass $7.2 million in 2017, up from $4.8 million in 2014 and $1.9 million in 2008, according to New York property-tracking firm CityRealty.
Land, meanwhile, has gotten so pricey that developers buying many new sites must expect to sell units at more than $3,500 a square foot to make a profit, real-estate experts say—three times the break-even level of a few years ago.
There are signs demand for this rarefied product might be nearing its limits. The 1,004-foot green glass tower One57 remained about 25% unsold for much of last year. Its builder, Extell Development Co., lowered its expected total revenue from the building by about 4%, or $100 million, in part because of the slowdown, according to filings made with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in Israel, where Extell has issued $300 million in debt.
With the market hot, pricey condominiums are filling the New York skies. Above, a rendering of a planned building on West 57th Street. ENLARGE
With the market hot, pricey condominiums are filling the New York skies. Above, a rendering of a planned building on West 57th Street.
But for now, times are good for developers. Last week, Vornado Realty Trust Chief Executive Steven Roth told investors his project at 220 Central Park South secured $1.1 billion in sales commitments in just six weeks on the market. With just one-third of the building committed, then, it has already paid for itself, according to calculations based on securities filings.
“We are doing beyond well,” Mr. Roth said.
At One57, Extell founder Gary Barnett said sales have picked up substantially in the past couple months. He declined to discuss specifics but said he hoped to fully sell out the tower by the end of the year.
Already, One57 is one for the record books. The building’s penthouse fetched $100 million in January, the most expensive sale for a single unit ever in New York City. The nearly 11,000-square-foot duplex on the 89th and 90th floors boasts 24-foot-high walls of glass on three sides and sweeping views of Central Park, New Jersey, Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean. It features six bedrooms, six baths, a curved staircase, two powder rooms and access to a pool at a Hyatt hotel in the building, according to offering documents.
All told, Extell expects the 1,004-foot building just south of Central Park to deliver a profit of about $1 billion to Extell and its partners from Abu Dhabi, according to filings.
Mr. Barnett plans an even larger tower just west on 57th Street, termed “billionaires row” given the rash of development. Anchored by a Nordstrom department store at its base, the building is projected to generate $4.4 billion in total sales proceeds, versus estimated construction costs of $2 billion, according to Extell’s filings.
While those costs could easily change, construction of the foundation is under way, and Mr. Barnett said he expects to secure financing in the coming months. The well of buyers is deep, he believes, at least for the best towers.
“Although supply is increasing, demand is increasing, too,” Mr. Barnett said of New York’s luxury market, adding he didn’t expect all projects to do well. “There is sufficient demand for projects that have everything going for them.”
But the precise factors driving demand for superluxury properties aren’t always clear. Developers and brokers attribute the soaring prices to a range of factors including the growing ranks of the superrich, a turn by the globally wealthy toward residential real estate, and low interest rates that have made investors look for higher returns than they can get from bonds. Many apartments go unoccupied, used only as investments.
Details on buyers are scant, since wealthy purchasers typically shield their names. That makes the fundamentals of the market more difficult to understand than the typical drivers of housing demand, like local income or population growth. Specifics on condo pricing also aren’t always easily accessible, making it difficult for developers to gauge their competition. Real-estate markets that lack transparency are prone to overbuilding, because developers don’t know the depth of the pool of buyers or when they will stop buying.
“There’s a problem when no one knows what housing demand really is,” said Charles Nathanson, a finance professor at Northwestern University who has studied real-estate pricing. “Very little information is actually getting into the market—everyone’s just copying each other,” he said. A frequent result: “You get an overshooting” as companies build more than the market can bear.
Even brokers who generally are bullish predict many units are likely to sit vacant despite an economy that could stay strong, given the flood of supply and the finite number of superwealthy individuals.
“Wealth creation has to keep abreast of the apartment creation,” said Leonard Steinberg, president of Compass, a New York-based brokerage. “The bottom line is everyone is going to have to expect that the time to sell will take much longer.”
Source: With Manhattan Luxury Property Hitting Highs, Some Fear Air Is Getting Thin – WSJ
NYC was Fear City
'WELCOME TO FEAR CITY' – THE INSIDE STORY OF NEW YORK'S CIVIL WAR, 40 YEARS ON
Monday 18 May 2015
Travellers arriving at New York City’s airports in June 1975 were greeted with possibly the strangest object ever handed out at the portal to a great city: pamphlets with a hooded death’s head on the cover, warning them, “Until things change, stay away from New York City if you possibly can.”
