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Below are current event articles that relate to events, topics, and people found in The Mystery of the Blues.
Wayne B. Wheeler: The Man Who Turned Off the Taps
Smithsonian.com
5/1/2010
On the last day before the taps ran dry, the streets of San Francisco were jammed. A frenzy of cars, trucks, wagons and every other imaginable form of conveyance crisscrossed the town and battled its steepest hills.
Jewish Songwriters, American Songs
Smithsonian.com
10/7/2009
By 1926, Cole Porter had already written several Broadway scores, “none of which had, well, scored,” poet and critic David Lehman points out. But one enchanted evening that year, while dining in Venice with Noël Coward, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Porter confided that he had finally figured out the secret to writing hits. “I’ll write Jewish tunes,” he said.
Why Music Moves Us
SCIAM.com
7/1/2009
As a recreational vocalist, I have spent some of the most moving moments of my life engaged in song. As a college student, my eyes would often well up with tears during my twice-a-week choir rehearsals. I would feel relaxed and at peace yet excited and joyful, and I occasionally experienced a thrill so powerful that it sent shivers down my spine. I also felt connected with fellow musicians in a way I did not with friends who did not sing with me.
Bone Flute Is Oldest Instrument, Study Says
Nationalgeographic.com
6/24/2009
A vulture-bone flute discovered in a European cave is likely the world's oldest recognizable musical instrument and pushes back humanity's musical roots, a new study says. Found with fragments of mammoth-ivory flutes, the 40,000-year-old artifact also adds to evidence that music may have given the first European modern humans a strategic advantage over Neanderthals, researchers say.
Herman Leonard’s Eye for Jazz
Smithsonian.com
5/7/2009
More than six decades ago, Herman Leonard began photographing icons of jazz in the smoke-filled nightclubs and rehearsal houses where the musicians worked. From jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday to the geniuses of bebop—Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie “Bird” Parker and Miles Davis—Leonard captured for posterity a transitional period in the history of jazz.
Benny Goodman's Clarinet
Smithsonian.com
3/26/2009
In the hierarchy of musical instruments, the clarinet tends to get short shrift—at least compared with the violin, cello or piano. But the inauguration of Barack Obama raised the instrument's profile when Anthony McGill, principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, performed with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman and pianist Gabriela Montero before a global television audience estimated at a billion viewers.
French wanted what US didn’t: Black Conn. man fought in WWI
www.telegram.com
1/25/2009
Pvt. William Henry Washington wasn’t considered fit to serve under the American flag during World War I because of the color of his skin, but France was only too happy to have him.