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cantsayidont · 4 months

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August 1985. The original WHO'S WHO entry for Doctor Fate gives an okay rundown of how things stood at the time of the Crisis, with a few minor caveats. Here's the history text:

BACKGROUND Archaeologist Sven Nelson and his son, Kent, then a boy, were exploring an ancient temple in the Valley of Ur in Mesopotamia. Kent found the entombed body of the giant ancient wizard Nabu the Wise, who was in suspended animation. Nabu was actually a being composed of pure energy who had originated a half million years ago on the planet Cilea [sic] and had taken human form. He was revived by a gas that killed Sven Nelson. Over the following years, Nabu trained Kent in sorcery. Finally, when Kent reached adulthood, Nabu presented him with a helmet, a cape, and an amulet and, naming him Doctor Fate, sent him back to the outside world to battle evil. On his way to America, Doctor Fate first met Inza Cramer, who eventually became his wife. There, Doctor Fate became a founding member of the Justice Society of America (see JSA).

Although Doctor Fate first appeared in MORE FUN COMICS #55, he didn't have any kind of origin for the first year — in fact, until MORE FUN #66, which was the first time he was seen without his helmet, he often intimated that he had no human identity! The above account comes mostly from MORE FUN COMICS #67, which also gave him a name: Kent Nelson. The planet from which Nabu said he'd originally come was spelled Cilia; "Cilea" appears to be a typo.

Nelson came to realize that when he donned his helmet, his personality was being increasingly supplanted by that of Nabu, who was a mystical "Lord of Order." Hence, Nelson put the helmet aside, thereby greatly reducing his powers, and instead wore a different helmet that did not conceal his entire face as the original had. Doctor Fate thereafter joined the All-Star Squadron (see All-Star Squadron), and months later, his original helmet was stolen by the sorcerer Kulak and hurled with him through "an infinity of dimensions."

The idea that Nabu possessed Kent Nelson wasn't indicated in the Golden Age stories; it was first suggested in Marty Pasko's 1975 Dr. Fate solo adventure in 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL #9. Using this to explain why Kent adopted the half-helmet in MORE FUN COMICS #72 in early 1942 (which didn't originally have any in-story explanation) was a Roy Thomas thing — the stuff with Kulak happened in ALL-STAR SQUADRON #27–28 in 1983.

Years passed, and Nelson married Inza. His own magic powers and temporal energy absorbed from the villainous Ian Karkull kept Nelson physically in his twenties. The magic kept Inza physically in her twenties as well.

Ian Karkull was a Golden Age Dr. Fate villain, seen in MORE FUN #69, but the "temporal energy" absorption refers to ALL-STAR SQUADRON ANNUAL #3 in 1984, a cumbersome Roy Thomas contrivance to help explain why even the non-super JSAers were still unusually spry in the '80s, when most of them were pushing 70.

Under circumstances yet to be revealed, however, Doctor Fate regained his original helmet and began wearing it whenever he went on a mission. Now, whenever Nelson puts the helmet on, his psyche is entirely replaced by that of the Lord of Order, Nabu, although the latter retains Nelson's memories. Doctor Fate continues to be an active member of the Justice Society of America.

The eventual consensus was that Doctor Fate reclaimed his original helmet sometime after his last Golden Age appearances in 1944, but before the end of WW2. In any event, he had it back by the time of his first Silver Age appearance in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #21, 19 years later. Dr. Fate remained a JSA member until the others were sent to limbo in the LAST DAYS OF THE JUSTICE SOCIETY SPECIAL, after the Crisis, and then joined the new Justice League.

POWERS & WEAPONS When wearing his original helmet, Doctor Fate is one of the most powerful of all known sorcerers, capable of virtually any kind of magical feat. However, his power is still dwarfed by that of the virtually omnipotent Spectre (see Spectre). When he is not wearing Nabu's helmet, Doctor Fate cannot cast spells. However, thanks to his training by Nabu, Doctor Fate can still fly and levitate objects. Nabu also made him superhumanly strong and nearly invulnerable even without the helmet, although Doctor Fate still needs to breathe.

Saying Kent Nelson couldn't cast spells without the Helm of Nabu isn't exactly correct, as he managed it on a number of occasions in Bronze Age stories. Also, his levitation and invulnerability were magic spells, based on molecular control; it's just that his personal abilities were much more narrowly focused than a magician like Zatanna.

#comics #who's who in the dc universe #who's who: the definitive directory of the dc universe #keith giffen #larry mahlstedt #gardner fox #roy thomas #doctor fate #dr fate #kent nelson #inza nelson #inza cramer #nabu the wise #ian karkull #martin pasko

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brookstonalmanac · 6 days

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Events 4.25 (after 1940)

1944 – The United Negro College Fund is incorporated. 1945 – World War II: United States and Soviet reconnaissance troops meet in Torgau and Strehla along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two. This would be later known as Elbe Day. 1945 – World War II: Liberation Day (Italy): The National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy calls for a general uprising against the German occupation and the Italian Social Republic. 1945 – United Nations Conference on International Organization: Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco. 1945 – World War II: The last German troops retreat from Finnish soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War. Military actions of the Second World War end in Finland. 1951 – Korean War: Assaulting Chinese forces are forced to withdraw after heavy fighting with UN forces, primarily made up of Australian and Canadian troops, at the Battle of Kapyong. 1953 – Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" describing the double helix structure of DNA. 1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories. 1959 – The Saint Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping. 1960 – The United States Navy submarine USS Triton completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. 1961 – Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit. 1972 – Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive: The North Vietnamese 320th Division forces 5,000 South Vietnamese troops to retreat and traps about 2,500 others northwest of Kontum. 1974 – Carnation Revolution: A leftist military coup in Portugal overthrows the authoritarian-conservative Estado Novo regime and establishes a democratic government. 1980 – One hundred forty-six people are killed when Dan-Air Flight 1008 crashes near Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, Canary Islands. 1981 – More than 100 workers are exposed to radiation during repairs of at the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. 1982 – Israel completes its withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula per the Camp David Accords. 1983 – Cold War: American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war. 1983 – Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit. 1990 – Violeta Chamorro takes office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman to hold the position. 2001 – President George W. Bush pledges U.S. military support in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. 2004 – The March for Women's Lives brings between 500,000 and 800,000 protesters, mostly pro-choice, to Washington D.C. to protest the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, and other restrictions on abortion. 2005 – The final piece of the Obelisk of Axum is returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937. 2005 – A seven-car commuter train derails and crashes into an apartment building near Amagasaki Station in Japan, killing 107, including the driver. 2005 – Bulgaria and Romania sign the Treaty of Accession 2005 to join the European Union. 2007 – Boris Yeltsin's funeral: The first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894. 2014 – The Flint water crisis begins when officials at Flint, Michigan switch the city's water supply to the Flint River, leading to lead and bacteria contamination. 2015 – Nearly 9,100 are killed after a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Nepal.

#Events

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1962dude420-blog · 3 years

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Today we remember the passing of Chris Wood who Died: July 12, 1983 in Birmingham, United Kingdom

Christopher Gordon Blandford Wood (24 June 1944 – 12 July 1983) was a British rock musician, most known as a founding member of the British rock band Traffic, along with Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, and Dave Mason.

Born in Quinton, a suburb of Birmingham, Chris Wood had an interest in music and painting from early childhood. Self-taught on flute and saxophone, which he began playing at the age of 15, he began to play locally with other Birmingham musicians who would later find international fame in music: Christine Perfect (later Christine McVie), Carl Palmer, Stan Webb, and Mike Kellie. Wood played with Perfect in 1964 in the band Shades of Blue and with Kellie during 1965–1966 in the band Locomotive.

He attended the Stourbridge College of Art, then the Birmingham School of Art (Painting Dept.) and subsequently was awarded a grant to attend the Royal Academy of Art starting in December 1965.

Aged 18, Wood joined the Steve Hadley Quartet, a jazz/blues group in 1962. His younger sister Stephanie designed clothes for the Spencer Davis Group, based in Birmingham, and it was through her that Wood was first introduced to fellow Birmingham native Steve Winwood. A well-known Birmingham club, the Elbow Room, was an after-hours haunt of local bands and musicians and it was here that Wood used to meet up with Winwood and Jim Capaldi. At the age of 18, Winwood abandoned the Spencer Davis Group at the height of their popularity and, along with Wood, Capaldi, and Dave Mason, formed Traffic.

To focus his fledgling band, Island Records' founder Chris Blackwell arranged for the four to retreat to an isolated farmhouse on the Berkshire Downs near Aston Tirrold. Initially without electricity, telephone or running water, The Cottage (as it became universally known) was so remote that a generator had to be installed to power the group's equipment. A concrete outdoor stage was built with the band's stage equipment set up to overlook the surrounding fields. After six months honing their music, Traffic released their first single, "Paper Sun".

In Traffic, Wood primarily played flute and saxophone, occasionally contributing keyboards, bass and vocals. Wood also co-wrote several of Traffic's songs, particularly during the earlier period of the band's recording career. His most notable contribution is as the co-writer (with Winwood and Capaldi), of "Dear Mr. Fantasy".

Wood introduced the 17th century traditional song "John Barleycorn" to the band after hearing it on The Watersons album Frost and Fire. It became the title song of their 1970 album, "John Barleycorn Must Die."

Wood played with Jimi Hendrix in 1968, appearing on Electric Ladyland. When Winwood temporarily formed supergroup Blind Faith in 1969, Wood, Mason and Capaldi joined Mick Weaver otherwise known as Wynder K Frog, to become Mason, Capaldi, Wood and Frog. He then went on to tour the United States with Dr. John, where he met singer Jeanette Jacobs (formerly of the 1960s girl group The Cake). Wood and Jacobs married in November 1972, at Kensington Registry Office, when he was 28 and she was 22.

