#15051
Marilyn Monroe
1926 - 1962 (36 years)
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a pop culture icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
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Ethel Clayton
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Ethel Clayton was an American actress of the silent film era. Early years Born in Champaign, Illinois, Clayton attended St. Elizabeth's school in Chicago. Career Clayton debuted on stage as a professional as a member of the chorus in a production at the Chicago Opera House. After that, she worked with stock theater companies in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
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George Jessel
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
George Albert "Georgie" Jessel was an American actor, singer, songwriter, and film producer. He was famous in his lifetime as a multitalented comedic entertainer, achieving a level of recognition that transcended his limited roles in movies. He was widely known by his nickname, the "Toastmaster General of the United States," for his frequent role as the master of ceremonies at political and entertainment gatherings. Jessel originated the title role in the stage production of The Jazz Singer.
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P. J. Cosijn
1840 - 1899 (59 years)
Pieter Jacob Cosijn was a late 19th-century Dutch scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature. His important work on Beowulf was edited by Rolf Bremmer. Cosijn became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1877.
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Feodor Koenemann
1873 - 1937 (64 years)
Feodor Feodorovich Koenemann was a pianist, composer and music teacher. His last name originated from the Prussian family name Könemann of his father Friedrich Napoleon Könemann . Biography Feodor Koenemann was trained from 1892 to 1897 at the Moscow Conservatory under Nikolay Zverev , Vasily Safonov , Anton Arensky, Sergei Taneyev and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov . He was graduated in 1897 with the Great Gold Medal with two specialities – Pianist and Music theory.
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John P. Shanley
1915 - 1985 (70 years)
John P. Shanley was an American journalist, specializing in radio, television and drama. He worked for The New York Times from 1937–63, winning five publisher's awards. A New York City native, Shanley attended Fordham University and was employed as a copyboy by The New York Times in 1937, the year he graduated with a bachelor's degree. Soon thereafter he was promoted to general assignment reporter, remaining in the position until World War II, when he took a leave of absence to enlist in the Army and serve in counterintelligence at such theaters of war as China, Burma, India and North Africa...
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John Barnes Chance
1932 - 1972 (40 years)
John Barnes Chance was an American composer. Chance studied composition with Clifton Williams at the University of Texas, Austin, and is best known for his concert band works, which include Variations on a Korean Folk Song, Incantation and Dance, and Blue Lake Overture.
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Nadia Reisenberg
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Nadia Reisenberg Sherman was an American pianist of Lithuanian birth. Biography Nadia Reisenberg was born in Vilnius to a Jewish family. Her parents were Aaron and Rachel Reisenberg. Her sister Anna was born two years later, and Clara in 1911 who later took the married name of Clara Rockmore and became renowned for her virtuosity on the theremin. The three sisters remained extremely close. When Nadia was six, her uncle Paul sent the family a piano, and Nadia immediately knew she would be at the keyboard for the rest of her life. Her talent demanded that the family move to St. Petersburg for ...
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James Litton
1900 - Present (126 years)
James Litton was an American musician, who directed the American Boychoir from 1985 to 2001, and is widely recognized as one of the leading choral conductors of the day. Overview Dr. Litton conducted choral and orchestral works throughout five continents, and regularly lead workshops and seminars in the United States and abroad. During past seasons he has conducted the Berkshire Choral Festival, at the Tanglewood Music Festival, and at music festivals in Canada, in Prague, Guatemala, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, France, Poland, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and South Africa.
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Armas Launis
1884 - 1959 (75 years)
Armas Launis , was a Finnish composer as well as an ethnomusicologist, a professor, a writer and a journalist. He was born in Hämeenlinna. Composer Armas Launis was mainly an opera composer. He wrote ten operas . Several were performed:In Finland: "The Seven Brothers" , the first Finnish opera comique, and "Kullervo" , both in full stage performance, and a concert performance of "Aslak Hetta" in 2004 at Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, directed by Sakari Oramo.In France: stage performance of Kullervo with radio broadcasts on Paris-Inter and Radio Monte-Carlo . A short version of "Jehudith" was also ...
