A star-studded tribute (from the creators of That's Entertainment) to the contributions of Afro-Americans in film over the last century. Vanessa Williams traces the struggles and triumphs of the superstars of music and film. Among the many artists featured are: Whitney Houston, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Cab Calloway, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Little Richard, Also included are today's contemporary superstars: Snoop Dogg, Ice T, Quincy Jones, Spike Lee, Russell Simmons, and many, more! 80 minutes plus DVD bonus features.
02-08-2002
1h 20m
THIS
HELLA
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Whitney Elizabeth Houston (born August 9, 1963 - February 11, 2012) was an American R&B/pop singer, actress, and former fashion model. Houston is the most awarded female artist of all time, according to Guinness World Records, and her list of awards include 2 Emmy Awards, 6 Grammy Awards, 16 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. Houston is also one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums and singles worldwide.
Inspired by several prominent soul singers in her extended family, including mother Cissy Houston and cousins Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, as well as her godmother, Aretha Franklin, Houston began singing with New Jersey church's junior gospel choir at age 11. After she began performing alongside her mother in night clubs in the New York City area, she was discovered by Arista Records label head Clive Davis. As of 2011, Houston has released six studio albums and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have had diamond, multi-platinum, platinum, or gold certification.
Houston's 1985 debut album, Whitney Houston, became the best-selling debut album by a female act at the time of its release. Her second studio album, Whitney (1987), became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Houston's crossover appeal on the popular music charts as well as her prominence on MTV, starting with her video for "How Will I Know", enabled several African-American female artists to follow in her success. Houston's first acting role was as the star of the feature film The Bodyguard (1992). The movie's original soundtrack won the 1994 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Its lead single, "I Will Always Love You", became the best-selling single by a female artist in music history. The album makes her the only female act ranked in the list of the top-10 best-selling albums, at number four.
Houston continued to star in movies and contribute to soundtracks, including with the films Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher's Wife (1996). Three years after the release of her fourth studio album, My Love Is Your Love (1998), she renewed her recording contract with Arista Records. She released her fifth studio album, Just Whitney, in 2002, and the Christmas-themed One Wish: The Holiday Album in 2003. Amid widespread media coverage of personal and professional turmoil, Houston ended her 14-year marriage to singer Bobby Brown in 2006. In 2009, Houston released her seventh studio album, I Look To You.
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Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
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Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. (born October 20, 1971), known professionally as Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg and briefly Snoop Lion), is an American rapper and actor. His initial fame dates back to 1992 after guest appearing on Dr. Dre's debut solo single, "Deep Cover", and then on Dre's debut album, The Chronic, the same year. Broadus has since sold over 23 million albums in the United States and 35 million albums worldwide. His accolades include an American Music Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and 17 nominations at the Grammy Awards.
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Diana Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American singer, actress, and record producer. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Ross rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group the Supremes, which, during the 1960s, became Motown's most successful act, and are the best charting female group in US history, as well as one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time. The group released a record-setting twelve number-one hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100, including "Where Did Our Love Go", "Baby Love", "Come See About Me", "Stop! In the Name of Love", "You Can't Hurry Love", "You Keep Me Hangin' On", "Love Child", and "Someday We'll Be Together".
Following her departure from the Supremes in 1970, Ross released her eponymous debut solo album that same year, featuring the number-one Pop hit "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". She later released the album Touch Me in the Morning in 1973; its title track reached number 1, as her second solo No. 1 hit. She continued a successful solo career through the 1970s, which included hit albums like Mahogany and Diana Ross and their number-one hit singles, "Theme from Mahogany" and "Love Hangover", respectively. Her 1980 album Diana produced another number-one single, "Upside Down", as well as the international hit "I'm Coming Out". Ross' final single with Motown during her initial run with the company achieved her sixth and final US number-one Pop hit, the duet "Endless Love" featuring Lionel Richie, whose solo career was launched with its success.
Ross has also ventured into acting, with a Golden Globe Award and Academy Award–nominated performance for her performance in the film Lady Sings the Blues (1972); she recorded its soundtrack, which became a number-one hit. She also starred in two other feature films, Mahogany (1975) and The Wiz (1978), later acting in the television films Out of Darkness (1994), for which she also was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and Double Platinum (1999).
