Fred Astaire - Cheek to Cheek

Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987), born Frederick Austerlitz, was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.

His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans. Although his efforts as a dancer necessarily overshadowed his purely musical work, he made hundreds of recordings over a period of more than 50 years, resulting in several major hits.

Astaire's long career breaks down neatly into four major phases. From 1905 to 1917, he and his sister Adele Astaire (b. Sep 10, 1897; d. Jan 25, 1981) danced and sang as the team of Fred and Adele Astaire in vaudeville. From 1917 to 1933, Astaire worked in the legitimate theater in 11 stage musicals, ten of them with his sister. From 1933 to 1957, he appeared in 30 movie musicals, ten of them teaming him with Ginger Rogers. From 1957 to 1981, he worked mostly as a character actor in films and on television.

He made his final film appearance in the thriller Ghost Story, released in December 1981. He died of pneumonia at 88 on June 22, 1987.

"Cheek to Cheek" is a song written by Irving Berlin, and first performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Top Hat (1935). Astaire's 1935 recording with the Leo Reisman Orchestra was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.

The song is probably most famous for its opening lines, "Heaven, I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak..." and quickly became a standard of the Great American Songbook. The lyrics were parodied by Berlin himself in his subsequent song He Ain't Got Rhythm, from the film On the Avenue (1937).

Nina Simone - Mood Indigo

"Mood Indigo" (1930) is a jazz composition and song, with music by Duke Ellington and Barney Bigard with lyrics by Irving Mills.

The main theme was provided by Bigard, who learned it in New Orleans, Louisiana from his clarinet teacher Lorenzo Tio, who called it a "Mexican Blues". Ellington's distinctive arrangement was first recorded on 17 October 1930.

"Mood Indigo" is performed both as an instrumental and as a vocal. It has been recorded by a countless number of artists, ranging from Charles Mingus to Ella Fitzgerald, Nat "King" Cole, Frank Sinatra, Louie Armstrong.

"Mood Indigo" is featured in the films The Untouchables (1987) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). It is also the closing music for the film The Cotton Club (1984).

Nina Simone (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music.

Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
Over her career, Simone recorded over 40 albums, mostly between 1958 — when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue — and 1974.

After twenty years of performing, she became involved in the civil rights movement and the direction of her life shifted once more. Simone's music was highly influential in the fight black people faced for equal rights at this time in America, regardless of race.

James Iron Head Baker - Black Betty

"Black Betty" is a 20th century African-American work song . The song was first recorded in the field by U.S. musicologists John and Alan Lomax in 1933, performed a cappella by the convict James Baker (also known as Iron Head) and a group at Central State Farm, Sugar Land, Texas (a State prison farm).It was recorded commercially in New York in 1939 by Lead Belly, an iconic American folk and blues musician.

Benny Goodman - Sing Sing Sing

If this blog was a radio show..that would be its opening theme... a 1936 song, written by Louis Prima. Benny Goodman on clarinet; Harry James, Ziggy Elman, and Chris Griffin on trumpets; Red Ballard and Murray McEachern on trombones; Hymie Schertzer and George Koenig on alto saxophones; Art Rollini and Vido Musso on tenor saxophone; Jess Stacy on piano; Allan Reuss on guitar; Harry Goodman on bass; and Gene Krupa on drums. A true masterpiece..