#15501
Mario Bonnard
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
Mario Bonnard was an Italian actor and film director. Career Bonnard was born and died in Rome. He began his cinematic career as an actor becoming a popular romantic lead in numerous silent films made before World War I. In 1917, he ventured into film directing for the first time. Before the arrival of sound films he worked for a period in Germany in films directed by Luis Trenker.
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Alfred E. Green
1889 - 1960 (71 years)
Alfred Edward Green was an American film director. Green entered film in 1912 as an actor for the Selig Polyscope Company. He became an assistant to director Colin Campbell. He then started to direct two-reelers until he started features in 1917.
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Paul Dessau
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Paul Dessau was a German composer and conductor. He collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and composed incidental music for his plays, and several operas based on them. Biography Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family. His grandfather, Moses Berend Dessau , was a cantor in the Hamburg synagogue. His uncle, , was Konzertmeister at the Staatskapelle Berlin; his cousin, Max Winterfeld, became known under the name Jean Gilbert as a composer of operettas; and his second cousin, Robert Gerson Müller-Hartmann, was a composer and collaborator with Ralph Vaughan Williams.
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Tommy Bolin
1951 - 1976 (25 years)
Thomas Richard Bolin was an American guitarist who played with Zephyr , The James Gang , and Deep Purple , in addition to maintaining a notable career as a solo artist and session musician. Career Early years Tommy Bolin was born in Sioux City, Iowa, and began playing with a band called The Miserlous before he was asked to join another band called Denny and The Triumphs in 1964 at age 13. The band included Dave Stokes on lead vocals, Brad Miller on guitar and vocals, Bolin on lead guitar, Steve Bridenbaugh on organ and vocals, Denny Foote on bass, and Brad Larvick on drums. They played a ble...
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Cootie Williams
1911 - 1985 (74 years)
Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter. Biography Born in Mobile, Alabama, Williams began his professional career at the age of 14 with the Young Family band, which included saxophonist Lester Young. According to Williams he acquired his nickname as a boy when his father took him to a band concert. When it was over his father asked him what he'd heard and he replied, "Cootie, cootie, cootie."
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Willy Fleckhaus
1925 - 1983 (58 years)
Wilhelm August Fleckhaus was a German designer and art director, perhaps best known as art director of Twen magazine throughout its 1959 to 1970 existence. He was a prolific designer of book covers.
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Jimmie Lunceford
1902 - 1947 (45 years)
James Melvin Lunceford was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era. Early life Lunceford was born on a farm in the Evergreen community, west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mississippi, United States. The farm was owned by his father, James. His mother was Idella Shumpert of Oklahoma City, an organist of "more than average ability". Seven months after James Melvin was born, the family moved to Oklahoma City.
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Lionel Monckton
1861 - 1924 (63 years)
Lionel John Alexander Monckton was an English composer of musical theatre. He became Britain's most popular composer of Edwardian musical comedy in the early years of the 20th century. Life and career
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Professor Longhair
1918 - 1980 (62 years)
Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd , better known as Professor Longhair or "Fess" for short, was an American singer and pianist who performed New Orleans blues. He was active in two distinct periods, first in the heyday of early rhythm and blues and later in the resurgence of interest in traditional jazz after the founding of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1970. His piano style has been described as "instantly recognizable, combining rumba, mambo, and calypso".
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Efrem Zimbalist
1889 - 1985 (96 years)
Efrem Zimbalist was a Russian and American concert violinist, composer, conductor and director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Early life Efrem Zimbalist Sr. was born on April 9, 1889, O.S., equivalent to April 21, 1889, in the Gregorian calendar, as reported in many newspaper obituaries, in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of Jewish parents Maria and Aron Zimbalist , who was a conductor. By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father's orchestra. At age 12 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Leopold Auer. He graduated f...
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Jerry Livingston
1909 - 1987 (78 years)
Jerry Livingston was an American songwriter and dance orchestra pianist. Life and career Born in Denver, Colorado to Sam and Dora Levinson, Jerry Livingston studied music at the University of Arizona. While there he composed his first score for a college musical. He moved to New York City in the 1930s, initially working as a pianist for dance orchestras. Livingston served in the Army's Special Services division during World War II.
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Al Cohn
1925 - 1988 (63 years)
Al Cohn was an American jazz saxophonist, arranger and composer. He came to prominence in the band of clarinetist Woody Herman and was known for his longtime musical partnership with fellow saxophonist Zoot Sims.