Ross was named the "Female Entertainer of the Century" by Billboard magazine. In 1993, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Ross the most successful female music artist in history, due to her success in the United States and United Kingdom for having more hits than any female artist in the charts, with a career total of 70 hit singles with her work with the Supremes and as a solo artist. In 1988, Ross was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as member of the Supremes, alongside Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard. She was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
She is a 12-time Grammy nominee, never earning a competitive honor, but later became the recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. In December 2016, Billboard magazine named her the 50th most successful dance artist of all time. In Billboard magazine's Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Artists chart, she ranked 16th as the lead singer of the Supremes and 26th as a solo artist. In December 2018, Diana Ross consolidated her status as a dance diva by ranking #3 in the Billboard Dance Club Songs Artists year-end chart.
Spike Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American filmmaker and actor. He was born Shelton Lee in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. His father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a school teacher. His mother dubbed him Spike, due to his tough nature.
He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University. After graduating, he went to the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) -- a ten-minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983), which won a student academy award. Lee's next film, "The Messenger," in 1984, was somewhat biographical. In 1986, Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for 175,000 dollars, and made seven million. Since then, Lee has become a well-known, intelligent, and talented film maker. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set in a historically black school and focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible, and uncaring.
Lee went on to do his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie specifically about his own town in Brooklyn, New York. The movie garnered an Oscar nomination, for Danny Aiello, for supporting actor. It also sparked a debate on racial relations. Lee went on to produce the jazz biopic Mo' Better Blues (1990) which showed his talent for directing and acting, and was the first of many Spike Lee films to feature Denzel Washington. His next film, Jungle Fever (1991), was about interracial dating. Lee's handling of the subject proved yet again highly controversial. Lee's next film was the self-titled biography of Malcolm X (1992), which had Denzel Washington portraying the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and resulted in an Oscar nomination for Washington. His next films were the comparatively light, Crooklyn (1994), and the intense crime drama, Clockers (1995). In 1996, Lee directed two movies: the badly received comedy, Girl 6 (1996), and the politically pointed, Get on the Bus (1996), about a group of men going to the Million Man March. His next film, He Got Game (1998), proved to be another excursion into the collegiate world as he shows the darker side of recruiting college athletes. The movie, in limited release, yet again featured Denzel Washington. In 2000 came Bamboozled which made a mockery out of television and the way African-Americans are perceived by white America and the way African-Americans perceive themselves. The movie, however, was a resounding critical success. Lee also has produced films like New Jersey Drive (1995), Tales from the Hood (1995), and Drop Squad (1994). He also has produced and or directed movies about Huey P. Newton, Jim Brown, and has commented in many documentaries about varied subjects. Lee is an obsessive New York Knicks fan. He and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, have two children.
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance.
With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics.
Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general.
Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his amazing talent in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a person of color. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a huge supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.
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Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 - May 9, 2020), better known as Little Richard, was a flamboyant and groundbreaking American singer, songwriter and musician.
Little Richard was a pioneering influence on the birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
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Carl Anderson (February 27, 1945 – February 23, 2004) was an American singer, film and theatre actor best known for his portrayal of Judas Iscariot in the Broadway and film versions of the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Jesus Christ Superstar.
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Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald, naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French entertainer, activist, and French Resistance agent. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. During her early career she was renowned as a dancer, and was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in Paris. Her costume, consisting of only a girdle of artificial bananas, became her most iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the 1920s.
James Brown (May 3, 1933 - December 25, 2006) was an American singer and songwriter, eventually referred to as "The Godfather of Soul"(GFOS). Brown started singing in gospel groups and worked his way on up. He has been recognized as one of the most iconic figures in the 20th century popular music and was renowned for his vocals and feverish dancing. He was also called "the hardest-working man in show business".
Brown began his professional music career in 1956 and rose to fame during the late 1950s and early 1960s on the strength of his thrilling live performances and string of smash hits. In spite of various personal problems and setbacks he continued to score hits in every decade through the 1980s. In addition to his acclaim in music, Brown was also a presence in American political affairs during the 1960s and 1970s.
Tisha Michelle Campbell (born October 13, 1968) is an American actress, comedian, singer and dancer. She's best known for her roles as Gina Waters-Payne in the FOX sitcom Martin (1992-1997), Patrice Murphy in the WB comedy The Jamie Foxx Show (1996-2000), and as Janet "Jay" Marie Johnson-Kyle in the ABC comedy series My Wife and Kids (2001–2005), for which she received NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series. She made her screen debut appearing in the 1986 rock musical comedy film Little Shop of Horrors and has appeared in films including School Daze (1988), Rooftops (1989), Another 48 Hrs. (1990), Boomerang (1992), and Sprung (1997).