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Adolphe Samuel
1824 - 1898 (74 years)
Adolphe-Abraham Samuel was a Belgian music critic, teacher, conductor and composer. Biography Adolphe-Abraham Samuel was born in Liège in an artistic family. His parents encouraged him to become a painter and he began studying at the age of seven. He received his earliest music education from his sister Caroline before studying solfège and piano with Etienne Soubre and Auguste Franck and the Royal Conservatory of Liège. At the age of twelve he performed in concerts organised by the Belgian violinist Charles Auguste de Bériot and his sister-in-law Pauline Viardot. In 1840 he entered the Royal ...
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Muggsy Spanier
1901 - 1967 (66 years)
Francis Joseph "Muggsy" Spanier was an American jazz cornetist based in Chicago. He was a member of the Bucktown Five, pioneers of the "Chicago style" that straddled traditional Dixieland jazz and swing.
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Robert F. McGowan
1882 - 1955 (73 years)
Robert Francis McGowan was an American film director and producer, best known as the senior director of the Our Gang short subjects film series from 1922 until 1933. Career Before moving to Los Angeles, McGowan was a firefighter in his native Denver. An on-the-job accident during a fire rescue mission left him with a permanent limp.
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Magic Sam
1937 - 1969 (32 years)
Samuel Gene Maghett , known as Magic Sam, was an American Chicago blues musician. He was born in Grenada County, Mississippi, and learned to play the blues from listening to records by Muddy Waters and Little Walter. After moving to Chicago at the age of 19, he was signed by Cobra Records and became well known as a bluesman after the release of his first record, "All Your Love", in 1957. He was known for his distinctive tremolo guitar playing.
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Friedrich Grützmacher
1832 - 1903 (71 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Grützmacher was a noted German cellist and composer in the second half of the 19th century. He composed mostly for cello , but also wrote orchestral pieces, chamber music, piano music and songs.
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Mack Harrell
1909 - 1960 (51 years)
Mack Kendree Harrell, Jr. was an American operatic and concert baritone vocalist who was regarded as one of the greatest American-born lieder singers of his generation. Growing up Harrell was born in Celeste, Texas, to Asbury Mack Kendree Harrell and Mollie Harrell, . The youngest of two brothers and a sister, he was raised and educated in Greenville, Texas. He studied violin from the age of ten and continued for twelve years. One of his brothers, Lynn Mozart Harrell , had been a big band pianist with the Jimmy Joy Orchestra while a student at The University of Texas at Austin in the 1920...
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Tansen
1493 - 1589 (96 years)
Mian Tansen , also referred to and commonly known as Sangeet Samrat or Mian , was a Hindustani classical musician. Born in a Hindu Gaur Brahmin family, he learnt and perfected his art in the northwest region of modern Madhya Pradesh. He began his career and spent most of his adult life in the court and patronage of the Hindu king of Rewa, Raja Ramchandra Singh , where Tansen's musical abilities and studies gained widespread fame. This reputation brought him to the attention of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, who sent messengers to Raja Ramchandra Singh, requesting Tansen to join the musicians at the Mughal court.
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J. T. Brown
1918 - 1969 (51 years)
John Thomas Brown was an American tenor saxophonist of the Chicago blues era. He was variously billed as Saxman Brown, J. T. Brown, Bep Brown, Nature Boy Brown and J.T. "Blow It" Brown. Biography Born John Thomas Brown in Mississippi, he was a member of the Rabbit's Foot Minstrels and spent some time in Memphis, Tennessee, before moving to Chicago. He worked as a session musician for several artists and made some records on Harlem and United, among other labels, in the 1950s. "Round House Boogie" / "Kickin' the Blues Around", "Sax-ony Boogie", and "Dumb Woman Blues" were issued under various...
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Richard Wetz
1875 - 1935 (60 years)
Richard Wetz was a German late Romantic composer best known for his three symphonies. In these works, he "seems to have aimed to be an immediate continuation of Bruckner, as a result of which he actually ended up on the margin of music history".