“Welcome to Fear City” read the stark headline on these pamphlets, which were subtitled “A Survival Guide for Visitors to the City of New York”. Inside was a list of nine “guidelines” that might allow you to get out of the city alive, and with your personal property intact.
The guidelines painted a nightmarish vision of New York; one that made it sound barely a cut above Beirut, which then had just been engulfed in Lebanon’s civil war. Visitors were advised not to venture outside of midtown Manhattan, not to take the subways under any circumstances, and not to walk outside anywhere after six in the evening.
----Tourists must have been baffled, if not horrified. They might have been even more shaken had they known that the men in casual clothes handing them these strange, badly set little pamphlets – with their funereal black borders and another death’s head leering at them inside next to the smirking wish “Good luck” – were members of New York’s police forces.
“A new low in irresponsibility,” fumed New York’s embattled mayor at the time, Abe Beame, who sent the city’s lawyers into court to try to ban distribution of the pamphlet. They failed. Justice Frederick E Hammer agreed that the members of “New York’s Finest” distributing the pamphlet were violating “a public trust” – but ruled that this was a “reasonable dissemination of opinion” under the US constitution, even if it struck at the heart of public confidence.
Near panic ensued. The New York Convention and Visitors Bureau immediately dispatched emissaries armed with slideshow presentations to London, Paris, Frankfurt and Brussels, to “prove” to European travel agents just how attractive the Big Apple still was. Tourism was one of the city’s few remaining industries, still drawing 10.5 million visitors to the city each year, despite reports of massive city budget cuts.
----New York’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s is surely one of the weirdest moments in the history of the city – indeed, of the United States. It was a time when the wholesale disintegration of the largest city in the most powerful nation on earth seemed entirely possible. A time when the American president, Gerald Ford – egged on by his young chief of staff, one Donald Rumsfeld – sought not to succour New York but to deliberately shame and humble it, and perhaps even replace it as the world’s leading financial centre.
----Many of the warnings in the Fear City pamphlet were, of course, ludicrous exaggerations or outright lies. The streets of midtown Manhattan weren’t “nearly deserted” after six in the evening, and they were perfectly safe to walk on. The city hadn’t“had to close off the rear half of each [subway] train in the evening so that the passengers could huddle together and be better protected”.
There were still many safe and secure neighbourhoods outside Manhattan, and there was neither a spate of “spectacular” robberies nor deadly fires in hotels.
----There was a pervasive sense that the social order was breaking down. Most subway trains were filthy, covered in graffiti inside and out. Often only one – and sometimes no – carriage door would open when they pulled into a station, and in summer they were “cooled” only by the methodical sweep of a begrimed metal fan that just pushed the sordid air about. The trains ran late, and were always crowded; their denizens included chain-snatchers, raggedy buskers and countless beggars, including at least two legless individuals, manoeuvring with remarkable agility between the cars on their wheeled boards.
The roads were in no better condition. Public restrooms were almost non-existent; dangerous and dirty when they were available at all. Men could often be seen pissing in the gutter down side-streets. Times Square’s venerable old theatres and spectacular movie palaces were torn down for office buildings or allowed to slowly rot away, showing scratchy prints of cheesy second-run films or pornography, which any casual visitor might have thought was the city’s leading industry.
“Welcome to Fear City” read the stark headline on these pamphlets, which were subtitled “A Survival Guide for Visitors to the City of New York”. Inside was a list of nine “guidelines” that might allow you to get out of the city alive, and with your personal property intact.
The guidelines painted a nightmarish vision of New York; one that made it sound barely a cut above Beirut, which then had just been engulfed in Lebanon’s civil war. Visitors were advised not to venture outside of midtown Manhattan, not to take the subways under any circumstances, and not to walk outside anywhere after six in the evening.
----Tourists must have been baffled, if not horrified. They might have been even more shaken had they known that the men in casual clothes handing them these strange, badly set little pamphlets – with their funereal black borders and another death’s head leering at them inside next to the smirking wish “Good luck” – were members of New York’s police forces.
