#16451
John Lewis
1675 - 1747 (72 years)
John Lewis was an English clergyman and antiquary. Life Born in the parish of St. Nicholas, Bristol, on 29 August 1675, he was the eldest son of John Lewis, wine cooper in the city. Francis Lewis, vicar of Worth Matravers, Dorset, was his paternal grandfather. His mother was Mary, eldest daughter of John Eyre, merchant, of Poole. He received his education first under Samuel Conant, rector of Lichet-Matravers, next at Wimborne grammar school, under John Moyle and afterwards under John Russel in the grammar school at Poole. He acted as assistant to Russel, who, after he had moved to Wapping, ob...
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Hermann Finck
1527 - 1558 (31 years)
Hermann Finck was a German composer. Career Finck was born in Pirna, and died at Wittenberg. After 1553 he lived at Wittenberg, where he was organist, and there, in 1555, was published his collection of wedding songs. In 1545 he matriculated at Wittenberg University and then taught at the university from 1554 and became an organist in 1557.
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Hugo Becker
1863 - 1941 (78 years)
Hugo Becker was a prominent German cellist, cello teacher, and composer. He studied at a young age with Alfredo Piatti, and later Friedrich Grützmacher in Dresden. Biography He was born in 1863 in Strasbourg ; his father Jean Becker was a famous violinist. His father tried teaching him violin at the age of six, but the young Becker loved cello, and switched over at the age of nine. By age fifteen he was touring with a string quartet made up of him, his father, sister, and brother. He had also become a leading cellist in the court orchestra in Mannheim.
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Ede Zathureczky
1903 - 1959 (56 years)
Ede Zathureczky was a Hungarian violin virtuoso and pedagogue. Life and career Ede Zathureczky was born in Igló, Kingdom of Hungary . His teacher was the exceptional Jenő Hubay. In 1920 he started playing concerts in Austria, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Bohemia, Poland, Scandinavian countries and many cities around the world.
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Peter Mennin
1923 - 1983 (60 years)
Peter Mennin was a prominent American composer, teacher and administrator. In 1958, he was named Director of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and in 1962 became President of the Juilliard School, a position he held until his death in 1983. Under his leadership, Juilliard moved from Claremont Avenue to its present location at Lincoln Center. Mennin is responsible for the addition of drama and dance departments at Juilliard. He also started the Master Class Program, and brought many artists to teach including Maria Callas, Pierre Fournier and others.
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Anni Frind
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Anni Frind was one of the most highly recorded lyric sopranos in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Anni Frind was born into a German family in Nixdorf, a small town in Bohemia . Career She made her debut in 1922 at the Volksoper Berlin and went on to sing leading soprano roles in both opera and operetta at the Munich State Opera, the Dresden State Opera, the German Opera House in Berlin and other major European cities. After the successful premiere of Ralph Benatzky's operetta Casanova in 1928, her energies were devoted mainly to operetta; and the ever-popular HMV recording of "The Nuns' Chorus" was produced.
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Spencer Gordon Bennet
1893 - 1987 (94 years)
Spencer Gordon Bennet was an American film producer and director. Known as the "King of Serial Directors", he directed more film serials than any other director. Biography Born in Brooklyn, New York, Bennet first entered show business as a stunt man, when he answered a newspaper ad to jump from the Palisades of the Hudson River while wearing a suit for the serial film Hurricane Hutch . The gig at that time paid $1 per foot he had to fall.
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Joseph E. Maddy
1891 - 1966 (75 years)
Joseph Edgar Maddy was a pioneering American music educator and conductor. He was born in Wellington, Kansas where both of his parents were teachers. He attended Wichita College of Music in Wichita, Kansas where he studied violin and later joined the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. He was also the first music supervisor of instrumental music in America in 1918 in Rochester, New York. After a short time in Rochester, he was encouraged by Will Earhart to take a job at Morton High School in Richmond, Indiana to revive the outstanding school and community music program Earhart had developed there some years earlier.
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Frederick Bodmer
1894 - 1960 (66 years)
Frederick Bodmer was a Swiss philologist and author of the popular book The Loom of Language. Life He wrote his PhD thesis in 1924 at University of Zurich on the topic Studies about a dialogue in Nathan by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . After that he taught in Europe and at University of Cape Town. Later he held a position within the Department of Modern Languages at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He was succeeded in his position at MIT by Noam Chomsky in 1955.
