Kalomira's full name is Maria Kalomira Sarantis. Known simply as Carol by her family, she was born in West Hempstead, New York, and her parents are Greek restaurant owners.
Since childhood, Kalomira's dream was to become a pop star. She took part drama productions and musicals while in school. Her favorite instrument was the viola, which she studied for nine years and played in the school orchestra. She was also Miss West Hempstead at her high school in 2003 and class president for two consecutive years.
On a tip from her cousin Eleni, she entered and won second place at a music contest organized by WBLI Radio. Following her appearance, she opened up several live shows for Jessica Simpson, LL Cool J, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Michelle Branch and Nick Lachey.
Kalomira entered the New York City auditions for Antenna's reality singing competition Fame Story 2, which was a subsidiary of Star Academy. She was one of two selected from over 200 auditions in New York.
Despite speaking primarily English, Kalomira went to Greece after having completed one semester of college at Adelphi University where she was a music major with a scholarship. Her difficulties with Greek songs were not significant enough to hold her back. Kalomira placed first and her professional singing career began.
Following the success of her first performance, she performed the popular song "Stand by Me." The following weeks, the challenges became more difficult. Kalomira was one of the final six participants left with only two performances left.
Her rendition of "Εϊ Καζανόβα" ("Hey Cazanova") equalled her success with Madonna’s "Express Yourself" in the final show. Kalomira won the contest, earned 200,000 Euros and a recording contract with Heaven Music.
Kalomira performed in Thessaloniki’s FOCUS from July 8 to August 14. While entertaining audiences by night, she was recording her first album by day. Outside of Greece, Kalomira appeared on NBC’s "Today Show" and "Access Hollywood" during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, and sang live and was interviewed on numerous media outlets including appearing on Oprah.
Kalomira's 15 track first album Kalomira which went gold. She then toured Greece. She was awarded "Woman of the Year - Best Newcomer" by Life and Style magazine. Also in 2004, she had a minor credited role in the Greek TV drama series I Lampsi.
In 2005, Kalomira released her second album titled Paizeis? (You Playing?). She wrote two of the 12 songs.
In the fall of 2006, Kalomira became the female co-hostess on the hit Sunday night show Pio Poli Tin Kiriaki alongside Grigoris Arnaoutoglou on Mega Channel. In December, she released her third CD I Kalomira Paei Cinema (Kalomira Goes to the Cinema). It features songs from classic Greek movies.
In 2007, Heaven Music chose Kalomira to be their contestant in the 2008 National Final to represent Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008. On February 27, 2008, Kalomira won the National Final with "Secret Combination" and represented Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008. In the Eurovision final, he came in third behind Russia and Ukraine.
Kalomira announced online that she recorded her new album during September and October 2007 in Greece. The album, named Secret Combination the Album, was released in May 2008 and contained songs in both Greek and English, including her Eurovision entry "Secret Combination."
In January 2010 Kalomira announced that she was in the studio recording new music. Her single, "Please Don't Break My Heart," features American rapper, Fatman Scoop. The video was filmed in Turkey. In mid 2010, Kalomira was planning to release her fifth full-length studio album.
"I'm going to play it with both hands so that way I will get through with it a little faster."
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Borge was born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen, Denmark, His parents, Bernhard and Frederikke Rosenbaum, were both musicians—his father a violist in the Royal Danish Orchestra and his mother a pianist.
Like his mother, Borge began piano lessons at the age of two, and it was soon apparent that he was a prodigy. He gave his first piano recital when he was eight years old, and in 1918 was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, studying under Olivo Krause. Later on, he was taught by Victor Schiøler, Liszt's student Frederic Lamond, and Busoni's pupil Egon Petri.
Borge played his first major concert in 1926 at the Danish concert-hall Odd Fellow Palæet (The Odd Fellow's Lodge building). After a few years as a classical concert pianist, he started his now famous "stand up" act, with the signature blend of piano music and jokes. He married American Elsie Chilton in 1933, the same year he debuted with his revue acts. Borge started touring extensively in Europe, where he began telling anti-Nazi jokes.
When the Nazis occupied Denmark during World War II, Borge was playing a concert in Sweden, and managed to escape to Finland. He traveled to America on the USS American Legion, the last neutral ship to make it out of Petsamo, Finland, and arrived August 28, 1940 virtually penniless. (Disguised as a sailor, Borge returned to Denmark once during the occupation to visit his dying mother.)
Even though Borge did not speak a word of English upon arrival, he quickly managed to adapt his jokes to the American audience, learning English by watching movies. He took the name of Victor Borge, and, in 1941, he started on Rudy Vallee's radio show, but was hired soon after by Bing Crosby for his Kraft Music Hall.
From then on, fame rose quickly for Borge, who won Best New Radio Performer of the Year in 1942. Soon after the award, he was offered film roles with stars such as Frank Sinatra (in Higher and Higher).
While hosting The Victor Borge Show on NBC beginning in 1946, he developed many of his trademarks, including repeatedly announcing his intent to play a piece but getting "distracted" by something or other, making comments about the audience, or discussing the usefulness of Chopin's "Minute Waltz" as an egg timer. Or he would start out with some well-known classical piece like Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and suddenly move into a harmonically suitable pop or jazz tune like Cole Porter's "Night and Day."