“A new low in irresponsibility,” fumed New York’s embattled mayor at the time, Abe Beame, who sent the city’s lawyers into court to try to ban distribution of the pamphlet. They failed. Justice Frederick E Hammer agreed that the members of “New York’s Finest” distributing the pamphlet were violating “a public trust” – but ruled that this was a “reasonable dissemination of opinion” under the US constitution, even if it struck at the heart of public confidence.
Near panic ensued. The New York Convention and Visitors Bureau immediately dispatched emissaries armed with slideshow presentations to London, Paris, Frankfurt and Brussels, to “prove” to European travel agents just how attractive the Big Apple still was. Tourism was one of the city’s few remaining industries, still drawing 10.5 million visitors to the city each year, despite reports of massive city budget cuts.
----New York’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s is surely one of the weirdest moments in the history of the city – indeed, of the United States. It was a time when the wholesale disintegration of the largest city in the most powerful nation on earth seemed entirely possible. A time when the American president, Gerald Ford – egged on by his young chief of staff, one Donald Rumsfeld – sought not to succour New York but to deliberately shame and humble it, and perhaps even replace it as the world’s leading financial centre.
----Many of the warnings in the Fear City pamphlet were, of course, ludicrous exaggerations or outright lies. The streets of midtown Manhattan weren’t “nearly deserted” after six in the evening, and they were perfectly safe to walk on. The city hadn’t“had to close off the rear half of each [subway] train in the evening so that the passengers could huddle together and be better protected”.
There were still many safe and secure neighbourhoods outside Manhattan, and there was neither a spate of “spectacular” robberies nor deadly fires in hotels.
----There was a pervasive sense that the social order was breaking down. Most subway trains were filthy, covered in graffiti inside and out. Often only one – and sometimes no – carriage door would open when they pulled into a station, and in summer they were “cooled” only by the methodical sweep of a begrimed metal fan that just pushed the sordid air about. The trains ran late, and were always crowded; their denizens included chain-snatchers, raggedy buskers and countless beggars, including at least two legless individuals, manoeuvring with remarkable agility between the cars on their wheeled boards.
The roads were in no better condition. Public restrooms were almost non-existent; dangerous and dirty when they were available at all. Men could often be seen pissing in the gutter down side-streets. Times Square’s venerable old theatres and spectacular movie palaces were torn down for office buildings or allowed to slowly rot away, showing scratchy prints of cheesy second-run films or pornography, which any casual visitor might have thought was the city’s leading industry.
More
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/18/welcome-to-fear-city-the-inside-story-of-new-yorks-civil-war-40-years-on
WEST SIDE ELEVATED HIGHWAY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Elevated_Highway
Monday, May 18, 2015
Berta, Berta
Uploaded on Jun 2, 2009
No one has a monopoly on being oppressed. This video shows African Americans and Chinese immigrant railroad workers. This video gives just a hint, the aroma of the deep oppression by dominant culture in America.
Negro Prison Songs / "Rosie"1947 [RARE]
Uploaded on Aug 8, 2008
..recorded at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman in 1947..
..taken from italian version'wax L.P. from 1977 ALBATROS Records..
..taken from italian version'wax L.P. from 1977 ALBATROS Records..
Sunday, May 17, 2015
1959 The Year that Changed Jazz
Published on May 29, 2012
1959 was the seismic year jazz broke away from complex bebop music to new forms, allowing soloists unprecedented freedom to explore and express. It was also a pivotal year for America: the nation was finding its groove, enjoying undreamt-of freedom and wealth social, racial and upheavals were just around the corner and jazz was ahead of the curve.
Four major jazz albums were made, each a high watermark for the artists and a powerful reflection of the times. Each opened up dramatic new possibilities for jazz which continue to be felt Miles Davis Kind of Blue Dave Brubeck, Time Out Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um; and Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come.
Rarely seen archive performances help vibrantly bring the era to life and explore what made these albums vital both in 1959 and the 50 years since. The programme contains interviews with Lou Reed, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Joe Morello (Brubecks drummer) and Jimmy Cobb (the only surviving member of Miles band) along with a host of jazz movers and shakers from the 50s and beyond.