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Fred Clark
1914 - 1968 (54 years)
Frederick Leonard Clark was an American film and television character actor, often cast in authoritative roles. Early years Born in Lincoln, California, Clark was the son of Fred Clark Sr. He attended Stanford University with plans to become a doctor, but participation in a college production of Yellow Jack diverted his attention to acting. He changed his major to drama and later received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there, he was elected his class's most promising actor.
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Booker Ervin
1930 - 1970 (40 years)
Booker Telleferro Ervin II was an American tenor saxophone player. His tenor playing was characterised by a strong, tough sound and blues/gospel phrasing. He is remembered for his association with bassist Charles Mingus.
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Robert Livingston
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Robert Edward Randall was an American film actor known under his stage name, Robert Livingston. He appeared in 136 films between 1921 and 1975. He was one of the original Three Mesquiteers. He also played The Lone Ranger and Zorro.
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Mack Swain
1876 - 1935 (59 years)
Mack Swain was a prolific early American film actor, who appeared in many of Mack Sennett’s comedies at Keystone Studios, including the Keystone Cops series. He also appeared in major features by Charlie Chaplin and starred in both the world's first feature length comedy and first film to feature a Movie-within-a-movie premise.
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Julian Egerton
1848 - 1945 (97 years)
Julian Egerton was a British classical clarinetist. Egerton was born in London. Despite contracting polio at the age of eight, he went on to have a lengthy, productive career, performing until the age of 93. He first studied under his father, William Egerton, and then with George Tyler of the Royal Philharmonic Society. He was the first British clarinetist to perform Brahms' Clarinet Quintet Op. 115. He was professor at the Royal College of Music in succession to Henry Lazarus from 1894 until 1910, and at Kneller Hall from 1889. His students included Charles Draper and Haydn Draper.
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Theodor Coccius
1824 - 1897 (73 years)
Theodor Coccius was a German pianist and pedagogue. Coccius was born in Knauthain near Leipzig in 1824. He was a pupil of Sigismond Thalberg. He taught at the Leipzig Conservatory from 1864 for the rest of his life, alongside Ignaz Moscheles and Carl Reinecke. His notable pupils included Oskar Merikanto, Aleksander Michałowski , and Algernon Ashton.
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Noboru Nakamura
1913 - 1981 (68 years)
Noboru Nakamura was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Biography After graduating from the Tokyo Imperial University Faculty of Letters in 1936, Nakamura joined the Shochiku film studios, working as an assistant director for Torajirō Saitō and Yasujirō Shimazu. He debuted as director in 1941 with Life and Rhythm, and finally received recognition with his 1951 film Home Sweet Home. His most noted works include the Yasunari Kawabata adaptation Twin Sisters of Kyoto , The Kii River and Portrait of Chieko . Both Twin Sisters of Kyoto and Portrait of Chieko were nominated for the Academy A...
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Rudolf Dittrich
1861 - 1919 (58 years)
Rudolf Dittrich was an Austrian musician. He is noted for his role in bringing western music to Japan during the late 19th century. Biography Dittrich was born in Biala, Galicia . He attended the Vienna Conservatory, where he specialized in violin, piano, organ, and music composition. His teachers included Anton Bruckner, who later became one of his sponsors.
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Thomas Jefferson
1920 - 1986 (66 years)
Thomas Jefferson was an American Dixieland jazz trumpeter, strongly influenced by Louis Armstrong. Early life Jefferson was born in Chicago, Illinois in June 1920. He played drums and French horn while young before switching to trumpet. Jefferson professional career began when he was 14, and played with Billie and De De Pierce.
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Cisco Houston
1918 - 1961 (43 years)
Gilbert Vandine "Cisco" Houston was an American folk singer and songwriter, who is closely associated with Woody Guthrie due to their extensive history of recording together. Houston was a regular recording artist for Moses Asch's Folkways recording studio. He also performed with such folk/blues musicians as Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, Woody Guthrie and the Almanac Singers.