In 1969, Wood also appeared on the eponymous second album of Free and the Small Faces' The Autumn Stone. In 1970, Wood and his wife, along with Steve Winwood, joined Ginger Baker's Air Force, releasing one album before reforming Traffic. Wood remained with Traffic from the time of its 1970 reformation until its 1974 breakup. He played on John Martyn's Inside Out (1973). Throughout Traffic's life, Chris was also in demand as a session musician with his immediately identifiable flute or saxophone playing cropping up on albums by Rebop Kwaku Baah, Tyrone Downie, Fat Mattress, Gordon Jackson, Crawler, The Sky, Bobby Whitlock and others.

Through much of his life, Wood suffered from addiction to drugs and alcohol, which were initially attributed to a fear of flying. His wife was unfaithful while he was on tour, leading to an increased drinking, culminating in liver disease. He cut down on drinking, but his medication caused further complications. His wife Jeanette, from whom he had separated, died in 1982, at the age of 31, from the effects of a seizure. Wood was profoundly affected by her death.

The death of two close friends, Free's Paul Kossoff and former bandmate Rebop Kwaku Baah followed by that of his (by then, estranged) wife lay very heavy on Wood.

In 1983, Wood died of pneumonia at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England.

At the time, he was working on a solo album that was to be titled Vulcan, and had recorded material for the album over the previous few years, mostly in London at Island's Hammersmith Studio, The Fall Out Shelter, with engineer Terry Barham, as well as at Pathway Studios in London. Following Wood's death, the Vulcan recordings remained in the possession of Wood's sister, Stephanie. In 2008, with the consent of Stephanie Wood a CD titled Vulcan, consisting of selected material Wood recorded while working on the incomplete album (plus an unreleased Traffic live performance of one of Wood's compositions), was released by Esoteric Recordings.

Traffic recorded one additional studio album, Far from Home (1994), after Wood's death. The album is dedicated to him, and the central figure on its front cover is a stick figure of a man playing flute.

In June 2013, on Wood's 69th birthday, the Chris Wood Estate (run by his sister, Stephanie) announced that a commemorative box set was being prepared – in collaboration with contemporary music archivists Hidden Masters, to properly honor Wood's life in music. Among other music, the set would include the album Vulcan as Chris originally sequenced it in 1978. The box set Evening Blue was finally released three and a half years later in early 2017, in a special deluxe first edition limited to 1000 copies.

#July 12 #1983 #R.I.P.#Chris Wood #Traffic

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botanizing · 4 years

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Elke Mackenzie (1911-1990)

“an uncommonly good woman, greatly admired for her gentle kindness and generosity”

In the course of my research, I came across the obituary of the lichenologist generally referred to as “I. M. Lamb”. I already knew about her exceptional contributions to lichenology from reading her publications, but here I learned that she was a trans woman, and her preferred name was Elke Mackenzie. Even though the obituary acknowledged her transition, it mostly referred to her using the wrong name and pronouns. Here, I’ve created a memorial that respects her gender in a way I hope she would have wanted.

Elke Mackenzie was born Ivan Mackenzie Lamb on September 11, 1911 in Clapham, London. After her family moved to Scotland, she attended Edinburgh Academy, graduating in 1929. She then attended Edinburgh University and graduated in 1933 with a B.Sc. with Honours in Botany. For the next two years, she continued doing research in botany at the universities of Munich and Würzburg, funded by a scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service). In 1935, Mackenzie began working as the Assistant Keeper in the Department of Botany at the British Museum (Natural History) under the lichenologist Annie Lorrain Smith. She became especially interested in the lichen flora of the antarctic regions during this time.

Mackenzie married Maila Elvira Laabejo in 1936; their first son was born in 1940. She finished her Doctor of Science degree at Edinburgh University in 1942 with a thesis about the hypothesis of the movement of the continents in the southern hemisphere based on her studies of antarctic lichens.

In 1943, Mackenzie joined Operation Tabarin, a secretive mission organized by the British Colonial Office that sought to establish British sovereignty in the Antarctic Peninsula. From 1944 to 1946, she worked as a botanist as well as helping to construct bases at Port Lockroy and Hope Bay. During this time, she described several new species of lichens, including Verrucaria serpuloides, the only known marine lichen. She was awarded both the British and United States Polar Medals for her work in Antarctica.

In 1947, Mackenzie accepted a position as Professor of Cryptogamic Botany at the National University of Tucumán in Argentina, and the whole family moved there with her. She traveled and collected extensively in Argentina and Brazil. However, Laabejo was unhappy with life in the tropics. In 1950, Mackenzie was hired as a cryptogamic botanist by the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and the family moved again. She sold her private herbarium of 3200 specimens to the museum to help cover the expensive move. Her personal library is also part of the museum’s collections, but it is unknown whether she sold or donated it. Mackenzie continued to travel and collect in Canada and made valuable contributions to the museum’s herbarium.

In 1953, Mackenzie and her family moved yet again as she had been offered the position of director of the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard. She continued to travel to New Zealand, Europe, and Central America and began studying marine algae in addition to lichens. She returned to Antarctica in 1964 for what she referred to as “Operation Gooseflesh,” a study of marine algae involving SCUBA diving in the frigid sea.

During the 1960′s, Mackenzie suffered from poor mental health and was eventually brought to the hospital by a concerned colleague. At this point she separated from Laabejo. She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and transitioned in 1971, taking the name Elke Mackenzie. All of her publications are under the name I. M. Lamb, but some acknowledge Elke Mackenzie as an assistant.

Mackenzie retired from the Farlow Herbarium in 1973. She continued to work translating German botanical textbooks into English to pay for the land and construction of a bungalow in Costa Rica, where she moved in 1976. Some of her collections are suspected to have been destroyed by the humid climate during this time. Mackenzie had worked for over 25 years on a monograph of the lichen genus Stereocaulon, but much of the data were never published “due to economic reasons.” In 1977 she published an abridged version of her monumental work.

In 1980, Mackenzie moved back to Cambridge to live with her daughter due to political unrest in Central America. She took up woodworking as a hobby, making furniture and reproductions of whaler’s sea chests. In 1983 she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; her health gradually declined and she passed away on January 18, 1990.

Elke Mackenzie was remembered by her colleagues as “completely unflappable, meticulous … cultured and kindly.” Her work with lichens was careful, thorough, and groundbreaking, laying the foundations for future lichenologists. Her story paints a picture of a kind, intelligent, resilient woman who persevered through financial, academic, and gender struggles.

I hope that her time in Costa Rica was peaceful and happy. I imagine her sitting on her porch in the humid air, drinking strong British tea and reading a book beginning to mold at the corners. Maybe sometimes she wishes she were back in Antarctica, where the mildew wouldn’t eat her belongings, but then again, here she is warm, no gooseflesh whatsoever.

Sources:

Llano, G. A. 1991. I. Mackenzie Lamb, D.Sc. (Elke Mackenzie) (1911-1990). The Bryologist 94(3):315-320.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elke_Mackenzie

#lichenology #science #biology #history #queer history #obituary #Elke Mackenzie #Ivan Mackenzie Lamb #women in science #queer scientists #LGBTQ+ scientists #death/#not plants

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missysmadhouse · 4 years

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Vincent Price: The Charming Villain

A very young Vincent Price; Source: Cinebeats

What comes to mind when thinking of Vincent Price are the many roles he played in Roger Corman's Poe-inspired adaptations such as "House of Usher" and "Masque of the Red Death" and William Castle's fun films "House on Haunted Hill" and "The Tingler." Price was an unforgettable figure with his distinct voice and wonderfully evil characters. He began his career in 1940's film noir. Eventually, he would be cast mostly in horror roles, his name synonymous with darkness.

Vincent Leonard Price was born on May 27, 1911 in St. Louis, MO. to Vincent and Marguerite Price. His father was president of a candy company. His parents were well-to-do and provided Price with a good education. Price attended a private school, St. Louis Country Day School. He went on to attend Yale University and earned a bachelor's degree in history and language. Price began performing with Gilbert and Sullivan operettas during his time at Yale. He continued his education in England, studying history at the University of London and art at the Cortaid Institute.

Price's career as a professional actor began with the Gate Theater in Dublin in a production of "Chicago" and "Victoria Regina."

Price's film debut was in 1938's "Service DeLuxe.' It wasn't long before Price began landing larger roles, mostly characters of a villainous nature in noirs such as Otto Preminger's "Laura" (1944) and "The Long Night" (1947). Price would play many bad boys throughout the 1940's.

Price branched out to horror as a vengeful sculptor in the 1953 3-D feature "House of Wax." He went on to star in "The Mad Magician" in 1954. Other roles included a cameo in a comedy, Bob Hope's "Casanova's Big Night" (1954). He also had roles in Howard Hughes' "Son of Sinbad" (1955), Fritz Lang's "While the City Sleeps" (1956) and Cecille B. DeMille's "The Ten Commanents" (1956) opposite Charlton Heston and Yule Brenner.

Price landed supporting roles in major feature films but was the leading man in b-horror. In the late 1950's, he starred in three of his more memorable roles in : "The Fly" (1958), "The Return of the Fly" and "House on Haunted Hill" (both in 1959).

Source: IMDb

The 1960's included a string of low-budget Poe adaptations with Roger Corman, which included: "The House of Usher" (1960), "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961), "The Raven" (1963) and "Masque of the Red Death" (1964). Price sometimes worked with veteran icons such as Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. He also made surprising turns with a couple of James Bond spoofs, "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" (1965) and "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs" (1966).