Four major jazz albums were made, each a high watermark for the artists and a powerful reflection of the times. Each opened up dramatic new possibilities for jazz which continue to be felt Miles Davis Kind of Blue Dave Brubeck, Time Out Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um; and Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come.
Rarely seen archive performances help vibrantly bring the era to life and explore what made these albums vital both in 1959 and the 50 years since. The programme contains interviews with Lou Reed, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Joe Morello (Brubecks drummer) and Jimmy Cobb (the only surviving member of Miles band) along with a host of jazz movers and shakers from the 50s and beyond.
B. B. King Dies
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MUSIC
B. B. King, Defining Bluesman for Generations, Dies at 89
By TIM WEINER MAY 15, 2015
Credit ABC Records
John Fudenberg, the coroner of Clark County, Nev., said the cause was a series of small strokes attributable to Type 2 diabetes, The Associated Press reported. Mr. King, who was in hospice care, had been in poor health but had continued to perform until October, when he canceled a tour, citing dehydration and exhaustion stemming from the diabetes.B. B. King, whose world-weary voice and wailing guitar lifted him from the cotton fields of Mississippi to a global stage and the apex of American blues, died on Thursday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 89.
Mr. King married country blues to big-city rhythms and created a sound instantly recognizable to millions: a stinging guitar with a shimmering vibrato, notes that coiled and leapt like an animal, and a voice that groaned and bent with the weight of lust, longing and lost love.
“I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions,” Mr. King said in his autobiography, “Blues All Around Me” (1996), written with David Ritz.
In performances, his singing and his solos flowed into each other as he wrung notes from the neck of his guitar, vibrating his hand as if it were wounded, his face a mask of suffering. Many of the songs he sang — like his biggest hit, “The Thrill Is Gone” (“I’ll still live on/But so lonely I’ll be”) — were poems of pain and perseverance.
The music historian Peter Guralnick once noted that Mr. King helped expand the audience for the blues through “the urbanity of his playing, the absorption of a multiplicity of influences, not simply from the blues, along with a graciousness of manner and willingness to adapt to new audiences and give them something they were able to respond to.”
B. B. stood for Blues Boy, a name he took with his first taste of fame in the 1940s. His peers were bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, whose nicknames fit their hard-bitten lives. But he was born a King, albeit in a shack surrounded by dirt-poor sharecroppers and wealthy landowners.
Mr. King went out on the road and never came back after one of his first recordings reached the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1951. He began in juke joints, country dance halls and ghetto nightclubs, playing 342 one-night stands in 1956 and 200 to 300 shows a year for a half-century thereafter, rising to concert halls, casino main stages and international acclaim.
He was embraced by rock ’n’ roll fans of the 1960s and ’70s, who remained loyal as they grew older together. His playing influenced many of the most successful rock guitarists of the era, including Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.
B.B. King, Bluesman of Distinction
Jon Pareles reflects on the rawness and finesse of B.B. King, whose musical style made him approachable to audiences and propelled him to fame. By Natalia V. Osipova on Publish DateMay 15, 2015. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
Mr. King considered a 1968 performance at the Fillmore West, the San Francisco rock palace, to have been the moment of his commercial breakthrough, he told a public-television interviewer in 2003. A few years earlier, he recalled, an M.C. in an elegant Chicago club had introduced him thus: “O.K., folks, time to pull out your chitlin’s and your collard greens, your pigs’ feet and your watermelons, because here is B. B. King.” It had infuriated him.
When he saw “longhaired white people” lining up outside the Fillmore, he said, he told his road manager, “I think they booked us in the wrong place.” Then the promoter Bill Graham introduced him to the sold-out crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the chairman of the board, B. B. King.”
“Everybody stood up, and I cried,” Mr. King said. “That was the beginning of it.”
By his 80th birthday he was a millionaire many times over. He owned a mansion in Las Vegas, a closet full of embroidered tuxedos and smoking jackets, a chain of nightclubs bearing his name (including a popular room on West 42nd Street in Manhattan) and the personal and professional satisfaction of having endured.
Through it all he remained with the great love of his life, his guitar. He told the tale a thousand times: He was playing a dance hall in Twist, Ark., in the early 1950s when two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove. Mr. King fled the fire — and then remembered his $30 guitar. He ran into the burning building to rescue it.
