Songwriter Sammy Cahn

Composer Sammy Cahn wrote the lyrics to some of America's most popular songs, recorded by Frank Sinatra and dozens of other artists. Cahn died January 15, 1993, but Mike O'Sullivan reports, a recent tribute to the composer reintroduced his music to a new generation.

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Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach's official press biography is effusive, impressive, overwhelming - and almost beside the point. The 14-page document dutifully lists the tangible signs of recognition given to the 80-year-old composer. There are chart-toppers and megahits, Grammys, Oscars and other awards, tributes from fellow legends - and even a placing on People Magazine's Sexiest Men Alive list as recently as 2000. But Bacharach's importance can't possibly be measured in statues, statistics and statements. What matters, in the end, is the groundbreaking level of sophistication he brought to pop music.---Bernard Perusse, Montreal Gazette
Published: Thursday, September 25

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Andre Kostelanetz

The papers of legendary conductor, arranger and broadcaster Andre Kostelanetz have been donated to the Library of Congress by his estate. Kostelanetz died in 1980. The gift is a veritable treasure trove for students of 20th century music and broadcasting. The archive of Kostelanetz' personal property, papers, clippings, letters, sound recordings, posters, and photographs spans some 73 crates. It documents in detail the career of one of America's most remarkable men of music. The gift from Kostelanetz' estate will complement the gift of scores and parts for many of his arrangements Kostelanetz made to the Library of Congress. His papers will join those of George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner, and Irving Berlin, among others in the Library's collection of material belonging to eminent American musicians.

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Anna Maria Alberghetti

Born in Pesaro, Marche, in central Italy, she starred on Broadway and won a Tony Award in 1962 as Best Actress (Musical) for Carnival (she tied with Diahann Carroll for the musical No Strings).

Alberghetti was a child prodigy. Her father was an opera singer and concert master of the Rome Opera Company. Her mother was a pianist. At age six, Anna Maria sang in a concert on the Isle of Rhodes with a 100-piece orchestra. She performed at Carnegie Hall in New York at the age of 13. 

                                            WIKIPEDIA                             



VIDEO: Twenty-one-year-old Anna Maria Alberghetti performs the song Come Back To Sorrento (Torna a Surriento) in 1957. 

Diahann Carroll

DIAHANN CARROLL was an American actress, singer, and model. She rose to stardom in performances in some of the earliest major studio films to feature black casts, including Carmen Jones in 1954 and Porgy and Bess in 1959. In 1962, Carroll won a Tony Award for best actress, a first for a black woman, for her role in the Broadway musical No Strings.



 WIKIPEDIA | About No Strings



 Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley sing their beautiful rendition of "The Sweetest Sounds" from the Richard Rodgers musical NO STRINGS:

Doris Day

Doris Day, the perennial girl-next-door whose career as a singer and actress spanned almost 50 years and made her one of the biggest Hollywood stars and most popular entertainers in the United States, has died. ... The Doris Day Animal Foundation told Fox News Day died early Monday 13 MAY 2019.



Doris Day (born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. After she began her career as a big band singer in 1939, her popularity increased with her first hit recording "Sentimental Journey" (1945). After leaving Les Brown & His Band of Renown to embark on a solo career, she recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967, which made her one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th century.
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Vic Damone

Vic Damone, the postwar crooner whose intimate, rhapsodic voice captivated bobby soxers, middle-age dreamers and silver-haired romantics in a five-decade medley of America's love songs and popular standards, died on Sunday, 11 February 2018 in Miami Beach. He was 89. Vic Damone (June 12, 1928 – February 11, 2018) was an American traditional pop and big band singer, actor, radio and television presenter, and entertainer who is best known for his performances of songs such as "You're Breaking My Heart" (a number one hit), the number four hit "On the Street Where You Live" (from My Fair Lady), and "My Heart Cries for You".
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Nancy Wilson

American singer whose career spanned over five decades, from the mid–1950s until her retirement in the early–2010s. She was notable for her single "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am" and her version of the standard "Guess Who I Saw Today". Wilson recorded more than 70 albums and won three Grammy Awards for her work. During her performing career Wilson was labeled a singer of blues, jazz, R&B, pop, and soul, a "consummate actress", and "the complete entertainer". The title she preferred, however, was "song stylist". She received many nicknames including "Sweet Nancy", "The Baby", "Fancy Miss Nancy" and "The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice".

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Jack deMello

Composer, arranger, producer and recording artist Jack de Mello, who created an expansive new synthesis of Hawaiian melodies and lush, contemporary orchestral music, died Saturday in Las Vegas. He was 102.

During his prolific career, de Mello recorded close to 160 albums of all types of music, including almost 500 Hawaiian songs. He recorded at top studios around the world and “gave Hawaiian music a new identity,” according to a statement from his family.

Born Nov. 15, 1916, in Oakland, Calif., de Mello showed early musical talent. He studied music and music theory at the Bickett Military Band School in San Francisco and was only 9 years old when he began playing the trumpet. The family recalled his stories about piling into a Model T Ford with his brother to go to his lessons, which also required travel by ferry boat and train since the Bay Bridge had yet to be built.

As a young musician in San Francisco, de Mello joined the staff band at the CBS radio network and later served as a musical director at ABC and NBC. He entered the Army as a bandmaster at Camp McQuaide in California.

As musical director of Mutual Network top-rated radio show, “Beat The Villian,” de Mello hired the Society Band led by Joe Reichman. They went on to perform together at major U.S. hotels including the Waldorf Astoria and Roosevelt in New York. During a run at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, they accepted an invitation to reopen the Royal Hawaiian hotel in 1947. The hotel had been used exclusively by the U.S. Navy during World War II.

From...HONOLULU STAR ADVERTISER

Keely Smith

Dorothy Jacqueline Keely (March 9, 1928 – December 16, 2017), known as Keely Smith, was a Grammy Award-winning American jazz and popular music singer, who performed and recorded extensively in the 1950s with then-husband Louis Prima, and throughout the 1960s as a solo artist.



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Adult Standards

Adult standards is a North American radio format heard primarily on AM stations in the mid 20th century. Adult standards (also sometimes known as the nostalgia format) is aimed at "mature" adults, meaning mainly those persons today who are over 50 years of age, but it is mostly targeted for senior citizens.

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