Besides acting, Price loved fine art and cooking. Price and his second wife, Mary, wrote a cookbook together, "The Come Into the Kitchen Cookbook," (1969). He also published "The Drawings of Delacroix" (1962). He took on the role of Batman nemesis Egghead in the 1966-68 Batman live action TV series. He then made a turn in a completely opposite direction to Broadway in the musical "Darling of the Day" (1968). He toured the U.S. with a production of a one-man show about Oscar Wilde, "Diversions and Delights."

Price and daughter, Victoria; Source: WTOP.com

He returned to film with "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" (1971) and "Dr. Phibes Rises Again" (1972). Price continued working in film. From 1981-1988, Price hosted the horror-themed show, "Mystery!" on PBS. He also did voicework, narrating a stop-motion short, "Vincent" by the then up-and-coming filmmaker Tim Burton in 1982 and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in 1983. Price also starred in horror spoofs "The House of the Long Shadows" (1983) with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and 1984's "Bloodbath at the House of Death."

Price even lent his voice to Disney's "The Great Mouse Detective" in 1986. His final major role was in 1987 in "The Whales of August" with Bette Davis and Lillian Gish. Price's poor health led his role in Tim Burton's 1990 film "Edward Scissorhands" being trimmed down. At the time Price had severe emphysema. He took one last role in a TV movie, 1993's "The Heart of Justice."

Vincent Price had a long and interesting life and career. He was married three times. His first wife was actress Edna Barrett. Price and Barrett were married from 1938 to 1948. The couple had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, who became a poet and columnist. His married his second wife, Mary Grant, in 1949. Price and Grant had one daughter, Victoria. Grant and Price divorced in 1973. Price's third wife was Australian actress, Coral Browne, who was in 1973's "Theater of Blood" with Price. The two were married from 1974 until Browne's death in 1991.

Vincent Price died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993 at age 82.

- Missy Dawn

Sources: "Vincent Leonard Price," by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, revised by Assistant Editor Patricia Bauer

vincentprice.com and Wikipedia

#horror movies #classic horror #horror icons #vincent price

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Muddy Waters

McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician who is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues", and an important figure on the post-war blues scene. His style of playing has been described as "raining down Delta beatitude".

Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.

In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon. These songs included "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I'm Ready". In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960.

Muddy Waters' music has influenced various American music genres, including rock and roll and rock music.

Early life

Muddy Waters' birthplace and date are not conclusively known. He stated that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915, but other evidence suggests that he was born in Jug's Corner, in neighboring Issaquena County, in 1913. In the 1930s and 1940s, before his rise to fame, the year of his birth was reported as 1913 on his marriage license, recording notes, and musicians' union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest in which he stated 1915 as the year of his birth, and he continued to say this in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920, suggesting that his birth year may have been 1914. The Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid-1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1913. His gravestone gives his birth year as 1915.

His grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth. Grant gave him the nickname "Muddy" at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. "Waters" was added years later, as he began to play harmonica and perform locally in his early teens. The remains of the cabin on Stovall Plantation where he lived in his youth are now at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

He had his first introduction to music in church: "I used to belong to church. I was a good Baptist, singing in the church. So I got all of my good moaning and trembling going on for me right out of church," he recalled. By the time he was 17, he had purchased his first guitar. "I sold the last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty and paid about two-fifty for that guitar. It was a Stella. The people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago." He started playing his songs in joints near his hometown, mostly on a plantation owned by Colonel William Howard Stovall.

Career

Early career, 1941–1948

In August 1941, Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Muddy recalled for Rolling Stone magazine, "and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, 'I can do it, I can do it.'" Lomax came back in July 1942 to record him again. Both sessions were eventually released by Testament Records as Down on Stovall's Plantation. The complete recordings were reissued by Chess Records on CD as Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings. The Historic 1941–42 Library of Congress Field Recordings in 1993 and remastered in 1997.

In 1943, Muddy Waters headed to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician. He later recalled arriving in Chicago as the single most momentous event in his life. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy, then one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago, had Mudddddddy Waters open his shows in the rowdy clubs where Broonzy played. This gave Muddy Waters the opportunity to play in front of a large audience. In 1944, he bought his first electric guitar and then formed his first electric combo. He felt obliged to electrify his sound in Chicago because, he said, "When I went into the clubs, the first thing I wanted was an amplifier. Couldn't nobody hear you with an acoustic." His sound reflected the optimism of postwar African Americans. Willie Dixon said that "There was quite a few people around singing the blues but most of them was singing all sad blues. Muddy was giving his blues a little pep."

Three years later, in 1946, he recorded some songs for Mayo Williams at Columbia Records, with an old-fashioned combo consisting of clarinet, saxophone and piano; they were released a year later with Ivan Ballen's Philadelphia-based 20th Century label, billed as James "Sweet Lucy" Carter and his Orchestra - Muddy Waters' name was not mentioned on the label. Later that year, he began recording for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. In 1947, he played guitar with Sunnyland Slim on piano on the cuts "Gypsy Woman" and "Little Anna Mae". These were also shelved, but in 1948, "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "I Feel Like Going Home" became hits, and his popularity in clubs began to take off. Soon after, Aristocrat changed its name to Chess Records. Muddy Waters's signature tune "Rollin' Stone" also became a hit that year.

Commercial success, 1948–1957

Initially, the Chess brothers would not allow Muddy Waters to use his working band in the recording studio; instead, he was provided with a backing bass by Ernest "Big" Crawford or by musicians assembled specifically for the recording session, including "Baby Face" Leroy Foster and Johnny Jones. Gradually, Chess relented, and by September 1953 he was recording with one of the most acclaimed blues groups in history: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums, and Otis Spann on piano. The band recorded a series of blues classics during the early 1950s, some with the help of the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon, including "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You", and "I'm Ready"

Waters's band became a proving ground for some of the city's best blues talent, with members of the ensemble going on to successful careers of their own. In 1952, Little Walter left when his single "Juke" became a hit, although he continued a collaborative relationship long after he left Waters's band, appearing on most of the band's classic recordings in the 1950s. Howlin' Wolf moved to Chicago in 1954 with financial support earned through his successful Chess singles, and the "legendary rivalry" with Waters began. The rivalry was, in part, stoked by Willie Dixon providing songs to both artists, with Wolf suspecting that Waters was getting Dixon's best songs. 1955 saw the departure of Jimmy Rogers, who quit to work exclusively with his own band, which had been a sideline until that time.

During the mid-1950s, Muddy Waters' singles were frequently on Billboard magazine's various Rhythm & Blues charts including "Sugar Sweet" in 1955 and "Trouble No More", "Forty Days and Forty Nights", and "Don't Go No Farther" in 1956. 1956 also saw the release of one of his best-known numbers, "Got My Mojo Working", although it did not appear on the charts. However, by the late 1950s, his singles success had come to an end, with only "Close to You" reaching the chart in 1958. Also in 1958, Chess released Muddy Waters' first compilation album, The Best of Muddy Waters, which collected twelve of his singles up to 1956.

Performances and crossover, 1958–1970

Muddy toured England with Spann in 1958, where they were backed by local Dixieland-style or "trad jazz" musicians, including members of Chris Barber's band. At the time, English audiences had only been exposed to acoustic folk blues, as performed by artists such as Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Big Bill Broonzy. Both the musicians and audiences were unprepared for Muddy Waters' performance, which included his electric slide guitar playing. He recalled:

They thought I was a Big Bill Broonzy [but] I wasn't. I had my amplifier and Spann and I was going to do a Chicago thing. We opened up in Leeds, England. I was definitely too loud for them. The next morning we were in the headlines of the paper, 'Screaming Guitar and Howling Piano'.

Although his performances alienated the old guard, some younger musicians, including Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies from Barber's band, were inspired to go in the more modern, electric blues direction. Korner and Davies' own groups included musicians who would later form the Rolling Stones (named after Muddy's 1950 hit "Rollin' Stone"), Cream, and the original Fleetwood Mac.

In the 1960s, Muddy Waters' performances continued to introduce a new generation to Chicago blues. At the Newport Jazz Festival, he recorded one of the first live blues albums, At Newport 1960, and his performance of "Got My Mojo Working" was nominated for a Grammy award. In September 1963, in Chess' attempt to connect with folk music audiences, Muddy Waters recorded Folk Singer, which replaced his trademark electric guitar sound with an acoustic band, including a then-unknown Buddy Guy on acoustic guitar. Folk Singer was not a commercial success, but it was lauded by critics, and in 2003 Rolling Stone magazine placed it at number 280 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In October 1963, Muddy Waters participated in the first of several annual European tours, organized as the American Folk Blues Festival, during which he also performed more acoustic-oriented numbers.

In 1967, he re-recorded several blues standards with Bo Diddley, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf, which were marketed as Super Blues and The Super Super Blues Band albums in Chess' attempt to reach a rock audience. The Super Super Blues Band, bringing together both Wolf and Waters, who had a long-standing rivalry, was, as Ken Chang wrote in his AllMusic review, flooded with "contentious studio banter [...] more entertaining than the otherwise unmemorable music from this stylistic train wreck". In 1968, at the instigation of Marshall Chess, Muddy Waters recorded Electric Mud, an album intended to revive his career by backing him with Rotary Connection, a psychedelic soul band that Chess had put together. The album proved controversial; although it reached number 127 on the Billboard 200 album chart, it was scorned by many critics, and eventually disowned by Muddy himself:

That Electric Mud record I did, that one was dogshit. But when it first came out, it started selling like wild, and then they started sending them back. They said, "This can't be Muddy Waters with all this shit going on – all this wow-wow and fuzztone."