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Clifton Webb
1889 - 1966 (77 years)
Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck , known professionally as Clifton Webb, was an American actor, singer, and dancer. He worked extensively and was known for his stage appearances in the plays of Noël Coward, including Blithe Spirit, as well as appearances on Broadway in a number of successful musical revues. As a film actor, he was nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Supporting Actor for Laura and The Razor's Edge , and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sitting Pretty .
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Alice Blinn
1889 - 1982 (93 years)
Alice Blinn was an American educator, home efficiency expert, and magazine editor. Born in Candor, New York, she attended the New York State normal school and became a teacher. After teaching briefly, in 1913, she entered Cornell University and earned a degree in Domestic Science. While in school, she founded and managed the Cornell Women's Review. After graduation in 1917, she became a food conservation demonstrator for the New York Extension Service and then returned after a year to teach and manage the publications office for the Extension Service at Cornell.
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Thomas Armstrong
1898 - 1994 (96 years)
Sir Thomas Henry Wait Armstrong was an English organist, conductor, composer and educationalist. He was from a musical family and his early career was as a church and cathedral organist. From the 1920s onwards he was a broadcaster for the BBC giving talks as well as playing.
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Gaspar Cassadó
1897 - 1966 (69 years)
Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu was a Spanish cellist and composer of the early 20th century. Biography Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu was born in Barcelona to a church musician father, Joaquim Cassadó, and began taking cello lessons at age seven. When he was nine, he played in a recital where Pablo Casals was in the audience; Casals immediately offered to teach him. The city of Barcelona awarded him a scholarship so that he could study with Casals in Paris.
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Mabel Normand
1892 - 1930 (38 years)
Amabel Ethelreid Normand , better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, director and screenwriter. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company, the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company. On screen, she appeared in twelve successful films with Charlie Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing films featuring Chaplin as her leading man. In the 1920s Normand's name was linked wit...
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Karl Schmitt-Walter
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Karl Schmitt-Walter was a prominent German opera singer, particularly associated with Mozart and the more lyrical Wagner baritone roles. Life and career Schmitt-Walter was born in Germersheim. He studied at the Nuremberg Conservatory with Gustav Landauer, and made his debut there in 1921. He subsequently appeared at provincial opera houses in Oberhausen, Saarbrücken, Dortmund and Wiesbaden, building a reputation for vocal excellence as he went along. Schmitt-Walter made his key debut at the Berlin State Opera in 1935, as Luna in Il trovatore, which led to a long association with this important theatre, where he would sing wide repertory of lyric parts for the baritone voice.
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Prosper Sainton
1813 - 1890 (77 years)
Prosper Philippe Catherine Sainton was a French violinist. Life Sainton was the son of a merchant at Toulouse, where he was born. He entered the Paris Conservatoire under François Antoine Habeneck in 1831, and became professor of the violin in the Conservatoire of Toulouse.
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Louis Persinger
1887 - 1966 (79 years)
Louis Persinger was an American violinist, pianist and professor of violin. Persinger had early lessons in Colorado, appearing in public by the age of 12. His main studies were at the Leipzig Conservatory where he studied violin with Hans Becker, piano with Carl Beving, conducting with Arthur Nikisch before finishing with Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels and then studying with Jacques Thibaud in France for two summers. Arthur Nikisch described him as "one of the most talented pupils the Leipzig Conservatory ever had."
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Harry Ruby
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Harry Rubenstein , known professionally as Harry Ruby, was an American actor, pianist, composer, songwriter and screenwriter, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. He was married to silent film actress Eileen Percy.
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Keith Murdoch
1885 - 1952 (67 years)
Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch was an Australian journalist and newspaper proprietor who was the founder of the Murdoch media empire. He amassed significant media holdings in Australia which after his death were expanded globally by his son Rupert.
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Georg Kulenkampff
1898 - 1948 (50 years)
Alwin Georg Kulenkampff-Post was a German virtuoso violinist. One of the most popular German concert violinists of the 1930s and 1940s, he was considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century.