He learned thereafter that the fight had been about a woman named Lucille. For the rest of his life, Mr. King addressed his guitars — big Gibsons, curved like a woman’s hips — as Lucille.
He married twice, unsuccessfully, and was legally single from 1966 onward; by his own account he fathered 15 children with 15 women. But a Lucille was always at his side.
Riley B. King (the middle initial apparently did not stand for anything) was born on Sept. 16, 1925, to Albert and Nora Ella King, sharecroppers in Berclair, Miss., a hamlet outside the small town of Itta Bena in the Mississippi Delta. His memories of the Depression included the sound of sanctified gospel music, the scratch of 78 r.p.m. blues records, the sweat of dawn-to-dusk work and the sight of a black man lynched by a white mob.
By early 1940 Mr. King’s mother was dead and his father was gone. He was 14 and on his own, “sharecropping an acre of cotton, living on a borrowed allowance of $2.50 a month,” wrote Dick Waterman, a blues scholar. “When the crop was harvested, Riley ended his first year of independence owing his landlord $7.54.”
In November 1941 came a revelation: “King Biscuit Time” went on the air, broadcasting on KFFA, a radio station in Helena, Ark. It was the first radio show to feature the Mississippi Delta blues, and young Riley King heard it on his lunch break at the plantation. A largely self-taught guitarist, he now knew what he wanted to be when he grew up: a musician on the air.
The King Biscuit show featured Rice Miller, a primeval bluesman and one of two performers who worked under the name Sonny Boy Williamson. After serving in the Army and marrying his first wife, Martha Denton, Mr. King, then 22, went to seek him out in Memphis, looking for work. Memphis and its musical hub, Beale Street, lay 130 miles north of his birthplace, and it looked like a world capital to him.
Mr. Miller had two performances booked that night, one in Memphis and one in Mississippi. He handed the lower-paying nightclub job to Mr. King. It paid $12.50.
Mr. King was making about $5 a day on the plantation. He never returned to his tractor.
He was a hit, and quickly became a popular disc jockey playing the blues on a Memphis radio station, WDIA. “Before Memphis,” he wrote in his autobiography, “I never even owned a record player. Now I was sitting in a room with a thousand records and the ability to play them whenever I wanted. I was the kid in the candy store, able to eat it all. I gorged myself.”
Memphis had heard five decades of the blues: country sounds from the Delta, barrelhouse boogie-woogie, jumps and shuffles and gospel shouts. Mr. King made it all his own. From records he absorbed the big-band sounds of Count Basie, the rollicking jump blues of Louis Jordan, the electric-guitar styles of the jazzman Charlie Christian and the bluesman T-Bone Walker.
On the air in Memphis, Mr. King was nicknamed the Beale Street Blues Boy. That became Blues Boy, which became B. B. In December 1951, two years after arriving in Memphis, Mr. King released a single, “Three O’Clock Blues,” which reached No. 1 on the rhythm-and-blues charts and stayed there for 15 weeks.
He began a tour of the biggest stages a bluesman could play: the Apollo Theater in Harlem, the Howard Theater in Washington, the Royal Theater in Baltimore. By the time his wife divorced him after eight years, he was playing 275 one-night stands a year on the so-called chitlin’ circuit.
There were hard times when the blues fell out of fashion with young black audiences in the early 1960s. Mr. King never forgot being booed at the Royal by teenagers who cheered the sweeter sounds of Sam Cooke.
“They didn’t know about the blues,” he said 40 years after the fact. “They had been taught that the blues was the bottom of the totem pole, done by slaves, and they didn’t want to think along those lines.”
Mr. King’s second marriage, to Sue Hall, also lasted eight years, ending in divorce in 1966. He responded in 1969 with his best-known recording, “The Thrill Is Gone,” a minor-key blues about having loved and lost. It was originally recorded in 1951 by Roy Hawkins, one of its writers, but Mr. King made it his own.
Mr. King is survived by 11 children. Three of them had recently petitioned to take over his affairs, asserting that Mr. King’s manager, Laverne Toney, was taking advantage of him. A Las Vegas judge rejected their petition this month.
The success of “The Thrill Is Gone” coincided with a surge in the popularity of the blues with a young white audience. Mr. King began playing folk festivals and college auditoriums, rock shows and resort clubs, and appearing on “The Tonight Show.”