Nonetheless, six months later Muddy Waters recorded a follow-up album, After the Rain, which had a similar sound and featured many of the same musicians.

Later in 1969, Muddy Waters recorded and released the album Fathers and Sons, which featured a return to his classic Chicago blues sound. Fathers and Sons had an all-star backing band that included Michael Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield, longtime fans whose desire to play with him was the impetus for the album. It was the most successful album of Muddy Waters' career, reaching number 70 on the Billboard 200.

Resurgence and later career, 1971–1982

In 1971, a show at Mister Kelly's, an upmarket Chicago nightclub, was recorded and released, signalling both Muddy's return to form and the completion of his transfer to white audiences.

In 1972, he won his first Grammy Award, for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording for They Call Me Muddy Waters, a 1971 album of old, but previously unreleased recordings.

Later in 1972, he flew to England to record the album The London Muddy Waters Sessions. The album was a follow-up to the previous year's The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions. Both albums were the brainchild of Chess Records producer Norman Dayron, and were intended to showcase Chicago blues musicians playing with the younger British rock musicians whom they had inspired. Muddy Waters brought with him two American musicians, harmonica player Carey Bell and guitarist Sammy Lawhorn. The British and Irish musicians who played on the album included Rory Gallagher, Steve Winwood, Rick Grech, and Mitch Mitchell. Muddy Waters was dissatisfied by the results, due to the British musicians' more rock-oriented sound. "These boys are top musicians, they can play with me, put the book before 'em and play it, you know," he told Guralnick. "But that ain't what I need to sell my people, it ain't the Muddy Waters sound. An' if you change my sound, then you gonna change the whole man." He stated, "My blues look so simple, so easy to do, but it's not. They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play." Nevertheless, the album won another Grammy, again for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording.

He won another Grammy for his last LP on Chess Records: The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album, recorded in 1975 with his new guitarist Bob Margolin, Pinetop Perkins, Paul Butterfield, and Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of the Band. In November 1976 he appeared as a featured special guest at The Band's Last Waltz farewell concert, and in the subsequent 1978 feature film documentary of the event.

From 1977 to 1981, blues musician Johnny Winter, who had idolized Muddy Waters since childhood, produced four albums of his, all on the Blue Sky Records label: the studio albums Hard Again (1977), I'm Ready (1978) and King Bee (1981), and the live album Muddy "Mississippi" Waters – Live (1979). The albums were critical and commercial successes, with all but King Bee winning a Grammy. Hard Again has been especially praised by critics, who have tended to describe it as Muddy Waters' comeback album.

In 1981, Muddy Waters was invited to perform at ChicagoFest, the city's top outdoor music festival. He was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Buddy Miles, and played classics like "Mannish Boy", "Trouble No More", and "Mojo Working" to a new generation of fans. The performance was made available on DVD in 2009 by Shout! Factory. On November 22, he performed live with three members of British rock band the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards & Ronnie Wood) at the Checkerboard Lounge, a blues club in Bronzeville, on the South Side of Chicago, which was established in 1972 by Buddy Guy and L.C. Thurman. A DVD version of the performance was released in 2012.

In 1982, declining health dramatically stopped his performance schedule. His last public performance took place when he sat in with Eric Clapton's band at a concert in Florida in the summer of 1982.

Personal life

Muddy Waters and his longtime wife, Geneva Wade (a first cousin of R. L. Burnside) were married in Lexington, Mississippi, in 1940. She died of cancer on March 15, 1973. Gaining custody of two of his children, Rosalind and Renee, he moved them into his home, eventually buying a new house in Westmont, Illinois. Years later, he travelled to Florida and met his future wife, 19-year-old Marva Jean Brooks, whom he nicknamed "Sunshine". Eric Clapton served as best man at their wedding in 1979.

His sons, Larry "Mud" Morganfield and Big Bill Morganfield, are also blues singers and musicians. In 2017, his younger son, Joseph "Mojo" Morganfield, began publicly performing the blues, occasionally with his brothers.

Death

Muddy Waters died in his sleep from heart failure, at his home in Westmont, Illinois, on April 30, 1983, from cancer-related complications. He was transported from his Westmont home, which he lived in for the last decade of his life, to Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, Illinois. There he was pronounced dead at the age of 70. The funeral service was held on May 4, 1983. Throngs of blues musicians and fans attended his funeral at Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. Muddy Waters is buried next to his wife, Geneva.

After his death, a lengthy legal battle ensued between Muddy Waters' heirs and Scott Cameron, his former manager. In 2010, Muddy Waters' heir was petitioning for the courts to appoint Mercy Morganfield, his daughter, as administrator and distribute remaining assets, which mainly consists of copyrights to his music. The petition to reopen the estate was successful. In May 2018, the heirs' lawyer sought to hold Scott Cameron's wife in contempt for diverting royalty income. However, the heirs asked for that citation not to be pursued. The next court date was set for July 10, 2018.

Legacy

Two years after his death, the city of Chicago paid tribute to Muddy Waters by designating the one-block section between 900 and 1000 East 43rd Street near his former home on the south side "Honorary Muddy Waters Drive". In 2017, a ten stories-mural commissioned as a part of the Chicago Blues Festival and designed by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra was painted on the side of the building at 17 North State Street, at the corner of State and Washington Streets.The Chicago suburb of Westmont, where Muddy Waters lived the last decade of his life, named a section of Cass Avenue near his home "Honorary Muddy Waters Way".

In 2008, a Mississippi Blues Trail marker has been placed in Clarksdale, Mississippi, by the Mississippi Blues Commission designating the site of Muddy Waters' cabin. He also received a plaque on the Clarksdale Walk of Fame.

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

Influence

The British band The Rolling Stones named themselves after Muddy Waters' 1950 song "Rollin' Stone". Jimi Hendrix recalled that "the first guitar player I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I first heard him as a little boy and it scared me to death". The band Cream covered "Rollin' and Tumblin'" on their 1966 debut album, Fresh Cream. Eric Clapton was a big fan of Muddy Waters while growing up, and his music influenced Clapton's music career. The song was also covered by Canned Heat at the Monterey Pop Festival and later adapted by Bob Dylan on his album Modern Times. One of Led Zeppelin's biggest hits, "Whole Lotta Love", is based on the Muddy Waters hit "You Need Love" (written by Willie Dixon). "Hoochie Coochie Man", was covered by Allman Brothers Band, Humble Pie, Steppenwolf, Supertramp and Fear. In 1993, Paul Rodgers released the album Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters, on which he covered a number of Muddy Waters songs, including "Louisiana Blues", "Rollin' Stone", "(I'm your) Hoochie Coochie Man" and "I'm Ready" in collaboration with guitarists such as Gary Moore, Brian May and Jeff Beck. Angus Young, of the rock group AC/DC, has cited Muddy Waters as one of his influences. The AC/DC song title "You Shook Me All Night Long" came from lyrics of the Muddy Waters song "You Shook Me", written by Willie Dixon and J. B. Lenoir. Earl Hooker first recorded it as an instrumental, which was then overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters in 1962. Led Zeppelin also covered it on their debut album. In 1981 ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons went to visit the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale with The Blues magazine founder Jim O'Neal. The museum's director, Sid Graves, brought Gibbons to visit Muddy Waters original house, and encouraged him to pick up a piece of scrap lumber that was originally part of the roof. Gibbons eventually converted the wood into a guitar. Named Muddywood, the instrument is now exhibited at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale.

Following his death, fellow blues musician B.B. King told Guitar World magazine, "It's going to be years and years before most people realize how greatly he contributed to American music." John P. Hammond told Guitar World magazine, "Muddy was a master of just the right notes. It was profound guitar playing, deep and simple... more country blues transposed to the electric guitar, the kind of playing that enhanced the lyrics, gave profundity to the words themselves."

Muddy Waters' songs have been featured in long-time fan Martin Scorsese's movies, including The Color of Money, Goodfellas, and Casino. Muddy Waters' 1970s recording of his mid-'50s hit "Mannish Boy" was used in the films Goodfellas, Better Off Dead, Risky Business, and the rockumentary The Last Waltz. In 1988 "Mannish Boy" was also used in a Levi's 501 commercial and re-released in Europe as a single with "(I'm your) Hoochie Coochie Man" on the flip side.

#04/04 #04/30

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something-in-the-seas · 4 years

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How many kids does Jack have, you think?

He’d probably have a ton of them, especially if he wants to kind of save the Marston line. I’d say, though, there are seven little Marstons running around and that’s just the beginning of the Marston clan. By 2019, the family can barely fit into Beecher’s Hope and mostly just spend time outside, bickering with each other in the way only Marstons can.

So in the Arthur in the future AU, we got this basic family tree for Jack’s kids (I’m not going into their kids, and their kid’s kids, etc). The only surviving ones are Abigail and Sadie, and there’s nothing better than two old ladies arguing with each other, but becoming total grandmas to Arthur.

Jack Marston (1895-1995) + Elizabeth Smith Marston (1896-1969)

John Marston III (1918-1993)

Susan “Susie” Mae Marston Cortez (1920-2010)

Arthur Hosea Marston (1923-1944)

Abigail Rose Marston (1925-2021)

Charles William Marston (1928-1983)

Jennifer Lynn Marston O’Brien (1935-2018)

Sadie Beth Marston (1935-2027)

#red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #jack marston #john marston #abigail marston #arthur morgan #sadie’s a lesbian and abigail’s divorced #abigail is alive solely out of spite

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oldschoolfrp · 5 years

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Ambush! -- a solitaire alternative to the Squad Leader series with 8 scenarios set mostly in France, 1944, by Eric Lee Smith and John Butterfield (who also painted the cover art), Victory Games, 1983. Victory Games was a subsidiary of Avalon Hill formed mostly of ex-SPI staff.