She was married to actor Duane Martin from 1996 until their divorce in 2020; they have 2 children.
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Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American jazz pianist and vocalist. He recorded over one hundred songs that became hits on the pop charts. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Cole also acted in films and on television and performed on Broadway. He was the first African American man to host an American television series.
Sean Love Combs (born Sean John Combs; November 4, 1969), also known by his stage names Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or Diddy, is an American rapper, actor, record producer, and record executive. Born in New York City, he worked as a talent director at Uptown Records before founding his own record label, Bad Boy Records in 1993. Combs has produced and cultivated artists such as the Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, and Usher.
Combs' debut album, No Way Out (1997), has been certified seven times platinum. The album was followed by Forever (1999), The Saga Continues... (2001), and Press Play (2006), all of which were commercially successful. In 2009, Combs created and produced the musical group Diddy – Dirty Money; they released their successful debut album Last Train to Paris in 2010.
Combs has won three Grammy Awards and two MTV Video Music Awards and is the producer of MTV's Making the Band. In 2022, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$1 billion. In 1998, he launched his own clothing line Sean John. He was nominated for the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Award for Menswear Designer of the Year in 2000 and won in 2004.
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Dorothy Jean Dandridge (November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965) was an American actress and singer. She was the first African-American film star to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in Carmen Jones (1954). Dandridge also performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. During her early career, she performed as a part of The Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, and appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles.
In 1959, Dandridge was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess. She is the subject of the 1999 biographical film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, with Halle Berry portraying her. She has been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Samuel George "Sammy" Davis, Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer.
Primarily a dancer and singer, Davis was a childhood vaudevillian who became known for his performances on Broadway and in Las Vegas, as a recording artist, television and film star, and as a member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack".
At the age of three Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father and "uncle" as the Will Mastin Trio, toured nationally, and after military service, returned to the trio. Davis became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's after the 1951 Academy Awards, with the trio, became a recording artist, and made his first film performances as an adult later that decade. In 1954, he lost his left eye in an automobile accident. Later the same year, he converted to Judaism. In 1960, he appeared in the first Rat Pack movie, Ocean's 11. After a starring role on Broadway in 1956's Mr Wonderful, Davis returned to the stage in 1964's Golden Boy, and in 1966 had his own TV variety show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. Davis's career slowed in the late sixties, but he had a hit record with "The Candy Man", in 1972, and became a star in Las Vegas.
As an African American, Davis was the victim of racism throughout his life, and was a large financial supporter of civil rights causes. Davis had a complex relationship with the African American community, and attracted criticism after physically embracing Richard Nixon in 1970. One day on a golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. "Handicap?" he asked. "Talk about handicap — I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew." This was to become a signature comment, recounted in his autobiography, and in countless articles.
After reuniting with Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1987, Davis toured with them and Liza Minnelli internationally, before dying of throat cancer in 1990. He died in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, and his estate was the subject of legal battles.
Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for his television performances. He was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1987, and in 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Rah Digga (born Rashia Fisher) is an American rapper. Well known as a long time member of the Flipmode Squad, a hip hop group led by Busta Rhymes, she parted ways amicably with the group in 2007. She has been called "one of rap's most prominent women MCs" by Allmusic and "one of hip-hop's most skilled female MCs" in the book How to Rap.
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Suzzanne Douglas was an American film, television and stage actress, singer, composer, dancer, and producer, best known for her role as matriarch Jerri Peterson in the television sitcom "The Parent 'Hood". She held an MFA in Music from the Manhattan School of Music, New York.
Andre Romelle Young, known by his stage name Dr. Dre, is an American rapper, record producer, record executive, entrepreneur, and actor. He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics.
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem.
Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), known professionally as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer, and comedian. He gained his career breakthrough as a featured player in the sketch comedy show In Living Colour until the show's end in 1994. Following this success, he was given his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show, in which he starred, co-created, and produced from 1996 to 2001.
Foxx received acclaim for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the film Ray (2004), winning the Academy Award, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. That same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in the crime film Collateral. He gained prominence for his film roles in Booty Call (1997), Ali (2001), Jarhead (2005), Dreamgirls (2006), Miami Vice (2006), Horrible Bosses (2011), Django Unchained (2012), Annie (2014), Baby Driver (2017), and Soul (2020). He played the supervillain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). For playing Walter McMillian in Just Mercy (2019), he received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.