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Hans Steinhoff
1882 - 1945 (63 years)
Hans Steinhoff was a German film director, best known for the propaganda films he made in the Nazi era. Life and career Steinhoff started his career as a stage actor in the 1900s and later worked as a stage director. He directed his first silent film Clothes Make the Man, the adaption of a novel by Gottfried Keller, in 1921.
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Luigi Denza
1846 - 1922 (76 years)
Luigi Denza was an Italian composer. Career Denza was born at Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. He studied music with Saverio Mercadante and Paolo Serrao at the Naples Conservatory. In 1884, he moved to London, taught singing privately and became a professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music in 1898, where he taught for two decades. He died in London in 1922.
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Nicolas Cleynaerts
1493 - 1542 (49 years)
Nicolas Cleynaerts was a Flemish grammarian and traveler. He was born in Diest, in the Duchy of Brabant. Life Cleynaerts was a follower of Jan Driedo. Educated at the University of Leuven, he became a professor of Latin, which he taught by the conversational method.
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Ferdinand Ries
1784 - 1838 (54 years)
Ferdinand Ries was a German composer. Ries was a friend, pupil and secretary of Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, nine piano concertos , three operas, and numerous other works, including 26 string quartets. In 1838 he published a collection of reminiscences of his teacher Beethoven, co-written with Beethoven's friend, Franz Wegeler. Ries' symphonies, some chamber works—most of them with piano—his violin concerto and his piano concertos have been recorded, exhibiting a style which, given his connection to Beethoven, lies between the Classical and early Rom...
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Alfred De Sève
1858 - 1927 (69 years)
Alfred De Sève was a Canadian violinist, composer, and music educator. His compositional output includes works for violin and piano, solo piano, and orchestra; many of which were published by Arthur P. Schmidt and Charles H. Ditson.
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Alice Joyce
1890 - 1955 (65 years)
Alice Joyce Brown was an American actress who appeared in more than 200 films during the 1910s and 1920s. She is known for her roles in the 1923 film The Green Goddess and its 1930 remake of the same name.
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Giuseppe Sarti
1729 - 1802 (73 years)
Giuseppe Sarti was an Italian opera composer. Biography He was born at Faenza. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 1 December 1729. Some earlier sources say he was born on 28 December, but his baptism certificate proves the later date impossible. Already organist at Faenza at age 13, he was invited to receive an education by Padre Martini in Bologna. Resigning his appointment in Faenza in 1750, Sarti devoted himself to the study of dramatic music, becoming director of the Faenza theatre in 1752.
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Reed Hadley
1911 - 1974 (63 years)
Reed Hadley was an American film, television and radio actor. Early life Hadley was born in Petrolia, Texas, to Bert Herring, an oil well driller, and his wife Minnie. Hadley had one sister, Bess Brenner. He was reared in Buffalo, New York, where he attended and graduated from Bennett High School.
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Edward Tyrrel Channing
1790 - 1856 (66 years)
Edward Tyrrel Channing was an American rhetorician. He was a professor at Harvard College, brother to William Ellery Channing and Walter Channing, and cousin of Richard Henry Dana Sr. Biography Channing was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the son of William and Lucy Channing. In 1807 he graduated from Harvard College, and began the practice of law in Boston, but devoted his attention chiefly to literature. From 1818–1819 he was the second editor of the North American Review after William Tudor , and remained a regular contributor through much of his life.
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George Whitefield Chadwick
1854 - 1931 (77 years)
George Whitefield Chadwick was an American composer. Along with John Knowles Paine, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, and Edward MacDowell, he was a representative composer of what is called the Second New England School of American composers of the late 19th century—the generation before Charles Ives. Chadwick's works are influenced by the Realist movement in the arts, characterized by a down-to-earth depiction of people's lives.
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Francisco Tárrega
1852 - 1909 (57 years)
Francisco de Asís Tárrega Eixea was a Spanish composer and classical guitarist of the late Romantic period. He is known for such pieces as Capricho Árabe and Recuerdos de la Alhambra. Biography Tárrega was born on 21 November 1852, in Villarreal, Province of Castellón, Spain. It is said that Francisco's father played flamenco and several other music styles on his guitar; when his father was away working as a watchman at the Convent of San Pascual, Francisco would take his father's guitar and attempt to make the beautiful sounds he had heard. Francisco's nickname as a child was "Quiquet".
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Uncle Dave Macon
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
David Harrison Macon , known professionally as Uncle Dave Macon, was an American old-time banjo player, singer, songwriter, and comedian. Known as "The Dixie Dewdrop", Macon was known for his chin whiskers, plug hat, gold teeth, and gates-ajar collar, he gained regional fame as a vaudeville performer in the early 1920s before becoming the first star of the Grand Ole Opry in the latter half of the decade.