#WWII #D-Day #Ambush!#John Butterfield #wargame #board game #Eric Lee Smith #Victory Games #Avalon Hill #SPI #jeep #solitaire game #solo game #D Day

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woundthatswallows · 10 months

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if you have time, can you tell us what your favorite films of all time are? in no particular order (your blog is inspiring)

yess i would love to🖤🖤 and thank you so much!! i'm so happy to hear that, spreading film inspiration is my fave thing abt this place :) i'll do chronological order and put a ⭐️ next to my top top faves that make me want to scream when i think of them etc ! this is going to be Long .... but i swear all of these make me crazy. when u watch a lot of movies u have a lot of all time faves <3

the passion of joan of arc 1927⭐️

city lights 1931

design for living 1933⭐️

it happened one night 1934

history is made at night 1937

bringing up baby 1938

midnight 1939

the lady eve 1941⭐️

arsenic and old lace 1944⭐️

sunset boulevard 1955⭐️

all about eve 1950

rear window 1954

carnival of souls 1962⭐️

cléo de 5 - 7 1962

the servant 1963

repulsion 1965

les demoiselles de rocherfort 1967⭐️

secret ceremony 1968⭐️

teorema 1968⭐️

the cremator 1969⭐️

multiple maniacs 1970⭐️

harold and maude⭐️

let's scare jessica to death 1971⭐️

sophie's way 1971

pink flamingos⭐️

la rose der fer 1973

female trouble 1974

vampyres 1974

scenes from a marriage 1974

the rocky horror picture show 1975⭐️

jeanne dielman 1975

nashville 1975

the witch who came from the sea 1976

l'une chante l'autre pas 1977⭐️

3 women 1977⭐️

hausu 1977⭐️

girlfriends 1978⭐️

possession 1981⭐️

the beyond 1981

la morte vivante 1982⭐️

valley girl 1983

a zed & two noughts 1985 ⭐️

blue velvet 1986⭐️

moonstruck 1987⭐️

wings of desire 1987⭐️

evil dead ii 1987

hellraiser 1987

hellbound: hellraiser 2 1988

dead ringers 1988⭐️

the cook the thief his wife & her lover 1989

wild at heart 1990⭐️

goodfellas 1990⭐️

nekromantik 2 1991⭐️

twin peaks fire walk with me 1992⭐️

the living end 1992

dazed and confused 1993⭐️

natural born killers 1994⭐️

angela 1995

crash 1996⭐️

kissed 1996⭐️

les deux vampires 1996

ringu 1998

10 things i hate about you 1999

ginger snaps 2000⭐️

cecil b demented 2000⭐️

american psycho 2000⭐️

hedwig and the angry inch 2001⭐️

la pianiste 2001⭐️

dans ma peau 2002⭐️

inland empire 2006

martyrs 2008⭐️

phantom thread 2017⭐️

the velvet underground 2021

here's my letterboxd list of faves too that has some more too- did this mostly off the top of my head. + this is my tentatively ranked top 30!

#🖤💞#asks #film recs

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galactic-empress · 4 years

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I love genealogy and family trees. I don’t even know where to begin.

Heimbergs and Klossners

My mothers’ maternal side is Swiss German (Schweizerdeutsch.) They were chilling in Bellikon, Allgau and sometimes in the capital Bern. My great-great-Grandfather Alexander Heimberg (1870-1944) immigrated to Iowa in 1889, met and married Rosina Koemann (1872-1953). They went back to Switzerland and had seven children, Otto, John, Hannah, Ernst, Marie, Fritz and Gertrude.

As a family they returned to Iowa in 1924 abroad the RMS Majestic (originally SS Bismarck but its building was interrupted by WW1 and was given to the British.) They moved later to New Haven Township, MN and lastly to Kasson, Minnesota.

Gertrude (1914-1985), at the age of 10 was in a new world. She would later marry Robert Klossner (1903-1976) who was also on the ships manifest. She had my grandmothers late oldest brother John at age 19 and my late grandmother Rose at age 21. Gertrude and Robert had eight children in total: John, Rose, Alice, Amanda, Ernie, Margaret, Lena and Dorothy.

Rose Marie (Klossner) (1935-2017) married Charles Alexander Koenig (1932-) in 1956. Together they had my uncles Steven and Jerry, and my mother Carol. They were married for 60 years.

This all means I am a third generation Swiss-German-American.

_____________________________________________

Koenig (König)

My mothers’ paternal side is something that I find the most interesting! It was what led me to getting invested into royal families, Prussian and German history. With a name that translates to 'King' it was kinda expected.

My great-great-great-great grandparents Heinrich Koenig (1820-1888) and Friederike (1818-1902) and their two sons John (1840-1931) and Wilhelm Friedrich (1839-1925) immigrated from Stettin, Kingdom of Prussia in 1864.

(Before they left they were living during the reign of Prussian Hohenzollern King Wilhelm I., later the first Emperor of Imperial Germany.

Not many, even in Germany, care or know about Prussia. Germany used to be divided into many Kingdoms and Principalities. Stettin is now in Poland as Szczecin. The historical Baltic capital city of Prussia is Königsberg, meaning Kings mountain, is now Kaliningrad Oblast in Russia. Historically Prussia unified modern Germany.

I find it fascinating that in an alternate history had my family waited 7 more years in Prussia they could have seen the creation of a new nation of Germany in 1871. I could be German today, that is, if they survived WW1 in 50 years and survived WW2 and the Soviet invasion of Prussia in 31 more years. After that Prussia ceased to exist. I am lucky they left before it all went down since the only Prussians left are immigrants. Nobody Prussian lives in historic Prussia. There is SOME residue of their culture but it was mostly converted to Soviet or Polish influence. I could talk for days so I will spare you with that.)

Anyway, Wilhelm Friedrich Koenig (1839-1925) bought our farm in 1876 and built the house in 1881. He married Marie Steppenhagen (1838-1920) and had: Wilhelm, Lena and Friedrich Wilhelm ‘Fred’.

‘Fred’ Friedrich Wilhelm (1869-1936) married Hulda Augusta Nickel (1873-1948) in ... and they had my great-grandfather Alexander Viktor Koenig (1906-1983) and his brother Paul Friedrich (1894-1970)

Alexander married Ella Diana Bell (1911-2003) in ... and they had my grandfather Charles Alexander (1932-) (see above), his sister Florence and brother Gorden.

This all means I am fifth generation Prussian-American.

#dont mind this i need to put it somewhere

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theuncannytruthteller · 5 years

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Jean-Baptiste Illinois Jacquet (October 31, 1922 – July 22, 2004) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, best remembered for his solo on "Flying Home", critically recognized as the first R&B saxophone solo.

Although he was a pioneer of the honking tenor saxophone that became a regular feature of jazz playing and a hallmark of early rock and roll, Jacquet was a skilled and melodic improviser, both on up-tempo tunes and ballads. He doubled on the bassoon, one of only a few jazz musicians to use the instrument.

Jacquet was born to a Black Creole mother and father, named Marguerite Traham and Gilbert Jacquet, in Louisiana and moved to Houston, Texas, as an infant, and was raised there as one of six siblings. His father, was a part-time bandleader. As a child he performed in his father's band, primarily on the alto saxophone. His older brother Russell Jacquet played trumpet and his brother Linton played drums.

At 15, Jacquet began playing with the Milton Larkin Orchestra, a Houston-area dance band. In 1939, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he met Nat King Cole. Jacquet would sit in with the trio on occasion. In 1940, Cole introduced Jacquet to Lionel Hampton who had returned to California and was putting together a big band. Hampton wanted to hire Jacquet, but asked the young Jacquet to switch to tenor saxophone.

In 1942, at age 19, Jacquet soloed on the Hampton Orchestra's recording of "Flying Home", one of the very first times a honking tenor sax was heard on record. The record became a hit. The song immediately became the climax for the live shows and Jacquet became exhausted from having to "bring down the house" every night. The solo was built to weave in and out of the arrangement and continued to be played by every saxophone player who followed Jacquet in the band, notably Arnett Cobb and Dexter Gordon, who achieved almost as much fame as Jacquet in playing it. It is one of the very few jazz solos to have been memorized and played very much the same way by everyone who played the song. He quit the Hampton band in 1943 and joined Cab Calloway's Orchestra. Jacquet appeared with Cab Calloway's band in Lena Horne's movie Stormy Weather. In the earlier years of Jacquet's career, his brother Linton Jacquet managed him on the chitlin circuit Linton's daughter Brenda Jacquet-Ross sang in jazz venues in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s to early 2000s, with a band called the Mondo Players.

In 1944, Illinois Jacquet returned to California and started a small band with his brother Russell and a young Charles Mingus. It was at this time that he appeared in the Academy Award-nominated short film Jammin' the Blues with Lester Young. He also appeared at the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert. In 1946, he moved to New York City, and joined the Count Basie orchestra, replacing Lester Young. In 1952 Jacquet co-wrote 'Just When We're Falling in Love'; Illinois Jacquet (m) Sir Charles Thompson (m) S. K. "Bob" Russell (l). Jacquet continued to perform (mostly in Europe) in small groups through the 1960s and 1970s. Jacquet led the Illinois Jacquet Big Band from 1981 until his death. Jacquet became the first jazz musician to be an artist-in-residence at Harvard University, in 1983. He played "C-Jam Blues" with President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn during Clinton's inaugural ball in 1993. Jacquet's final performance was on July 16, 2004, at the Lincoln Center in New York.