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Lily Pons
1898 - 1976 (78 years)
Alice Joséphine Pons , known professionally as Lily Pons, was a French-American operatic lyric coloratura soprano and actress who had an active career from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. As an opera singer, she specialized in the coloratura soprano repertoire and was particularly associated with the title roles in Lakmé and Lucia di Lammermoor. In addition to appearing as a guest artist with many opera houses internationally, Pons enjoyed a long association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where she performed nearly 300 times between 1931 and 1960.
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Ralph Forbes
1904 - 1951 (47 years)
Ralph Forbes was an English film and stage actor active in Britain and the United States. Early life Forbes was born in Wandsworth, London, the son of Ernest John "E.J." and Ethel Louise Taylor. His mother would become known as Mary Forbes, a stage and film actress. His younger sister was actress Brenda Forbes . Born on 30 September 1904, Forbes was baptized on 6 November and his birth was legally registered with the authorities during the last quarter of 1904.
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Theodor Wisén
1835 - 1892 (57 years)
Theodor Wisén was a Swedish philologist of Scandinavian languages. Biography Wisén was born in the parish of Vissefjärda in Kalmar County. He studied the classics, especially Greek, before turning to Scandinavian languages. He was appointed professor in Lund in 1865, a position he held until his death. Wisén was reportedly a gifted teacher. His edition of the Homiliu-bok was awarded the prize by the Swedish Academy in 1874, and he published a number of notable books and monographs on Icelandic poetry.
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Mario Lanza
1921 - 1959 (38 years)
Mario Lanza was an American tenor and actor. He was a Hollywood film star popular in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Lanza began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16. After appearing at the Hollywood Bowl in 1947, Lanza signed a seven-year film contract with Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who saw his performance and was impressed by his singing. Prior to that, the adult Lanza sang only two performances of an opera. The following year , however, he sang the role of Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly in New Orleans.
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Ian Wolfe
1896 - 1992 (96 years)
Ian Marcus Wolfe was an American character actor with around 400 film and television credits. Until 1934, he worked in the theatre. That year, he appeared in his first film role and later television, as a character actor. His career lasted seven decades and included many films and TV series; his last screen credit was in 1990.
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W. Otto Miessner
1880 - 1967 (87 years)
William Otto Miessner was an American composer and music educator. Most of his life was spent in the midwest, particularly Indiana and Wisconsin. Life and career Born in Huntingburg, Indiana, Miessner was the son of Charles Miessner and Mary Miessner and the older brother of Benjamin Franklin Miessner. He graduated from Huntingburg High School in 1898. He earned a diploma from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where he studied music theory with A. J. Gantvoort, piano with Frederick Hoffman, and singing with Adolph Devin-Duvivier. He later pursued further studies in New York with Frederick Bristol , A.
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B. Reeves Eason
1886 - 1956 (70 years)
William Reeves Eason , known as B. Reeves Eason, was an American film director, actor and screenwriter. His directorial output was limited mainly to low-budget westerns and action pictures, but it was as a second-unit director and action specialist that he was best known. He was famous for staging spectacular battle scenes in war films and action scenes in large-budget westerns, but he acquired the nickname "Breezy" for his "breezy" attitude towards safety while staging his sequences—during the famous cavalry charge at the end of Charge of the Light Brigade , so many horses were killed or inju...
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Grace Moore
1898 - 1947 (49 years)
Mary Willie Grace Moore was an American operatic soprano and actress in musical theatre and film. She was nicknamed the "Tennessee Nightingale." Her films helped to popularize opera by bringing it to a larger audience. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in One Night of Love.
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Clara Novello Davies
1861 - 1943 (82 years)
Clara Novello Davies was a Welsh singer, teacher and conductor. She used the pen name Pencerddes Morgannwg. Early life Clara Novello Davies was born on 7 April 1861. She was named after Clara Novello, a famous soprano . Her father, leader of the church choir, taught her to play the harmonium. She also studied music with Charles Williams of the Llandaff Cathedral.
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Gábor Rejtő
1916 - 1987 (71 years)
Gábor Rejtő, also known as Gabor Rejto , was a Hungarian cellist who performed with various artists and chamber music ensembles in the 20th century. Biography Early life Rejtő was born in Budapest into a Jewish family. His first cello teacher was Frederick Teller, a local teacher whose ideas, for the time, were exceptionally forward-looking. At sixteen, Rejtő entered the Academy of Music under Adolf Schiffer , and two years later, with his Artist’s Diploma, he began his European concert career.