Foxx also embarked on a successful career as an R&B singer in the 2000s. He earned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, with his features on the singles "Slow Jamz" by Twista alongside Kanye West and "Gold Digger" by the former. His single "Blame It" won him the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Four of his five studio albums have charted in the top ten of the U.S. Billboard 200: Unpredictable (2005), which topped the chart; Intuition (2008); Best Night of My Life (2010); and Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses (2015). Since 2017, Foxx has served as the host and executive producer of the Fox game show Beat Shazam. In 2021, he wrote his autobiography Act Like You Got Some Sense.
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Aretha Louise Franklin (March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the "Queen of Soul", Rolling Stone twice named her as the greatest singer of all time. With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world's best-selling music artists.
As a child, Franklin was noticed for her gospel singing at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father C. L. Franklin was a minister. At the age of 18, she was signed as a recording artist for Columbia Records. While her career did not immediately flourish, Franklin found acclaim and commercial success once she signed with Atlantic Records in 1966. Hit songs such as "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "Respect", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Chain of Fools", "Think", and "I Say a Little Prayer", propelled Franklin past her musical peers.
Franklin continued to record acclaimed albums such as I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), Lady Soul (1968), Spirit in the Dark (1970), Young, Gifted and Black (1972), Amazing Grace (1972), and Sparkle (1976), before experiencing problems with the record company. Franklin left Atlantic in 1979 and signed with Arista Records. The singer appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers before releasing the successful albums Jump to It (1982), Who's Zoomin' Who? (1985) and Aretha (1986) on the Arista label. In 1998, Franklin returned to the Top 40 with the Lauryn Hill-produced song "A Rose Is Still a Rose"; later, she released an album with the same name.
Franklin recorded 112 charted singles on the US Billboard charts, including 73 Hot 100 entries, 17 top-ten pop singles, 100 R&B entries and 20 number-one R&B singles. Besides the foregoing, the singer's well-known hits also include "Ain't No Way", "Call Me", "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)", "Spanish Harlem", "Rock Steady", "Day Dreaming", "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)", "Something He Can Feel", "Jump to It", "Freeway of Love", "Who's Zoomin' Who" and "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (a duet with George Michael). Franklin won 18 Grammy Awards (out of 44 nominations), including the first eight awards given for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (1968–1975), a Grammy Awards Living Legend honor and Lifetime Achievement Award.
Franklin received numerous honors throughout her career. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1987, she became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She also was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005 and into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2019, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded the songwriter a posthumous special citation "for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades". In 2020, Franklin was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. ..
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Jasmine Guy (born March 10, 1962) is an American actress, singer and dancer. She is best known for her starring role as Whitley Gilbert in the television sitcom A Different World and Roxy in Dead Like Me.
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James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix, November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter. He is widely considered to be the greatest electric guitarist in musical history, and one of the most influential musicians of his era across a range of genres.
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Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan, was an American jazz singer with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. Billie Holiday appeared in four feature films and many television shows.
Lena Horne (June 30, 1917 - May 9, 2010) was a singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist.
Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather.
Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood. Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums.
She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died on May 9, 2010 in New York City.
During her lifetime, Horne was awarded four Grammys, a Tony, and a NAACP Image Award . She also received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1984.
Tracy Morrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American musician and actor.
He was born in Newark, New Jersey and moved to district Crenshaw, Los Angeles, California when he was in the 7th grade. After graduating from high school he served in the United States Army for four years.
He began his career as a rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays. The next year, he founded the record label Rhyme Syndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip hop artists called the Rhyme Syndicate) and released another album, Power. He co-founded the thrash metal band Body Count, which he introduced in his 1991 album O.G.: Original Gangster. Body Count released its self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", which was perceived to glamorize killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion was released later in the Fall of 1993 through Priority Records. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, dancer, singer-songwriter, musician, and philanthropist. Referred to as the King of Pop, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades.
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James Samuel "Jimmy Jam" Harris III has a decades-old partnership with Terry Lewis, having both first found success in the Prince-formed-and-directed band The Time (originally Flyte Time) before going out on their own as producers for some of the biggest pop and R&B acts of the 80s and 90s, perhaps most notably Janet Jackson.
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.
Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores. He moved easily between musical genres, producing Lesley Gore's major pop hits of the early 1960s (including "It's My Party") and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie in the same time period. In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Eyes of Love" from the film Banning. Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year. Jones produced three of popstar Michael Jackson's most successful albums: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song "We Are the World", which raised funds for victims of famine in Ethiopia.