Jacquet died in his home in Queens, New York of a heart attack on July 22, 2004. He was 81 years of age. He is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

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brookstonalmanac · 3 years

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Events 4.25

404 BC – Admiral Lysander and King Pausanias of Sparta blockade Athens and bring the Peloponnesian War to a successful conclusion. 775 – The Battle of Bagrevand puts an end to an Armenian rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate. Muslim control over Transcaucasia is solidified and its Islamization begins, while several major Armenian nakharar families lose power and their remnants flee to the Byzantine Empire. 799 – After mistreatment and disfigurement by the citizens of Rome, pope Leo III flees to the Frankish court of king Charlemagne at Paderborn for protection. 1134 – The name Zagreb was mentioned for the first time in the Felician Charter relating to the establishment of the Zagreb Bishopric around 1094. 1607 – Eighty Years' War: The Dutch fleet destroys the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar. 1644 – The Chongzhen Emperor, the last Emperor of Ming dynasty China, commits suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng. 1707 – A coalition of Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal is defeated by a Franco-Spanish army at Almansa (Spain) in the War of the Spanish Succession. 1792 – Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine. 1792 – "La Marseillaise" (the French national anthem) is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. 1829 – Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the United Kingdom. 1846 – Thornton Affair: Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican–American War. 1849 – The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots. 1859 – British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal. 1862 – American Civil War: Forces under U.S. Admiral David Farragut demand the surrender of the Confederate city of New Orleans, Louisiana. 1864 – American Civil War: In the Battle of Marks' Mills, a force of 8,000 Confederate soldiers attacks 1,800 Union soldiers and a large number of wagon teamsters, killing or wounding 1,500 Union combatants. 1882 – French and Vietnamese troops clashed in Tonkin, when Commandant Henri Rivière seized the citadel of Hanoi with a small force of marine infantry. 1898 – Spanish–American War: The United States Congress declares that a state of war between the U.S. and Spain has existed since April 21, when an American naval blockade of the Spanish colony of Cuba began. 1901 – New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates. 1915 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli begins: The invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula by British, French, Indian, Newfoundland, Australian and New Zealand troops, begins with landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles. 1916 – Anzac Day is commemorated for the first time on the first anniversary of the landing at ANZAC Cove. 1920 – At the San Remo conference, the principal Allied Powers of World War I adopt a resolution to determine the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled lands of the Middle East. 1938 – U.S. Supreme Court delivers its opinion in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and overturns a century of federal common law. 1944 – The United Negro College Fund is incorporated. 1945 – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two. 1945 – Liberation Day (Italy): The National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy calls for a general uprising against the German occupation and the Italian Social Republic. 1945 – United Nations Conference on International Organization: Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco. 1945 – The last German troops retreat from Finland's soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War. Military acts of Second World War end in Finland. 1951 – Korean War: Assaulting Chinese forces are forced to withdraw after heavy fighting with UN forces, primarily made up of Australian and Canadian troops, at the Battle of Kapyong. 1953 – Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" describing the double helix structure of DNA. 1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories. 1959 – The Saint Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping. 1960 – The United States Navy submarine USS Triton completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. 1961 – Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit. 1972 – Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive: The North Vietnamese 320th Division forces 5,000 South Vietnamese troops to retreat and traps about 2,500 others northwest of Kontum. 1974 – Carnation Revolution: A leftist military coup in Portugal overthrows the authoritarian-conservative Estado Novo regime and establishes a democratic government. 1981 – More than 100 workers are exposed to radiation during repairs of at the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. 1982 – Israel completes its withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula per the Camp David Accords. 1983 – Cold War: American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war. 1983 – Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit. 1988 – In Israel, John Demjanjuk is sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II. 1990 – Violeta Chamorro takes office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman to hold the position. 2004 – The March for Women's Lives brings between 500,000 and 800,000 protesters, mostly pro-choice, to Washington D.C. to protest the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, and other restrictions on abortion. 2005 – The final piece of the Obelisk of Axum is returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937. 2005 – Bulgaria and Romania sign accession treaties to join the European Union. 2007 – Boris Yeltsin's funeral: The first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894. 2015 – Nearly 9,100 are killed after a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Nepal.

#Events

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chiseler · 5 years

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McVouty!

I first heard Slim Gaillard in a cramped little new and used punk rock record store just off South Street in Philadelphia in the mid-‘80s. You wouldn’t normally be expecting the spiked and leathered clerk in a place like that to be playing ’postwar jazz, but Gaillard was a different kind of finger-popping jazzbo, as singular a groovy beatnik punk rock wildman as they come.

Bulee “Slim” Gaillard’s early life, as he describes it, was as storied, fantastical, even mythical as Salvador Dali’s or an early 20th century boy’s adventure novel. Given official records are sparse, it’s just better and somehow more fitting to simply take him at his word. It only makes sense, really, and helps explain as well as anything how he became what he did.

The motormouthed madcap hepcat bebop comedy genius behind 1938’s “Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy),” a performer whose unexpected slips into rapid-fire Spanish, Arabic and Yiddish can at first sound like skilled mimicry, a kind of scatting Sid Caesar, was born in Cuba in 1916 to an Afro-Cuban mother and a German Jewish father. His father was a steamship steward who sometimes brought the young Gaillard along on ocean voyages to show him a bit of the world. But after a stop in Crete in 1928, the ship somehow sailed on half an hour earlier than scheduled, leaving the 12-year-old Gaillard behind. Completely alone and speaking only Spanish at the time, out of simple necessity he picked up enough Greek to get by for the next couple years. He also occasionally hopped aboard passing ships to visit the Middle East, where he likewise learned some Arabic and became enamored with the people, the music and the culture. Then at 16, deciding it was about time he returned home to see his parents again, he booked passage on a ship he thought was headed for Havana.

Only problem was, the boat skipped Havana, sailing north to New York. Gaillard didn’t disembark there, instead staying aboard as the ship made it’s way through the St. Lawrence before docking in Detroit. Considering he spoke no English, Detroit seemed much more amenable, he would note years later, mostly on account of it’s large immigrant population. With so many Greeks, Arabs and Hispanics vying for work in the auto plants, he was at least able to find people with whom he could communicate, and was taken in by an Armenian family. He picked up English as quickly as he picked up the others, though, and started working odd jobs. Among the odder, there in the midst of Prohibition, was a stint with the notorious Purple Gang, for whom he made deliveries in a hearse carrying a coffin filled with bootleg whiskey. After witnessing too much violence, the preternaturally gentle Gaillard realized it wasn’t the life for him, and took the advice of a tough local beat cop (who also happened to be black) who warned him to get away from the gangs, get out of the neighborhood, and do something with himself. For a black teenager in Detroit in the 1930s, his escape routes were limited. He could go into boxing, or go into music. He tried his hand at boxing for a bit, then decided maybe music was the preferable route.

Gaillard started taking night classes, and after some backstage encouragement from Duke Ellington himself, eventually learned to play guitar, sax, vibraphone, piano and drums. In the mid-30s he moved to New York, having decided he wanted to be a professional entertainer.

Since work as a professional musician was hard to come by, he became what he called a professional amateur, making the rounds of the amateur nights at the local clubs, changing his act as he did to avoid recognition. Sometimes he’d be a dancer, others a pianist, still others a sax player. Simple fact was he could get paid $15 a night on the amateur stages, which was better than a lot of professionals were getting paid. The trick, though, was he couldn’t be too good, If he was too good, they’d never let him play amateur night. So he always had to drop in a few intentional flat notes to cover himself.

Although he was an excellent musician who could play everything from boogie woogie to bebop to Big Band to Afro-Cuban to American standards to children’s songs and classical, Gaillard will never be remembered for his playing. Despite having so many languages at his disposal (the list had since come to include Armenian, German and Yiddish), Gaillard found there were still ideas and concepts beyond what any of them could express. To rectify this he began inventing his own vocabulary, centered around the adjectival verb “vout” (and it’s variations vouty, McVoutm McVouty, etc.) and the suffixes o-reenee, o-roonee, and o-rootee. They were fluid in both usage and meaning, and could be dropped in pretty much anywhere in conversation. By the time he teamed with bassist Slam Stewart and the pair began recording as the musical comedy team Slim and Slam in the late ‘30s, Gaillard had started writing his own songs in the new language he had christened, yes, Vout-O-Reenee. Beyong that, the pair was a master of the dueling jive comic scat, playing off each other and riffing on everything from La boheme and “Jingle Bells” to chicken clucks and food references. Gotta say, Gaillard wrote an unusual number of songs about food—avocados, chili, fried chicken, ice cream, matzoh balls, bagels, peanuts, and whatever else came to mind when he was hungry. He also wrote songs about motorcycles, cement mixers, and mass communication.

Slim and Slam first came to the public’s attention when Benny Goodman performed their song “Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy) on the radio in late 1937. The song was an overnight sensation, and when Slim and Slam recorded their own bersion shortly thereafter, it reached number two on the Billboard charts. A copy of the song was even included in a time capsule buried at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The capsule is scheduled to be reopened in the year 6939, and you have to wonder what whoever or whatever finds it will make of what kind of people we were.