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Antonina Nezhdanova
1873 - 1950 (77 years)
Antonina Vasilyevna Nezhdanova , was a Russian and Soviet coloratura soprano. Nezhdanova was born in , near Odesa, Ukraine, then in the Russian Empire. In 1899, she entered the Moscow Conservatory. Upon her graduation three years later she joined the Bolshoi Theatre, rapidly becoming its leading soprano. She often sang, too, at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and also in Kyiv and Odessa. Paris heard her in 1912, when she appeared opposite the tenor Enrico Caruso and the great baritone, Titta Ruffo.
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Samuel S. Hinds
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
Samuel Southey Hinds was an American actor and former lawyer. He was often cast as kindly authority figures and appeared in more than 200 films in a career lasting 22 years. Early years Hinds was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Joseph E. Hinds and Mary A. Beetham Hinds. He was the great-grandson of poet Robert Southey. His father was the president of the United States Playing Card Company,
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Hans Swarowsky
1899 - 1975 (76 years)
Hans Swarowsky was an Austrian conductor of Hungarian birth. Swarowsky was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied the art of conducting under Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss. His teachers in musical theory included Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.
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Anna Neagle
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Dame Florence Marjorie Wilcox , known professionally as Anna Neagle, was an English stage and film actress, singer, and dancer. She was a successful box-office draw in British cinema for 20 years and was voted the most popular star in Britain in 1949. She was known for providing glamour and sophistication to war-torn London audiences with her lightweight musicals, comedies, and historical dramas. Almost all of her films were produced and directed by Herbert Wilcox, whom she married in 1943.
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Otis Spann
1930 - 1970 (40 years)
Otis Spann was an American blues musician, whom many consider to be the leading postwar Chicago blues pianist. Early life Sources differ over Spann's early years. Some state that he was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1930, but researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc concluded on the basis of census records and other official information that he was born in 1924 in Belzoni, Mississippi.
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Hendrik Andriessen
1892 - 1981 (89 years)
Hendrik Franciscus Andriessen was a Dutch composer and organist. He is remembered most of all for his improvisation at the organ and for the renewal of Catholic liturgical music in the Netherlands. Andriessen composed in a musical idiom that revealed strong French influences. He was the brother of pianist and composer Willem Andriessen and the father of the composers Jurriaan Andriessen and Louis Andriessen and of the flautist Heleen Andriessen.
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Vernon Dalhart
1883 - 1948 (65 years)
Marion Try Slaughter , better known by his stage name Vernon Dalhart, was an American country music singer and songwriter. His recording of the classic ballad "Wreck of the Old 97" was the first country song reputed to have sold one million copies, although sales figures for pre-World War Two recordings are difficult to verify.
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Ernest Gagnon
1834 - 1915 (81 years)
Ernest Gagnon was a Canadian folklorist, composer, and organist. He is best known for compiling a large amount of French Canadian folk music which he published as Chansons populaires du Canada in 1865–1867. He was greatly admired for his virtuoso performances on the organ and was also considered an expert at plainsong accompaniment.
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Carl Friedberg
1872 - 1955 (83 years)
Carl Rudolf Hermann Friedberg was a German pianist and teacher of Jewish origin. Biography He was son of Eduard Friedberg and Elisa Landau from Bingen. The Friedberg were wine merchants in Bingen since 1700.
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Dorothy Howell
1898 - 1982 (84 years)
Dorothy Gertrude Howell was an English composer and pianist. Biography Howell was born in Birmingham, grew up in Handsworth, and received a convent education. She received private composition lessons from Granville Bantock before beginning her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, aged 15. Her teachers there included John Blackwood McEwen and Tobias Matthay.
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Alexander von Zagareli
1844 - 1929 (85 years)
Alexander Anton von Zagareli was a Georgian linguist. He was professor at Saint Petersburg State University an co-founder of Tbilisi State University. Zagareli was born in Kaspi, Georgia. He studied at the University of Tübingen, Vienna, Munich, and Saint Petersburg. In 1869 he became a member of Landsmannschaft Schottland. Zagareli habilitated at age 27 at the Saint Petersburg State University. There he became a docent for Georgian Literature and later professor for Oriental Languages. Nicholas Marr was one of his most famous students. Zagareli remained at the Georgian language department at Saint Petersburg for over half a century, until his return to Georgia in 1922.