In 1971, Jones became the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards. In 1995, he was the first African American to receive the academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African American, with seven nominations each. In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the winner, alongside Lou Adler, of the Ahmet Ertegun Award. He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time.
Adrienne-Joi Akua Okyerebea Johnson (born January 2, 1963), also known as AJ Johnson, is an American actress, life/wellness coach, fitness trainer, dancer, choreographer, and model. She graduated with honors in 1985 from Spelman College in Atlanta and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
Acting since 1987, she has made many guest appearances on sitcoms, television dramas and music videos; she also has numerous roles in feature films and TV movies, including House Party and Baby Boy.
She has appeared in A Different World, In the Heat of the Night, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Amen, Chicago Hope, The Jamie Foxx Show, and Touched by an Angel. She has also appeared in television movies such as A Mother's Courage: the Mary Thomas Story (1989), Clippers (1991), Murder Without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story (1992), Love, Lies & Lullabies (1993), and The Beast (1996). She had a major role on the TV show Sirens.
Johnson has also appeared in theatrical releases and independent films such as School Daze (1988), House Party (1990), Double Trouble (1992), Sister Act (1992), The Inkwell (1994), High Freakquency (1998), Two Shades of Blue (2000), Tara (2001), Baby Boy (2001), and Skin Deep (2003).
She hosts as the life coach on TV One's show Life Therapy and on VH1's Couples Retreat, where she helps America’s most dysfunctional reality show couples. She has also been on the reality show Love & Hip Hop: Miami.
Eartha Mae Kitt (January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008) was an American actress, singer and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit Christmas song "Santa Baby". Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world." She took over the role of Catwoman for the third season of the 1960s Batman television series, replacing Julie Newmar, who was unavailable for the final season. She also was famous for being the voice of Yzma in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove as well as its sequel and TV series.
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John Landis (born August 3, 1950) is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.
Terry Lewis is a musician, songwriter, singer, music arranger, film score composer, actor, record producer, and composer. Lewis has a decades-old partnership with James "Jimmy Jam" Harris III, having both first found success in the Prince-formed-and-directed band The Time (originally Flyte Time) before going out on their own as producers for some of the biggest pop and R&B acts of the 80s and 90s, perhaps most notably Janet Jackson.
James Todd Smith, better known as LL Cool J (acronym for Ladies Love Cool James), is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He is one of the earliest rappers to achieve commercial success, alongside fellow new school hip hop acts Beastie Boys and Run-DMC.
Signed to Def Jam Recordings in 1984, his breakthrough came with his single "I Need a Beat" and his landmark debut album, Radio (1985). He achieved further commercial and critical success with the albums Bigger and Deffer (1987), Walking with a Panther (1989), Mama Said Knock You Out (1990), Mr. Smith (1995), and Phenomenon (1997). His twelfth album, Exit 13 (2008), was his last in his long-tenured deal with Def Jam.
A two-time Grammy Award winner, LL Cool J is known for hip hop songs such as "Going Back to Cali", "I'm Bad", "The Boomin' System", "Rock the Bells", and "Mama Said Knock You Out", as well as R&B hits such as "Doin' It", "I Need Love", "Around the Way Girl" and "Hey Lover". In 2010, VH1 placed him on their "100 Greatest Artists Of All Time" list. In 2017, LL Cool J became the first rapper to receive the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2021, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with an award for Musical Excellence.
While he first appeared as a rapper in the movie Krush Groove (performing "I Can't Live Without My Radio"), his first acting part was a small role in a high school football movie called Wildcats. He continued to work in movies from then until 1995 when he landed his own television sitcom, In the House (1995-2000).
He has appeared in numerous films, including Last Holiday, Edison, Mindhunters, S.W.A.T., Deliver Us from Eva, Rollerball, Charlie's Angels, In Too Deep, Any Given Sunday, Deep Blue Sea, Halloween H20, B.A.P.S., Toys, and The Hard Way.
In 2005, he returned to television in a guest starring role on the FOX medical drama House. He also guest starred on 30 Rock in 2007, and on Sesame Street 's 39th season where he introduced the word of the day, "Unanimous” and performed "The Addition Expedition" in episode 4172 (Sept. 30, 2008).