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Walther Ludwig
1902 - 1981 (79 years)
Walther Ludwig was a German operatic lyric tenor, particularly associated with Mozart roles and Schubert lieder. Biography He was born on 17 March 1902 in Bad Oeynhausen. He first studied medicine in Freiburg before turning to voice studies in Königsberg, where he made his debut in 1928. He then sang in Schwerin, where he created the title role in Paul Graeners's Friedmann Bach in 1931. He joined the Städtische Oper Berlin in 1932, where he established himself in Mozart roles such as Belmonte, Don Ottavio, Tamino, Idomeneo, Ferrando, etc. After the war, he began appearing at the Hamburg State...
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John Hughes
1873 - 1932 (59 years)
John Hughes was a Welsh composer of hymn tunes. He is most widely known for the tune Cwm Rhondda. Hughes was born in Dowlais, and brought up in Llanilltud Faerdref , Pontypridd. At the age of 12 he began work in Glynn Colliery in his home town and subsequently became a clerk at the Great Western Colliery Pontypridd where he worked for over 40 years. He served as a deacon and leader of the congregational singing in Salem Baptist Chapel in Llanilltud Faerdref.
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Harry Benjamin Jepson
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Harry Benjamin Jepson was an American organist and composer and the first University Organist of Yale University. Jepson was born August 16, 1870, in New Haven, Connecticut. Jepson studied at Yale under Horatio Parker and Gustave Stoeckel, earning a B.A. in 1893 and a B.M. in 1894. While at Yale he was the organist for New Haven's Christ Church and Old Center Church . He then studied in Paris under Charles Marie Widor and Louis Vierne.
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Enn Võrk
1905 - 1962 (57 years)
Enn Võrk was an Estonian composer, conductor, and organist. In 1926, he graduated from Tallinn Conservatory. Between 1926–1933, he conducted Choir of St. John's Church in Tallinn. From 1926–1929, he conducted Radio Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra.
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Will Bradley
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Wilbur Schwichtenberg , known professionally as Will Bradley, was an American trombonist and bandleader during the 1930s and 1940s. He performed swing, dance music, and boogie-woogie songs, many of them written or co-written by Don Raye.
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Elmo Hope
1923 - 1967 (44 years)
St. Elmo Sylvester Hope was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, chiefly in the bebop and hard bop genres. He grew up playing and listening to jazz and classical music with Bud Powell, and both were close friends of another influential pianist, Thelonious Monk.
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Albert Grossman
1926 - 1986 (60 years)
Albert Bernard Grossman was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music and rock and roll scene. He was famous as the manager of many of the most popular and successful performers of folk and folk-rock music, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Band, Odetta, Gordon Lightfoot, and Ian & Sylvia.
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Joe Davis
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Joseph M. Davis was an American music producer, publisher and promoter in jazz, rhythm and blues and pop music. Life and career Joe Davis was born in New York City. In the late 1910s and 1920s, he worked as a songwriter and singer who recorded for Columbia Records. In the mid-1920s, he had been responsible for placing dozens of blues and pop singers under his management with major and minor labels, while pursuing a radio and recording career as "Joe Davis, The Melody Man" and operating Triangle Music Publishing Co., which was founded in 1919 with the help of George F. Briegel .
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Marmaduke Barton
1865 - 1938 (73 years)
Marmaduke Barton FRCM was an English pianist, composer and teacher at the Royal College of Music for almost 50 years. Career Marmaduke Miller Barton was born in Manchester, the son of a United Methodist Free Church minister, the Rev Samuel Saxon Barton. He was educated at the Royal College of Music in London under one of the first 50 scholarships. His teachers were John Francis Barnett and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.
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Wade Boteler
1888 - 1943 (55 years)
Wade Boteler was an American film actor and writer. He appeared in more than 430 films between 1919 and 1943. Biography He was born in Santa Ana, California, and died in Hollywood, California, from a heart attack.
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Eddie Vinson
1917 - 1988 (71 years)
Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson was an American jump blues, jazz, bebop and R&B alto saxophonist and blues shouter. He was nicknamed Cleanhead after an incident in which his hair was accidentally destroyed by lye contained in a hair straightening product, necessitating shaving it off; enamoured of the look, Vinson maintained a shaved head thereafter. Music critic Robert Christgau has called Vinson "one of the cleanest—and nastiest—blues voices you'll ever hear."