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Armstrong Gibbs
1889 - 1960 (71 years)
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs was a prolific and versatile English composer. Though best known for his choral music and, in particular, songs, Gibbs also devoted much of his career to the amateur choral and festival movements in Britain. Although his music is rarely played today he attained a high level of popularity in his lifetime. His slow waltz "Dusk" for orchestra and piano earned him more royalties than any of his other works combined. It was requested by Princess Elizabeth to be performed on her 18th birthday.
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Ronald Gould
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Sir Ronald Gould was General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers in the United Kingdom from 1947–1970. He was the son of the Labour MP Frederick Gould. Early life He was born in Midsomer Norton, Somerset. His father, Frederick Gould, was a bootmaker who was later Labour MP of nearby Frome.
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John Belushi
1949 - 1982 (33 years)
John Adam Belushi was an Albanian and American comedian, actor, and musician. He was one of the seven original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live . Throughout his career, Belushi had a personal and artistic partnership with his fellow SNL star Dan Aykroyd, whom he met while they were both working at Chicago's Second City comedy club.
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Dong Tonghe
1911 - 1963 (52 years)
Dong Tonghe or Tung Tung-ho was a Chinese linguist particularly well known for his contributions to Chinese historical phonology. Born in Kunming, Yunnan, China, Dong moved to Beijing at the age of four or five when his father was given a job at the Palace Museum. In 1930 he participated in dialect surveys of Yunnan and Sichuan under the direction of Yuen Ren Chao. In 1932, he was admitted to the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University. His thesis concerned issues in the Qieyun. In 1937, Dong was admitted to the Institute of History and Philology. He was one of the editors of the dialect su...
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John Thomas
1826 - 1913 (87 years)
John Thomas was a Welsh composer and harpist. The bardic name Pencerdd Gwalia was conferred on him at the 1861 Aberdare Eisteddfod. Life He was born in Bridgend on Saint David's Day, son of a tailor, also named John Thomas, a clarinetist in the amateur town band. He was the eldest of seven children, four of whom also played the harp, most notably his brother Thomas Thomas. John Thomas started off by playing the triple harp, which had three sets of strings and was very difficult to play. At the age of 14, through the influence of Ada Lovelace, , he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music in London.
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Choe Hyeon-bae
1894 - 1970 (76 years)
Choe Hyeon-bae , also known by the pen-name Oesol, was an educationalist and scholar of the Korean language. Early life and career Choe's family was part of the Gwangju Choe bon-gwan. He was born in Ulsan, then part of Gyeongsangnam-do in the southern half of the Joseon Kingdom . He did his secondary education at Gyeongseong High School , and in 1910 entered the Korean Language Academy , where he studied under Ju Sigyeong. He graduated from the Hiroshima Higher Normal School in Hiroshima, Japan in 1919. In 1920, he began teaching at the private Dongnae High School , but in 1922 returned to th...
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Earl Bostic
1913 - 1965 (52 years)
Eugene Earl Bostic was an American alto saxophonist. Bostic's recording career was diverse, his musical output encompassing jazz, swing, jump blues and the post-war American rhythm and blues style, which he pioneered. He had a number of popular hits such as "Flamingo", "Harlem Nocturne", "Temptation", "Sleep", "Special Delivery Stomp", and "Where or When", which all showed off his characteristic growl on the horn. He was a major influence on John Coltrane.
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Yuliy Ganf
1898 - 1973 (75 years)
Yuliy Abramovich Ganf was a Soviet Russian graphic artist, a People's Artist of the USSR, especially known for his satirical cartoons in the Krokodil magazine. He was furthermore active as a caricaturist, illustrator and poster designer.
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Henry Armetta
1888 - 1945 (57 years)
Henry Armetta was an American character actor who appeared in at least 150 American films, beginning in silent movies. His last film was released posthumously in 1946, the year after his death. Biography Armetta was born in Palermo, Sicily, Italy. At the age of 14, he stowed away on a boat to America. The immigration authorities were prepared to send him back, but he found an Italian family to act as his sponsor. He settled in New York City where he delivered groceries, sold sandwiches and pizzas and performed other menial tasks to get by. He eventually ended up working as a pants presser at a well known club where he was befriended by actor/producer Raymond Hitchcock.
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