As of 2011, he stars as Special Agent Sam Hanna on CBS's police procedural NCIS: L.A., a spin-off of NCIS. He was also the host of MTV's Lip Sync Battle.
Wynton Learson Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is the only musician to win a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical during the same year.
Sir Alan Parker was a director, writer and producer. His feature films have won nineteen BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and ten Oscars. His films include Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning, The Commitments, Evita, Fame, Birdy, Angel Heart and Angela’s Ashes. He was founding chairman of the UK Film Council, a position he held for five years, and prior to that was chairman of the BFI. Sir Alan received the CBE in 1995 and a knighthood in 2002. He was also an Officier Des Arts et Lettres (France).
Otis Ray Redding Jr. was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, arranger, and talent scout. He is considered one of the greatest singers in the history of American popular music and a seminal artist in soul music and rhythm and blues.
Christopher Reid (born April 5, 1964), formerly known as Kid (shortened from his original MC name, Kid Coolout), is an American actor, comedian, and former rapper. He was half of the late 1980s/early 1990s hip-hop/comedy duo Kid 'n Play.
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An American rapper, singer, musician, record producer, record executive, and actor. Busta was born to Jamaican parents Geraldine Green and Trevor Smith. He went to Uniondale High School class of '92.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Busta Rhymes, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
William "Smokey" Robinson Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson was the founder and frontman of the Motown vocal group the Miracles, for which he was also chief songwriter and producer. Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as "the Five Chimes" until 1972, when he announced a retirement from the group to focus on his role as Motown's vice president. However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year. Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left the company in 1990.
Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and was awarded the 2016 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for his lifetime contributions to popular music.
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Russell Wendell Simmons (born October 4, 1957) is an American entrepreneur, the co-founder, with Rick Rubin, of the pioneering hip-hop label Def Jam, and creator of the clothing fashion lines Phat Farm, Argyleculture, and American Classics.
Russell Simmons is the third richest figure in hip-hop, having a net-worth estimate of $340 million.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Russell Simmons, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Tina Turner (November 26, 1939 - May 24, 2023) was an American singer and actress whose career spanned more than 50 years. Known for her energetic stage presence, powerful vocals, career longevity, and widespread appeal, Turner has been called the most successful female rock artist, “The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and was named "one of the greatest singers of all time" by Rolling Stone. Her combined album and single sales total approximately 180 million copies worldwide, and over the course of her career she sold more concert tickets than any other solo music performer in history. Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Success followed with a string of hits including "River Deep, Mountain High" and the 1971 hit "Proud Mary". With the publication of her autobiography I, Tina (1986), Turner revealed severe instances of spousal abuse against her by Ike Turner prior to their 1976 split and subsequent 1978 divorce. After virtually disappearing from the music scene for several years following her divorce from Ike Turner, she rebuilt her career, launching a string of hits beginning in 1983 with the single "Let's Stay Together" and the 1984 release of her fifth solo album Private Dancer. In addition to her musical career, she occasionally ventured into film, beginning with a prominent role as The Acid Queen in the 1975 film Tommy, and an appearance in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. She starred opposite Mel Gibson as Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome for which she received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture, and her version of the film's theme, "We Don't Need Another Hero", was a hit single.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William December "Billy Dee" Williams Jr. (born April 6, 1937) is an American actor, voice actor, and artist. He is best known as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, first in the early 1980s, and nearly forty years later in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), marking one of the longest intervals between onscreen portrayals of a character by the same actor in American film history.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Billy Dee Williams, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Suzanne De Passe was born on July 19, 1946 in the USA. She is a producer and writer, known for Lonesome Dove (1989), Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (1983).
Berry Gordy III (born November 28, 1929), known professionally as Berry Gordy Jr., is an American retired record executive, record producer, songwriter, film producer and television producer. He is best known as the founder of the Motown record label and its subsidiaries, which was the highest-earning African-American business for decades.
As a songwriter, Gordy composed or co-composed a number of hits including "Lonely Teardrops" and "That's Why" (Jackie Wilson), "Shop Around" (the Miracles), and "Do You Love Me" (the Contours), all of which topped the US R&B charts, as well as the international hit "Reet Petite" (Jackie Wilson). As part of the Corporation, he wrote many hit songs for the Jackson 5, including "I Want You Back" and "ABC". As a record producer, he launched the Miracles and signed acts like the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Stevie Wonder. He was known for carefully directing the public image, dress, manners, and choreography of his acts.
Gordy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama in 2016, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2021. In 2022, he was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.