Though he never had another hit that big, he had more than four decades of the road before him. He eventually played the world — Russia and China as well as Europe and Japan. His schedule around his 81st birthday, in September 2006, included nine cities over two weeks in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg.
In addition to winning 15 Grammy Awards (including a lifetime achievement award), having a star on Hollywood Boulevard and being inducted in both the Rock and Roll and Blues Halls of Fame, Mr. King was among the recipients of Kennedy Center Honors in 1995 and was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006, awards rarely associated with the blues. In 1999, in a public conversation with William Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mr. King recounted how he came to sing the blues.
“Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon,” he said. “I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I’d sing and play.
“I’d have me a hat or box or something in front of me. People that would request a gospel song would always be very polite to me, and they’d say: ‘Son, you’re mighty good. Keep it up. You’re going to be great one day.’ But they never put anything in the hat.
“But people that would ask me to sing a blues song would always tip me and maybe give me a beer. They always would do something of that kind. Sometimes I’d make 50 or 60 dollars one Saturday afternoon. Now you know why I’m a blues singer.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: B. B. King, Who Rode Blues to Global Fame, Dies at 89.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/arts/music/b-b-king-blues-singer-dies-at-89.html?emc=edit_th_20150516&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59725256
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Reverend Gary Davis Bluesman
Today's selection -- from Say No to the Devil by Ian Zack. Though Ledbelly,
Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and others became more renowned, many consider early twentieth century bluesman Rev. Gary Davis (1896-1972) to be the most talented of them all. Bob Dylan called him "one of the wizards of modern music," and he was revered by such luminaries as the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and the Jefferson Airplane's Jorma Kaukonen. Blinded shortly after birth by negligent medical care and emotionally abandoned by his mother, Davis's music had a power beyond most of his contemporaries readily evident in such songs as "Death Don't Have No Mercy in this Land" and "You've Got to Go Down":
"Gary Davis's mother, the former Evelina Martin, was seventeen when she gave birth, and she would go on to have a total of eight children, most likely by multiple fathers. But with proper medical care for blacks practically nonexistent, six of her children died as infants; only Gary and a younger brother -- probably a half-brother, named Buddy Pinson -- survived, and Buddy would die in 1930 at age twenty-five, stabbed to death by a girlfriend with a butcher's knife. That would leave Gary as the sole survivor of Evelina Davis's large brood.
"The event that would define Davis's life -- the loss of his sight -- occurred soon after birth. 'I'd taken sore eyes when I was three weeks old,' he recalled in one version of the story. 'They [took] me to a doctor and the doctor put some alum and sweet milk in my eyes and they caused ulcers in my eyes. That's what caused me to go blind.' In his later application to attend a school for the blind, Davis's mother would tell a similar story, blaming his blindness on 'medicines of doctor who made a mistake.'
"A doctor who examined him as an adult would conclude that Davis had suffered both infant glaucoma and ulceration of the cornea, a condition that can result from neonatal conjunctivitis contracted from a mother with gonorrhea and also can afflict children with a severe Vitamin A deficiency. As to what led to Davis's blindness, a family friend named Tiny Robinson gave a different explanation: she said Davis's mother blinded him by trying to treat his eye infection with lye soap, an old folk remedy. Davis's second wife, Annie, corroborated the story about the doctor as Davis himself told it. Both accounts seem plausible, but the common denominator was the absence of even rudimentary medical care. Davis said the doctor told his family that he 'might overcome it' as he aged, but he never regained his sight. ...
"Davis's parents weren't well suited to raising children, and Davis's maternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Annie Spencer, quickly assumed responsibility for young sightless Gary. Davis's mother 'was once upon a time a rough woman' -- a southern euphemism for being sexually loose -- who was always 'twistin' about from one place to another,' Davis remembered, and 'didn't care to be bothered with no children.' His father was 'in trouble all the time.' John Davis eventually left South Carolina and was shot to death around 1906 by the sheriff in Birmingham, Alabama, apparently after slitting a lover's throat and telling the authorities, 'Come and get me.'