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Harry Carney
1910 - 1974 (64 years)
Harry Howell Carney was a jazz saxophonist and clarinettist who spent over four decades as a member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. He played a variety of instruments, but primarily used the baritone saxophone, being a critical influence on the instrument in jazz.
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Elwyn Flint
1910 - 1983 (73 years)
Elwyn Flint was an Australian linguist and academic, who undertook extensive surveys of English languages and dialects throughout Queensland, in particular Australian Aboriginal communities in the 1960s.
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James Cruze
1884 - 1942 (58 years)
James Cruze was a silent film actor and film director. Early life Born Jens Cruz Bosen in Ogden, Utah of Mormon parents, Cruze acquired his middle name solely by virtue of his birth date. As Cruze's longtime friend and colleague, actor Luke Cosgrave, explained in a 1930 interview: Did you hear how Jimmy and I came together? I was playing in Boise with Charley Murray and we needed a young fellow for the good looking hero parts and I wired for Chester Stevens, who was in San Francisco, sending him a ticket to Boise. He got a job right then and handed the ticket to another young fellow. I met the train two days after I had expected Chester and thought how young he seemed.
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John La Touche
1915 - 1956 (41 years)
John Treville Latouche was a lyricist and bookwriter in American musical theater. Biography John Treville Latouche was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His family moved to Richmond, Virginia, when he was four months old. There he attended school, before going north to Columbia University. He became involved in music and theater, writing for the Varsity Show and joining the Philolexian Society. He did not graduate.
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Giacinto Scelsi
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French. He is best known for having composed music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics, as paradigmatically exemplified in his Quattro pezzi su una nota sola . This composition remains his most famous work and one of the few performed to significant recognition during his lifetime. His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life.
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Mel Lewis
1929 - 1990 (61 years)
Melvin Sokoloff , known professionally as Mel Lewis, was an American jazz drummer, session musician, professor, and author. He received fourteen Grammy Award nominations. Biography Early years Lewis was born in Buffalo, New York, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents Samuel and Mildred Sokoloff. He started playing professionally as a teen, eventually joining Stan Kenton in 1954. His musical career brought him to Los Angeles in 1957 and New York City in 1963.
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Ivory Joe Hunter
1914 - 1974 (60 years)
Ivory Joe Hunter was an American rhythm-and-blues singer, songwriter, and pianist. After a series of hits on the US R&B chart starting in the mid-1940s, he became more widely known for his hit recording "Since I Met You Baby" . He was billed as The Baron of the Boogie, and also known as The Happiest Man Alive. His musical output ranged from R&B to blues, boogie-woogie, and country music, and Hunter made a name in all of those genres. Uniquely, he was honored at both the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Grand Ole Opry.
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John Knowles Paine
1839 - 1906 (67 years)
John Knowles Paine was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of composers collectively known as the Boston Six, Paine was one of those responsible for the first significant body of concert music by composers from the United States. The Boston Six's other five members were Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, George Chadwick, and Horatio Parker.
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Joseph Henry
1823 - 1870 (47 years)
Joseph Henry became one of the most important bowmakers of the golden era of French bowmaking, working and collaborating with his master and employer Dominique Peccatte and business partner Pierre Simon
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Norman Taurog
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Norman Rae Taurog was an American film director and screenwriter. From 1920 to 1968, Taurog directed 180 films. At the age of 32, he received the Academy Award for Best Director for Skippy , becoming the youngest person to win the award for eight and a half decades until Damien Chazelle won for La La Land in 2017. He was later nominated for Best Director for the film Boys Town . He directed some of the best-known actors of the twentieth century, including his nephew Jackie Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Deanna Durbin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Elvis Presley.
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Grant Green
1931 - 1979 (48 years)
Grant Green was an American jazz guitarist and composer. Recording prolifically for Blue Note Records as both leader and sideman, Green performed in the hard bop, soul jazz, bebop, and Latin-tinged idioms throughout his career. Critic Michael Erlewine wrote, "A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar ... Green's playing is immediately recognizable – perhaps more than any other guitarist." Critic Dave Hunter described his sound as "lithe, loose, slightly bluesy and righteously groovy".
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Pierre Johanns
1881 - 1955 (74 years)
Pierre Johanns was a Luxemburger Jesuit priest, missionary in India and Indologist. Education Johanns was ordained priest on 1 August 1914 at Louvain, three days before World War I broke out and Germany invaded Belgium. He had studied philosophy under the prestigious metaphysician and mystic, Pierre Scheuer. Johanns' superior intelligence, nearing genius, had been recognized and he was destined to further studies while awaiting a still impeded passage to India. He took a full Licentiate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven , and was then sent to Oxford as soon as the end of the war permitted it, in 1919.