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Henry Brinley Richards
1819 - 1885 (66 years)
Henry Brinley Richards was a Welsh composer, who also published some works under the pseudonym 'Carl Luini'. Richards was born in Hall Street, Carmarthen, his father being organist at St Peter's Church in the town and an organiser of local musical events. Richards won a prize at the Gwent-Morgannwg Eisteddfod of 1834, held at Cardiff, for his arrangement of the popular folk song, "The Ash Grove". As a result, he received the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle; this enabled him to study at the Royal Academy of Music. After completing his studies, he went to Paris where he became a pupil of Frédéric Chopin.
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Leroy Robertson
1896 - 1971 (75 years)
Leroy Robertson was an American composer and music educator. Robertson was born in Fountain Green, Utah. One of his earliest instructors was Anthony C. Lund. He graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music with a certificate in public school music and diplomas in composition, violin , and piano in 1923, the same year he was awarded the Endicott prize for "Overture in E Minor". Following his graduation, Robertson taught music at North Cache High School in Richmond, Utah and at Pleasant Grove High School in Pleasant Grove, Utah, where he also supervised music in the Alpine School Dist...
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Richard Tucker
1884 - 1942 (58 years)
Richard Tucker was an American actor. Tucker was born in Brooklyn, New York. Appearing in more than 260 films between 1911 and 1940, he was the first official member of the Screen Actors Guild and a founding member of SAG's Board of Directors. Tucker died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles from a heart attack. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in an unmarked niche in Great Mausoleum, Columbarium of Faith.
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James Blomfield
1879 - 1951 (72 years)
James Jervis Blomfield was an English-born Canadian artist and designer. He is best known for his design of the coat of arms of Vancouver and as a pioneer in the field of stained glass art in Canada, with an extensive body of works completed in British Columbia and Ontario, including the Beechwood Cemetery Mausoleum in Canada's national cemetery in Ottawa. He lived in Toronto for the last 30 years of his life.
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Paul Juon
1872 - 1940 (68 years)
Paul Juon was a Russian-born Swiss composer. Life Juon was born in Moscow, where his father was an insurance official. His parents were Swiss, and he attended a German primary school in Moscow. In 1889, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied violin with Jan Hřímalý and composition with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev. He completed his studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, under Woldemar Bargiel. His first printed works, two Romanzen appeared in 1894, the year he began studies with Bargiel. During his time in Berlin he was a composition professor, employed by Joseph ...
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Lindley Fraser
1904 - 1963 (59 years)
Lindley Macnaghten Fraser was a Scottish academic, author, broadcaster and economist. After an academic career, during which he successfully switched from classics to economics, holding university posts in America, England and Scotland, Fraser was recruited by the BBC to join, and later head, its German service, in which his broadcasts to listeners in Nazi Germany won him a large following.
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John Goss
1800 - 1880 (80 years)
Sir John Goss was an English organist, composer and teacher. Born to a musical family, Goss was a boy chorister of the Chapel Royal, London, and later a pupil of Thomas Attwood, organist of St Paul's Cathedral. After a brief period as a chorus member in an opera company he was appointed organist of a chapel in south London, later moving to more prestigious organ posts at St Luke's Church, Chelsea and finally St Paul's Cathedral, where he struggled to improve musical standards.
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Dan Dailey
1915 - 1978 (63 years)
Daniel James Dailey Jr. was an American actor and dancer. He is best remembered for a series of popular musicals he made at 20th Century Fox such as Mother Wore Tights . Biography Early life Dailey was born on December 14, 1915, in New York City, to Daniel James Dailey Sr. and Helen Theresa Dailey. His younger sister was actress Irene Dailey.
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Franz Simandl
1840 - 1912 (72 years)
Franz Simandl was a Czech double-bassist and pedagogue most remembered for his book New Method for the Double Bass, known as the "Simandl book", which is to this day used as a standard study of double bass technique and hand positions.
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