"Evelina Davis not only gave up primary responsibility for raising her son to her mother -- she outright rejected Gary emotionally, although she remained in his life. The abandonment had a profound effect on him. As Davis later recalled:
"It's surely no coincidence that the themes of death, abandonment, the lost child in the wilderness, and a reunion with his mother ran through Davis's gospel message and music. Indeed, gospel as an art form grew out of the misery and deprivation of the southern black experience, and those themes are common in the music as a whole. In Davis's case, it's easy to see why. Perhaps his most famous song, 'Death Don't Have No Mercy,' though based on traditional spirituals, has a strong autobiographical element for the only surviving child of eight, with its signature lament, 'death don't have no mercy in this land.'
"Davis would often sing about seeing his mother in heaven, when, presumably, all would be forgiven under God's grace. But his anger would also remain palpable. In 'Lord, I Wish I Could See,' he would address his mother's rejection in searingly poetic detail, singing: 'Nobody cares for me, because I'm away in the dark and I cannot see.' "
"Gary Davis's mother, the former Evelina Martin, was seventeen when she gave birth, and she would go on to have a total of eight children, most likely by multiple fathers. But with proper medical care for blacks practically nonexistent, six of her children died as infants; only Gary and a younger brother -- probably a half-brother, named Buddy Pinson -- survived, and Buddy would die in 1930 at age twenty-five, stabbed to death by a girlfriend with a butcher's knife. That would leave Gary as the sole survivor of Evelina Davis's large brood.
"The event that would define Davis's life -- the loss of his sight -- occurred soon after birth. 'I'd taken sore eyes when I was three weeks old,' he recalled in one version of the story. 'They [took] me to a doctor and the doctor put some alum and sweet milk in my eyes and they caused ulcers in my eyes. That's what caused me to go blind.' In his later application to attend a school for the blind, Davis's mother would tell a similar story, blaming his blindness on 'medicines of doctor who made a mistake.'
"A doctor who examined him as an adult would conclude that Davis had suffered both infant glaucoma and ulceration of the cornea, a condition that can result from neonatal conjunctivitis contracted from a mother with gonorrhea and also can afflict children with a severe Vitamin A deficiency. As to what led to Davis's blindness, a family friend named Tiny Robinson gave a different explanation: she said Davis's mother blinded him by trying to treat his eye infection with lye soap, an old folk remedy. Davis's second wife, Annie, corroborated the story about the doctor as Davis himself told it. Both accounts seem plausible, but the common denominator was the absence of even rudimentary medical care. Davis said the doctor told his family that he 'might overcome it' as he aged, but he never regained his sight. ..."Davis's parents weren't well suited to raising children, and Davis's maternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Annie Spencer, quickly assumed responsibility for young sightless Gary. Davis's mother 'was once upon a time a rough woman' -- a southern euphemism for being sexually loose -- who was always 'twistin' about from one place to another,' Davis remembered, and 'didn't care to be bothered with no children.' His father was 'in trouble all the time.' John Davis eventually left South Carolina and was shot to death around 1906 by the sheriff in Birmingham, Alabama, apparently after slitting a lover's throat and telling the authorities, 'Come and get me.'
"Evelina Davis not only gave up primary responsibility for raising her son to her mother -- she outright rejected Gary emotionally, although she remained in his life. The abandonment had a profound effect on him. As Davis later recalled:
I felt horrible about it 'cause I felt like I was throwed away. In fact, my mother never had cared as much about me as she did my younger brother .... He was her heart .... Because of the way she talkin' to me, she'd wish that I were dead. She tell me that a heap of times.
"It's surely no coincidence that the themes of death, abandonment, the lost child in the wilderness, and a reunion with his mother ran through Davis's gospel message and music. Indeed, gospel as an art form grew out of the misery and deprivation of the southern black experience, and those themes are common in the music as a whole. In Davis's case, it's easy to see why. Perhaps his most famous song, 'Death Don't Have No Mercy,' though based on traditional spirituals, has a strong autobiographical element for the only surviving child of eight, with its signature lament, 'death don't have no mercy in this land.'