Other outlandishly catchy novelty hits like “Cement Mixer (Put-Ti Put-Ti)” and “McVouty” soon followed. The pair’s between-song banter, marked by non-sequiturs, bad jokes, and Gaillard’s new language made them radio favorites. In 1941 they appeared as themselves in the appropriately wild and accidentally postmodern Hellzapoppin’, and performed in a handful of other films in the early ’40s.. Gaillard’s facility for languages, accents and crazy sound effects also earned him occasional voice work on animated Warner Brothers shorts from the era.

In 1943 Gaillard was drafted into the Army Air Corps, trained as a pilot, and flew a B-25 on bombing missions over Europe, which is something worth pausing to think about for a moment. After his plane was struck by anti-aircraft fire in 1944 and Gaillard was hospitalized for months with an arm full of shrapnel, he was discharged. He resumed his musical career, solo this time, recording jams with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and releasing his majestic four-part “Groove Juice Symphony.”

Gaillard was tall and rail thin with a pencil mustache, a groovy, mellow, and utterly unpredictable hepcat’s hepcat, and was deeply respected within the jazz community. While playing a stint at a little club in San Francisco in the late ‘40s, he met Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, whom he says hun out at the club eight nights a week. They became good friends, Gaillard being impressed by their deep understanding and love of the music. Kerouac would later immortalize Gaillard by famously recounting the meeting in On the Road. (It’s also interesting to note that during a 1968 episode of William Buckley’s Firing Line, a very drunken Kerouac interrupted the discussion about the hippie movement with an impromptu rendition of “Flat Foot Floogie.”)

By the late 1950s, however, the music scene had started to change, rock’n’roll was coming to dominate the airwaves, the jazz clubs which had lined Manhattan’s 52nd Street were shutting down, and Gaillard was starting to feel like he no longer belonged. It’s unclear if the 1957 release of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” had anything to do with this perception. The song was of course a massive hit and is today considered a fundamental, defining classic of early rock’n’roll. True to form, Little Richard refused to acknowledge the song (down to the “Tutti Frutti-o-roottee” chorus) was simply a bowdlerized version of Slim and Slam’s 1938 hit of the same name. Little Richard fans insist up and down they were two completely different and unrelated songs since the Slim and Slam version was about ice cream not girls, but when the singer himself notes his original title was “Tutti Frutti McVouty,” well, there you go.

Gaillard insisted he had nothing against the new music, but it simply wasn’t his scene, so by the end of the decade he stopped recording, stopped performing, dropped out and started looking for something else to do.

For an entertainer of his range, ability and goofy charisma, the choice seemed easy, and he picked up and moved to California. Although often cast as musicians who bore an uncanny resemblance to Slim Gaillard, over the next two decades he would appear opposite Bobby Darin and Stella Stevens in John Cassavetes 1961 feature Too Late Blues and in the 1958 Harlem Globetrotters movie Go, Man, Go! He had guest spots on Marcus Welby, M.D., Charlie’s Angels and Medical Center. He played Sam, the baseball expert in Roots: The Next Generation, and Raymond Burr’s butler in Love’s Savage Fury. Although he claims he was one of the gorillas in 1968’s Planet of the Apes, I honestly can find no verification of this, no matter how much I want to believe it.

After a dinner with Dizzy Gillespie around 1980, Gaillard decided to return to his one true calling. He signed on for a number of jazz festivals throughout Europe, and started work on a couple new albums. Also at Dizzy’s recommendation, Gaillard picked up again in 1983 and moved to London, where the atmosphere was much more welcoming for American jazz greats than it was in the States.

As if to prove a point, shortly after his arrival, Gaillard was approached by the BBC, which produced a remarkable four-part, four-hour documentary about his life and career. Slim Gaillard Civilization allowed Gaillard to tell his own story, combining archive footage with clips from recent performances, conversations between Gaillard and old friends, candid shots of a family get-together in California (his daughter Jan was married to Marvin Gaye), a few impromptu songs, and even some dramatic recreations of scenes from his childhood. Gaillard’s slow, gentle and simple poetic narration leaves his tale sounding like a children’s bedtime story, which is the overall form the documentary takes.

He was a little slower, a little more, yes, mellow, and the manic energy of half-a decade earlier had ebbed a bit. A new recording of “How High the Moon?” seemed staid and over-rehearsed, even a little bored compared with the unpredictable and mad anarchic ad-libbing of his original 1947 recording, but remains uniquely his own. More than anything, there was a new and unexpected air of melancholy about the 68-year-old, much of it focused on a scene from his childhood. As he was leaving Cuba with his father for what would be the last time, Gaillard had been instructed not to look back, because he would see his mother standing there on the dock and want to go home. He did as he was told, never once thinking he would never see her again. After being abandoned in Crete, he never saw either of his parents again.

Gaillard died in 1991 at age 75, and is mostly remembered today as a novelty act, a kind of clown prince of jazz, but he’d led a singularly American life for someone who didn’t speak English until he was 16, and remains one of the most unique, eccentric, and insanely talented musical entertainers the country’s produced.

O-Roonee.

Jim Knipfel

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dweemeister · 5 years

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2018 Movie Odyssey

That is time on the 2018 Movie Odyssey. Though the number of total films I saw increased this year, that was mostly because of a stratospheric rise in short films I saw - thanks to my time at the 2018 Viet Film Fest and Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) decision in March to begin airing one classic Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) short and a Popeye short every Saturday morning except in August and select Saturdays. I saw two hundred and sixty-two films in their entirety that were completely new to me this year - 156 feature-length films (includes one serial) and 107 short films. The number of features was expected to go down this year because of the Winter Olympics in February and the FIFA World Cup in June/July. With only the Women’s World Cup in June/July 2019, maybe there’ll be an increase next year (we’ll see how employment impacts the number too)?

If there is anything that disappoints me about this list is that, again, there is only one African film (a short) featured this year and one from Latin America (Roma). There used to be a handful of classic African films on Netflix, but Netflix’s recent moves to emphasize television and its Netflix originals has blocked off that possibility. So here’s hoping in 2019 there will be much more representation from Africa and Latin America - not only among short films, but in features especially.

For all those who participated and supported the Movie Odyssey in any way - by reading, liking, commenting on, or reblogging a write-up; talking with me about movies we’ve seen; or even sitting down with me to watch something... none of this possible without you. So all of you have my thanks. The Movie Odyssey continues, as always. Onward to 2019.

As many of you know, all ratings are based on my imdb rating and half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here. A 6/10 is considered the borderline between “passing” and “failing”. Feature-length narrative films, serials, documentaries, and short films are rated within their respective spectrums. Here is the list... beginning with Disney and ending with Disney.

JANUARY

Pete’s Dragon (1977) – 6.5/10

The Post (2017) – 8/10

Salt of the Earth (1954) – 7/10

Girl Crazy (1943) – 7/10

The Greatest Showman (2017) – 6/10

Charade (1963) – 9.5/10

The Boy with Green Hair (1948) – 6/10

Stop! Look! And Hasten! (1954 short) – 7/10

Strangled Eggs (1961 short) – 6/10

Flirty Birdy (1945 short) – 6/10

Hollywood Hotel (1937) – 6/10

Darkest Hour (2017) – 7/10

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2017, Japan) – 7/10

Pyaasa (1957, India) – 9.5/10

Call Me by Your Name (2017) – 8/10

Phantom Thread (2017) – 9/10

A Warm December (1973) – 6/10

A Corny Concerto (1943 short) – 9/10

FEBRUARY (2018′s 31 DAYS OF OSCAR)