Among Borge's other famous routines is the "Phonetic Punctuation" routine (SEE VIDEO), in which he recites a story, with full punctuation (comma, period, exclamation mark, etc.) as exaggerated onomatopoeic sounds.
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Another is his "Inflationary Language," where he incremented numbers embedded in words, whether they are visible or not ("once upon a time" becomes "twice upon a time", "wonderful" becomes "twoderful", "forehead" becomes "fivehead", "tennis" becomes "elevennis", "I ate a tenderloin with my fork" becomes "'I nine an elevenderloin with my five'k' and so on and so fifth").
Borge used physical and visual elements in his live and televised performances. He would play a strange-sounding piano tune from sheet music, looking increasingly confused; turning the sheet upside down, he would then play the actual tune, flashing a joyful smile of accomplishment to the audience (he had, at first, been literally playing the actual tune upside down).
When his energetic playing of another song would cause him to fall off the piano bench, he would open the seat lid, take out the two ends of an automotive seatbelt, and buckle himself onto the bench, "for safety."
Conducting an orchestra, he might stop and order a violinist who had played a sour note to get off the stage, then resume the performance and have the other members of the section move up to fill the empty seat while they were still playing.
His musical sidekick in the 1950s, Leonid Hambro, was a well-known concert pianist. In 1968, classical pianist Şahan Arzruni joined him as his straightman, performing together on one piano a version of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, considered a musical-comedic classic.
In his stage shows in later years, he would include a segment with opera singer Marilyn Mulvey. She would try to sing an aria, and he would react and interrupt, with such antics as falling off the bench in "surprise" when she hit a high note. He would also remind her repeatedly not to rest her hand on the piano.
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Marilyn Mulvey
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After the routine, the spotlight would fall upon Mulvey and she would sing a serious number with Borge accompanying in the background. Borge played with and conducted some of the world's most renowned orchestras such as Chicago Symphony Orchestra,[ the New York Philharmonic and London Philharmonic. Always modest, he felt very honored when he was invited to conduct the Royal Danish Orchestra at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1992.
His later television appearances included his use of his "Phonetic Punctuation" routine on The Electric Company in a filmed sketch; he would also use it on the record to follow during the "Punctuation" song. He appeared several times on Sesame Street and was a guest star during the fourth season of The Muppet Show.
Victor Borge continued to tour until his last days, performing up to 60 times per year when he was 90 years old. Borge died in Greenwich, Connecticut, at the age of 91, after more than 75 years of entertaining. He died peacefully in his sleep a day after returning from a concert in Denmark.
"I love this piano... I get about 4 sonatas to a gallon of red wine on it..."
An active country music performer between 1986 and 2006, Ricky Van Shelton charted more than twenty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. His ten Number One were, "Somebody Lied," "Life Turned Her That Way," 'Don't We All Have the Right," "I'll Leave This World Loving You," "From a Jack to a King," "Living Proof," "I've Cried My Last Tear for You," "Rockin' Years" (a duet with Dolly Parton), "I Am a Simple Man," and "Keep It Between the Lines."
Ricky also had seven more of his singles in the Top Ten on the same chart. He has also released nine studio albums, of which his first four have all been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
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Born in Danville, Virginia and raised in Grit, Virginia, Shelton's father sang Gospel music while Ricky was still a child. while Ricky also sang gospel, he was also drawn to Pop music and later, in high school, to Country music. He soon started singing Country songs with his brother's band.
After graduating high school, Shelton started performing in area clubs and also worked a series of jobs. In 1984, his girlfriend and later wife, Bettye Witt, found a job in Nashville, Tennessee and Shelton moved there with her.
In Nashville, Shelton tried to find a recording contract, and worked in area nightclubs. In 1986, Jerry Thompson, a newspaper columnist, heard one of Shelton's demos, and arranged an audition with Columbia Records. Soon thereafter, Shelton was offered a recording contract with CBS, with Jerry Thompson serving as his manager. In that same year, he recorded his first album, Wild-Eyed Dream. The title track was released as a single, and reached #24 on the Country charts.
The next song from the album, "Crime of Passion" gained him an even bigger hit on the Country charts, when it reached the Top 10 early that year. The follow-up ,"Somebody Lied," became his first No. 1 on the Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.
Nine other songs would make it to No. 1 on the Country charts during his career. He had a pair of other No. 1 singles from his album, "Life Turned Her That Way" and "Don't We All Have the Right." His album reached the No. 1 spot on the Top Country Albums chart in 1987, was one of the biggest-selling Country albums of the year, and it made Shelton one of the most successful male vocalists of that year.
He achieved equal success the next year with a new album and a new single. The album was entitled Loving Proof, and it too was a No. 1 Billboard Country album. The album spawned His third album, RVS III, also kept Shelton him high on the charts, though only one No. 1 single came from it.
By now, Shelton was one of Country music's most successful male vocalists. Around the same time, Shelton wrote a series of Children's books. The first two titles of his books were, Tales From a Duck Named Quacker and Quacker Meets Mrs. Moo.