Berry Gordy III (also known as Berry Gordy Jr.) was the seventh of eight children (Fuller, Esther, Anna, Loucye, George, Gwen, Berry and Robert), born on November 28, 1929, in Detroit, to middle-class parents, Berry Gordy II (also known as Berry Gordy Sr.) and Bertha Fuller Gordy, who had relocated to Detroit from Oconee, Washington County, Georgia, in 1922.
His grandfather, named Berry Gordy I, was the son of James Gordy, a white plantation owner in Georgia, and one of his slaves. Berry I's half-brother, James (son of the elder James and his legal wife), was the grandfather of President Jimmy Carter. Berry Gordy II was led to Detroit both by the job opportunities offered by the booming automotive businesses, and also by worries over the atmosphere in the American South where black men were lynched "with chilling regularity by the Ku Klux Klan"; in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, 1,502 lynchings were reported, most in Southern states. Gordy's father opened a grocery store, owned a plastering and carpentry business, and a printing shop. While his brothers Fuller and George were happy to work at jobs their father assigned to them in construction and printing, Berry and Robert, the younger boys, were less inclined to follow that path. Both Robert and Berry liked dancing and music, but Berry's greatest interest was in boxing.
Gordy dropped out of Northeastern High School in the eleventh grade to become a professional boxer in hopes of becoming rich quickly; he boxed professionally until 1950, when he was drafted by the United States Army in 1951 for service in the Korean War. Arriving in Korea in May 1952, Gordy was first assigned to the 58th Field Artillery Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, near Panmunjom. He later became a chaplain's assistant, driving a jeep and playing the organ at religious services at the front. His tour in the Korean War was completed in April 1953. He obtained a GED, which is equivalent to a high school diploma. ...
Source: Article "Berry Gordy" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Fayard Antonio Nicholas was an American choreographer, dancer and actor. He and his younger brother Harold Nicholas made up the Nicholas Brothers tap dance duo, who starred in the MGM musicals An All-Colored Vaudeville Show, Stormy Weather, The Pirate, and Hard Four. The Nicholas brothers also starred in the 20th Century-Fox musicals Down Argentine Way, Sun Valley Serenade, and Orchestra Wives. In 1932, when he was 18 and his brother was only 11, they became the featured act at Cotton Club in New York City. The brothers earned fame with a unique style of rhythm tap that blended "masterful jazz steps with daredevil athletic moves and an elegance of motion worthy of ballet". They appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway and in London they worked with jazz choreographer Buddy Bradley. The performances led them to a career in film. Nicholas appeared in over 60 films, including the 1943 musical Stormy Weather with their signature staircase dance.
His career was interrupted from 1943 to 1944 when he served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Nicholas achieved the rank of Technician fifth grade while in WWII.
After his dance career ended, Nicholas and his wife, Katherine Hopkins Nicholas, embarked on a lecture tour discussing dance. In 2003, Nicholas served as "Festival Legend" at the third "Soul to Sole Tap Festival" in Austin, Texas.
Nicholas was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001.
The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or Biggie, born Christopher George Latore Wallace, was an American rapper, songwriter, and actor. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest rappers of all time.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (born Rosetta Nubin, March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973) was an American singer and guitarist. She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar that was extremely important to the origins of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, presaging the rise of electric blues. Her guitar playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s; in particular a European tour with Muddy Waters in 1964 with a stop in Manchester on 7 May is cited by prominent British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.
Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of "light" in the "darkness" of nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording "Rock Me" and with her 1939 hit "This Train". Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music.
Tharpe's 1944 release "Down by the Riverside" was selected for the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress in 2004, which noted that it "captures her spirited guitar playing and unique vocal style, demonstrating clearly her influence on early rhythm-and-blues performers" and cited her influence on "many gospel, jazz, and rock artists". ("Down by the Riverside" was recorded by Tharpe on December 2, 1948, in New York City, and issued as Decca single 48106.) Her 1945 hit "Strange Things Happening Every Day", recorded in late 1944, featured Tharpe's vocals and resonator guitar, with Sammy Price (piano), bass and drums. It was the first gospel record to cross over, hitting no. 2 on the Billboard "race records" chart, the term then used for what later became the R&B chart, in April 1945. The recording has been cited as a precursor of rock and roll, and alternatively has been called the first rock and roll record. In May 2018, Tharpe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence. ...
Source: Article "Sister Rosetta Tharpe" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