All This, and Heaven Too (1940) – 8.5/10

A River Runs Through It (1992) – 7/10

The Heiress (1949) – 10/10

Stop, Look and Listen (1967 short) – 9/10

The Black Stallion (1979) – 7.5/10

DeKalb Elementary (2017 short) – 9/10

The Silent Child (2017 short) – 7/10

My Nephew Emmett (2017 short) – 7.5/10

The Eleven O’Clock (2017 short) – 9/10

Watu Wote: All of Us (2017, Germany/Kenya) – 8/10

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) – 6/10

Dear Basketball (2017 short) – 7.5/10

Negative Space (2017 short, France) – 7.5/10

Lou (2017 short) – 8/10

Revolting Rhymes Part One (2016 short) – 8/10

Garden Party (2016 short, France) – 7/10

Lost Property Office (2017 short) – 7/10

Weeds (2017 short) – 6/10

Achoo (2017 short, France) – 6/10

Heroin(e) (2017 short) – 6.5/10

Knife Skills (2017 short) – 8/10

Traffic Stop (2017 short) – 7/10

Edith+Eddie (2017 short) – 8/10

Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (2016 short) – 6.5/10

MARCH

A Man for All Seasons (1966) – 8/10

The Alamo (1960) – 6/10

A Wrinkle in Time (2018) – 5.5/10

Black Panther (2018) – 7/10

The Counterfeit Cat (1949 short) – 7/10

Popeye the Sailor (1933 short) – 8/10

Piccadilly (1929) – 6/10

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) – 7/10

Droopy Leprechaun (1958 short) – 6/10

I Yam What I Yam (1933 short) – 6.5/10

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) – 7.5/10

National Velvet (1944) – 6.5/10

The Early Bird Dood It! (1942 short) – 7/10

Blow Me Down! (1933 short) – 7/10

Splendor in the Grass (1961) – 8.5/10

Dangal (2016, India) – 7/10

Ready Player One (2018) – 7/10

The Golden Touch (1935 short) – 7/10

Grease (1978) – 6.5/10

The Bear That Couldn’t Sleep (1939 short) – 6/10

I Eats My Spinach (1933 short) – 7/10

Overboard (1987) – 7.5/10

APRIL

Quo Vadis (1951) – 7.5/10

In Search of the Castaways (1962) – 6/10

Cimarron (1931) – 5/10

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) – 6/10

Mr. Duck Steps Out (1940 short) – 7.5/10

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968) – 6/10

A Quiet Place (2018) – 8/10

Little ‘Tinker (1948 short) – 7/10

Seasin’s Greetniks! (1933 short) – 6.5/10

Drag-A-Long Droopy (1954 short) – 7/10

Wild Elephinks (1933 short) – 6/10

The Cat Returns (2002, Japan) – 6/10

Spring Dreams (1960, Japan) – 6/10

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) – 7.5/10

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) – 7/10

PK (2014, India) – 7/10

The Bear and the Bean (1948 short) – 6/10

Sock-a-Bye, Baby (1934 short) – 6/10

Crossfire (1947) – 7.5/10

The Sword and the Rose (1953) – 6/10

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years (2016) – 7/10

Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue (1953) – 5/10

Animal House (1978) – 6.5/10

The Early Bird and the Worm (1936 short) – 5/10

Let’s You and Him Fight (1934 short) – 6/10

MAY

My Brother’s Wedding (1983) – 7.5/10

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – 6.5/10

Chips Off the Old Block (1942 short) – 6/10

The Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934 short) – 8/10

The Woman in White (1948) – 6.5/10

Can You Take It (1934 short) – 7/10

Farewell to Spring (1959, Japan) – 6.5/10

Floral Japan (1937 short) – 5/10

The Wacky World of Mother Goose (1967) – 3/10

Dodge City (1939) – 7/10

Homesteader Droopy (1954 short) – 7/10

Shoein’ Hosses (1934 short) – 6/10

Wonder Man (1945) – 7/10

Hans Christian Andersen (1952) – 7.5/10

Solo (2018) – 6/10

JUNE

A Day at the Beach (1938 short) – 6/10

Strong to the Finich (1934 short) – 6.5/10

Blondie (1938) – 7/10

A Man Escaped (1956, France) – 10/10

Braveheart (1995) – 6.5/10

Hereditary (2018) – 9/10

Moose Hunters (1937 short) – 7/10

Bao (2018 short) – 6/10

Incredibles 2 (2018) – 8/10

Sleepy-Time Squirrel (1954 short) – 7/10

Shiver Me Timbers! (1934 short) – 8.5/10

Papa Gets the Bird (1940 short) – 6/10

Axe Me Another (1934 short) – 7/10

So You’re Going to Be a Father (1947 short) – 7/10

Gokurôsama (2017 short, France) – 6/10

Pom Poko (1994, Japan) – 8/10

Greyfriars Bobby (1961) – 7/10

Red Barry (1938 serial) – 5/10

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018) – 9/10

JULY

The Three Little Pups (1953 short) – 7.5/10

A Dream Walking (1934 short) – 7/10

Cellbound (1955 short) – 8/10

The Two-Alarm Fire (1934 short) – 6/10

The Blue Angel (1930, Germany) – 9.5/10

The Philadelphia Story (1940) – 10/10

Big Red (1962) – 6/10

Benji the Hunted (1987) – 6/10

The Dance Contest (1934 short) – 6/10

It (1927) – 7/10

The Legend of Lobo (1962) – 7/10

Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) – 6/10

Dances with Wolves (1990) – 8.5/10

The NeverEnding Story (1984) – 6/10

Son of Lassie (1945) – 6/10

A Generation (1955, Poland) – 6.5/10

Overture: Tannhäuser (1926 short) – 6/10

Stowaway (1936) – 7/10

A View to a Kill (1985) – 4.5/10

Warlock (1959) – 7.5/10

The Steamroller and the Violin (1961, Soviet Union) – 8.5/10

Old Smokey (1938 short) – 6.5/10

Beware of Barnacle Bill (1935) – 8/10

Stalker (1979, Soviet Union) – 10/10

Moon Over Miami (1941) – 7/10

Eighth Grade (2018) – 8.5/10

The Living Daylights (1987) – 6/10

Sorry to Bother You (2018) – 8/10

The Little Wise Quacker (1952 short) – 6/10

Be Kind to ‘Aminals’ (1935 short) – 5/10

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) – 8.5/10

AUGUST

Gojira (1954, Japan) – 9/10

Christopher Robin (2018) – 7/10

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) – 8/10

Licence to Kill (1989) – 7.5/10

Mare Nostrum (1926) – 6.5/10

Berkeley Square (1933) – 7/10

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) – 7/10

GoldenEye (1995) – 8/10

Hanh, Solo (2017) – 7/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

The Girl from Yesterday (2017, Vietnam) – 6/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

Actress Wanted (2018) – 7/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) – 6/10

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) – 6/10

The Fountainhead (1949) – 6.5/10

South Pacific (1958) – 6/10

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927) – 7/10

Naughty Marietta (1935) – 6/10

The World Is Not Enough (1999) – 5/10

The Way Station (2017, Vietnam) – 6/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963) – 5/10

49th Parallel (1941) – 8.5/10

SEPTEMBER

The Rains Came (1939) – 6/10

8½ (1963, Italy) – 10/10

Die Another Day (2002) – 4.5/10

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – 5/10

Tron (1982) – 5/10

Perfect Blue (1997, Japan) – 8/10

RBG (2018) – 7.5/10

The Alley Cat (1941 short) – 7/10

The ‘Hyp-Nut-Tist’ (1935 short) – 6/10

My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999, Japan) – 8.5/10

Pick of the Litter (2018) – 7/10

The House of Tomorrow (1949 short) – 7.5/10

OCTOBER

Cry, the Beloved Country (1951) – 8/10

A Star Is Born (2018) - 8/10

The Story of Temple Drake (1933) – 8/10

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973, Spain) – 8/10

First Generation (2017 short) – 6/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

Nước (2016 short, Vietnam) – 7/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

Spring Leaves (2015 short, France) – 8/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

Every Grain of Rice (2017 short) – 6/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest; not on imdb)

Nguyening: The Lee Nguyen Story (2017 short) – 7/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest; not on imdb)

Summer in Closed Eyes (2018, Vietnam) – 7/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

Untold Secrets (2018 short) – student film, score withheld (2018 Viet Film Fest; not on imdb)

Altarlife (2018 short) – student film, score withheld (2018 Viet Film Fest; not on imdb)

The Broken Bond (2018 short) – student film, score withheld (2018 Viet Film Fest; not on imdb)

Crazy 8 (2018 short) – student film, score withheld (2018 Viet Film Fest; not on imdb)

100 Days of Sunshine (2018, Vietnam) – 6/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

The Purple Horizon (1971, Vietnam) – 7/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

The Walking Dead (1936) – 6.5/10

First Man (2018) – 8/10

The Seventh Victim (1943) – 7/10

The Tailor (2017, Vietnam) – 6.5/10

The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964) – 4/10

NOVEMBER

The Old Man & the Gun (2018) – 7/10

Fallen Angel (1945) – 6/10

Imitation of Life (1934) – 8/10

Free Solo (2018) – 8/10

Mabel’s Blunder (1914 short) – 6/10

Caught in a Cabaret (1914 short) – 6/10

Floating Weeds (1959, Japan) – 9/10

The Hate U Give (2018) – 7/10

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) – 7.5/10

The D.I. (1957) – 7/10

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) – 7.5/10

Alexander Nevsky (1938, Soviet Union) – 8/10

Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) – 6/10

Cooley High (1975) – 7/10

Burning (2018, South Korea) – 9/10

Mirai (2018, Japan) – 6/10

DECEMBER

West Point (1927) – 7/10

Shoplifters (2018, Japan) – 10/10

Roma (2018, Mexico) – 10/10

Kiss & Spell (2017, Vietnam) – 5/10 (2018 Viet Film Fest)

Henpecked Hoboes (1946 short) – 6/10

For Better or Worser (1935 short) – 7/10

Dizzy Divers (1935 short) – 7/10

The Little Whirlwind (1941 short) – 6/10

The Captain’s Pup (1938 short) – 6/10

You Gotta Be a Football Hero (1935 short) – 6.5/10

King of the Mardi Gras (1935 short) – 7/10

Barney Bear’s Victory Garden (1942 short) – 6.5/10

Screwball Squirrel (1944 short) – 7.5/10

Adventures of Popeye (1935 short) – 5/10

The Spinach Overture (1935 short) – 7/10

One Droopy Knight (1957 short) – 7.5/10

Who Killed Who? (1943 short) – 8/10

Vim, Vigor and Vitaliky (1936 short) – 6/10

A Clean Shaven Man (1936 short) – 7/10

Jerky Turkey (1945 short) – 6/10

Brotherly Love (1936 short) – 8/10

I-Ski Love-Ski You-Ski (1936 short) – 7/10

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) – 9/10

Grin and Share It (1957 short) – 7.5/10

Alias St. Nick (1935 short) – 6/10

The Captain’s Christmas (1938 short) – 6/10

Bridge Ahoy! (1936 short) – 7/10

What – No Spinach? (1936 short) – 7/10

I Wanna Be a Life Guard (1936 short) – 6/10

Flight of the Navigator (1986) – 7.5/10

The Black Hole (1979) – 5.5/10

Pluto’s Sweater (1949 short) – 6/10

Double Dribble (1946 short) – 6/10

Aquaman (2018) – 6.5/10

The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) – 7/10

The Favourite (2018) – 8.5/10

The Cat from Outer Space (1978) – 5.5/10

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) – 6/10

Son of Flubber (1963) – 6/10

All scores are subject to change (upgrades and downgrades) upon a rewatch.

#My Movie Odyssey

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