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Arnold Ridley
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
William Arnold Ridley, OBE was an English playwright and actor, earlier in his career known for writing the play The Ghost Train and later in life in the British TV sitcom Dad's Army as the elderly bumbling Private Godfrey, as well as in spin-offs including the feature film version and the stage production.
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Franz Schreker
1878 - 1934 (56 years)
Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, librettist, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, Schreker developed a style characterized by aesthetic plurality , timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and conception of total music theatre into the narrative of 20th-century music.
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Isham Jones
1894 - 1956 (62 years)
Isham Edgar Jones was an American bandleader, saxophonist, bassist and songwriter. Career Jones was born in Coalton, Ohio, United States, to a musical and mining family. His father, Richard Isham Jones , was a violinist. The family moved to Saginaw, Michigan, where Jones grew up and started his first ensemble for church concerts. In 1911 one of Jones's earliest compositions "On the Alamo" was published by Tell Taylor Inc.
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Peter Cornelius
1824 - 1874 (50 years)
Carl August Peter Cornelius was a German composer, writer about music, poet and translator. Life He was born in Mainz to Carl Joseph Gerhard and Friederike Cornelius, actors in Mainz and Wiesbaden. From an early age he played the violin and composed, eventually studying with Tekla Griebel-Wandall and composition with Heinrich Esser in 1841. He lived with his painter uncle Peter von Cornelius in Berlin from 1844 to 1852, and during this time he met prominent figures such as Alexander von Humboldt, the Brothers Grimm, Friedrich Rückert and Felix Mendelssohn.
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Robert Fuchs
1847 - 1927 (80 years)
Robert Fuchs was an Austrian composer and music teacher. As Professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory, Fuchs taught many notable composers, while he was himself a highly regarded composer in his lifetime.
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Nikolai Tomsky
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Nikolai Vasilyevich Tomsky was a much-decorated Soviet sculptor, designer of many well-known ceremonial monuments of the Socialist Realism era. Biography Born in the village of Staro Ramushevo in Novgorod province, into a blacksmith's family, Tomsky studied in Leningrad. In 1927, graduated from the Arts and Crafts College.
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Wendy Barrie
1912 - 1978 (66 years)
Wendy Barrie was a British-American film and television actress. Early life Barrie was born in London to English parents. Her father, Francis Charles John Graigoe Jenkin KC, was an employee of the Great Western Railway , who then joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1902. Her mother was Ellen McDonagh. Hollywood gave her a more exotic parentage with her father being a King's Counsel. She received her education at a convent school in England and a finishing school in Switzerland.
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Jan Michał Rozwadowski
1867 - 1935 (68 years)
Jan Michał Rozwadowski was a Polish linguist and a professor at the Jagiellonian University. He was also the president of the Polish Academy of Learning.
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Monte Blue
1887 - 1963 (76 years)
Gerard Montgomery Blue was an American film actor who began his career as a romantic lead in the silent era; and for decades after the advent of sound, he continued to perform as a supporting player in a wide range of motion pictures.
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Red Nichols
1905 - 1965 (60 years)
Ernest Loring "Red" Nichols was an American jazz cornetist, composer, and jazz bandleader. Biography Early life and career Nichols was born in Ogden, Utah, United States. His father was a college music professor, and Nichols was something of a child prodigy, playing difficult set pieces for his father's brass band by the age of 12. Young Nichols heard the early recordings of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and later those of Bix Beiderbecke, and these had a strong influence on him. His style became polished, clean, and incisive.
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Othmar Schoeck
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Othmar Schoeck was a Swiss Romantic classical composer, opera composer, musician, and conductor. He was known mainly for his considerable output of art songs and song cycles, though he also wrote a number of operas, notably his one-act Penthesilea, which was premiered at the Semperoper in Dresden in 1927 and revived at the Lucerne Festival in 1999. He wrote a handful of instrumental compositions, including two string quartets and concertos for violin , cello and horn.
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King Curtis
1934 - 1971 (37 years)
Curtis Ousley , known professionally as King Curtis, was an American saxophonist who played rhythm and blues, jazz, and rock and roll. A bandleader, band member, and session musician, he was also a musical director and record producer. A master of the instrument, he played tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone. He played riffs and solos on hit singles such as "Respect" by Aretha Franklin , and "Yakety Yak" by The Coasters and his own "Soul Twist" , "Soul Serenade" , and "Memphis Soul Stew" .
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