"Davis would often sing about seeing his mother in heaven, when, presumably, all would be forgiven under God's grace. But his anger would also remain palpable. In 'Lord, I Wish I Could See,' he would address his mother's rejection in searingly poetic detail, singing: 'Nobody cares for me, because I'm away in the dark and I cannot see.' "
Say No to the Devil: The Life and Musical Genius of Rev. Gary Davis
Author: Ian Zack
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Copyright 2015 by Ian Zack
8-10
Source: http://www.delanceyplace.com/
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Harry Crews: The Rough Cut Of Harry Crews
Published on Feb 18, 2015
For all those Harry Crews fans out there that have been waiting years for this one. Here it is in full. Bless you all and enjoy.
Category
Film & Animation
License
Standard YouTube License
Source: https://youtu.be/xGhQlppUdOA
Friday, May 8, 2015
Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue (Original Jazz Band Version)
Uploaded on Feb 4, 2012
Rhapsody in Blue premiered in an afternoon concert on February 12, 1924, held by Paul Whiteman and his band Palais Royal Orchestra, entitled An Experiment in Modern Music, which took place in Aeolian Hall in New York City. The version that was heard then was for a 24-piece jazz band, not for full orchestra. This was the original arrangement of Gershwin's masterpiece.
Gershwin had agreed that Ferde Grofé, Whiteman's pianist and chief arranger, was the key figure in enabling the piece to be successful, and critics have praised the orchestral colour. Grofé confirmed in 1938 that Gershwin did not have sufficient knowledge of orchestration in 1924. After the premiere, Grofé took the score and made new orchestrations in 1926 and 1942, each time for larger orchestras. Up until 1976, when Michael Tilson Thomas recorded the original jazz band version for the very first time, the 1942 version was the arrangement usually performed and recorded.
The 1924 orchestration for Whiteman's band of 24 musicians (plus violins) calls for the following orchestra: woodwinds (5 players): flute, oboe, clarinet in E-flat, clarinet in B-flat, alto clarinet in E-flat, bass clarinet in B-flat, heckelphone, sopranino saxophone in E-flat, soprano saxophone in B-flat, alto saxophone in E-flat, tenor saxophone in B-flat, baritone saxophone in E-flat; brass: 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 flugelhorns, euphonium, 3 trombones, tuba; percussion: drums, timpani, trap set; keyboards: 2 pianos, celesta, accordion; strings: banjo, violins and string basses. Many musicians, especially the reeds, played two or more instruments; the reed "doublings" were especially calculated to take advantage of the full panoply of instruments available in that section of Whiteman's band. Indeed, Grofé's familiarity with the Whiteman band's strengths are a key factor in the scoring. This original version, with its unique instrumental requirements, had lain dormant until its revival in reconstructions beginning in the mid-1980s, owing to the popularity and serviceability of the later scorings.
This performance is by members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, with the conducting and piano soloist: Andrew Litton
Gershwin had agreed that Ferde Grofé, Whiteman's pianist and chief arranger, was the key figure in enabling the piece to be successful, and critics have praised the orchestral colour. Grofé confirmed in 1938 that Gershwin did not have sufficient knowledge of orchestration in 1924. After the premiere, Grofé took the score and made new orchestrations in 1926 and 1942, each time for larger orchestras. Up until 1976, when Michael Tilson Thomas recorded the original jazz band version for the very first time, the 1942 version was the arrangement usually performed and recorded.
The 1924 orchestration for Whiteman's band of 24 musicians (plus violins) calls for the following orchestra: woodwinds (5 players): flute, oboe, clarinet in E-flat, clarinet in B-flat, alto clarinet in E-flat, bass clarinet in B-flat, heckelphone, sopranino saxophone in E-flat, soprano saxophone in B-flat, alto saxophone in E-flat, tenor saxophone in B-flat, baritone saxophone in E-flat; brass: 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 flugelhorns, euphonium, 3 trombones, tuba; percussion: drums, timpani, trap set; keyboards: 2 pianos, celesta, accordion; strings: banjo, violins and string basses. Many musicians, especially the reeds, played two or more instruments; the reed "doublings" were especially calculated to take advantage of the full panoply of instruments available in that section of Whiteman's band. Indeed, Grofé's familiarity with the Whiteman band's strengths are a key factor in the scoring. This original version, with its unique instrumental requirements, had lain dormant until its revival in reconstructions beginning in the mid-1980s, owing to the popularity and serviceability of the later scorings.
This performance is by members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, with the conducting and piano soloist: Andrew Litton
Joe DiMaggio Bio talks about Marilyn Munri
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