By 1992, Shelton's success on the Country charts was slowing. He enjoyed one last Top 10 hit entitled "Wild Man," which was put on his newest album, called Greatest Hits Plus, which had all his biggest hits since he first entered Country music.
In 1997, Shelton formed his own label entitled, RVS. That same year, he released his first album in three years entitled Making Plans. Shelton financed the project himself however, and worked out to release his album only to Wal-Mart stores.
In May 2006, Ricky announced that he would be retiring from touring to spend more time with his family.
La Rosa was born in Brooklyn, New York and joined the United States Navy in 1947 after finishing high school. Arthur Godfrey, a radio and early network television pioneer (and a Naval Reserve officer), heard LaRosa in Pensacola, Florida, where LaRosa was stationed, and offered him a job.
Godfrey was impressed by La Rosa's singing and had him flown to New York to appear on his television show, with Godfrey ending the spot by saying, "When Julie gets out of the Navy he'll come back to see us."
Discharged from the Navy on a Friday, La Rosa went to Godfrey on the following Monday, and a week later he appeared on Godfrey's variety show. He was a regular on both the morning Arthur Godfrey Time and the Wednesday night variety show Arthur Godfrey and His Friends.
Julius La Rosa's appeared on Godfrey's shows from November 19, 1951 to October 19, 1953. When Archie Bleyer, Arthur Godfrey's bandleader, formed Cadence Records in 1952, the first performer signed was La Rosa. Cadence's first single, which was also La Rosa's first recording, was "Anywhere I Wander." It reached the top 30 on the charts, and his next recording, "My Lady Loves To Dance," was a moderate success.
La Rosa's third recording, "Eh, Cumpari" in 1953 hit #1 on the Cash Box chart and #2 on the Billboard chart, and La Rosa got an award as the best new male vocalist of 1953.
Like the other "Little Godfreys," as the cast members were known, Godfrey discouraged La Rosa from hiring a manager or booking agent, preferring to have his staff, and his own agent and manager, Tommy Rockwell and negotiate on La Rosa's behalf.
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With hit recordings and his appearances on Arthur Godfrey's shows, La Rosa's popularity grew exponentially. At one point, La Rosa's fan mail eclipsed Godfrey's. A year after La Rosa was hired, he was receiving 7,000 fan letters a week.
On the morning of October 19, 1953 (in a segment of the show broadcast on radio only) after La Rosa had finished singing "Manhattan" on Arthur Godfrey Time, Godfrey fired him on the air, announcing, "that was Julie's swan song with us." La Rosa tearfully met with Godfrey after the broadcast and thanked him for giving him his "break." La Rosa was then met at Godfrey's offices by his lawyer, manager and some reporters.
Singer Ruth Wallis, known for her raunchy double entendre' novelties, recorded "Dear Mr. Godfrey," a biting satire on the matter, which made it to #25 on the Billboard charts in November 1953. Days after firing La Rosa, Godfrey also fired bandleader Archie Bleyer, owner of La Rosa's label Cadence Records, for producing spoken word records for Cadence featuring Chicago-based talk host Don McNeill, whose Don McNeill's Breakfast Club on ABC Radio opposite Godfrey's morning show was considered a direct competitor.
Immediately after his firing, "Eh, Cumpari" became a major hit, followed by "Domani." Ed Sullivan immediately signed La Rosa for appearances on his CBS Toast of the Town TV variety show, which sparked a feud between him and Godfrey. La Rosa's first appearance on Toast of the Town following the firing got a 47.9 Trendex rating, and La Rosa would appear 12 more times on Sullivan's show that year.
La Rosa had a three times a week television series, The Julius La Rosa Show, during the summer of 1955, featuring Russ Case and his Orchestra. The short-lived series lasted only 13 weeks. La Rosa tired of revisiting the Godfrey affair, in part because it had been rehashed so many times, but he was also known to declare publicly that Godfrey was, indeed, the individual who made his career, but always adding, "He wasn't a very nice man."
Roger Dean Miller was famous for his catchy near-novelty songs. His best known records include the country and pop hits "King of the Road,” "Dang Me" and "England Swings,” all recorded in the mid 1960s.
Roger was born in Fort Worth, Texas and raised in Oklahoma. Growing up, he listened to the Grand Ole Opry and Light Crust Doughboys on a Fort Worth station with his cousin's husband Sheb Wooley. Wooley taught Miller his first guitar chords and bought him a fiddle.
Roger used to sneak out of his house and perform in Oklahoma and Texas. When he was 17, he stole a guitar to write songs, but turned himself in the next day. He chose to enlist in the Army to avoid jail.
Near the end of his military service, while stationed in Atlanta, Georgia, Miller played fiddle in the "Circle A Wranglers," a military musical group started by Faron Young. While stationed in South Carolina, an army sergeant whose brother was Kenneth C. Burns from the musical duo Homer and Jethro, convinced Miller to head to Nashville after he was discharged from the Army.
In Nashville, he met with Chet Atkins, who after listening to him, advised him to come back after he polished his act. Miller remained in Nashville and worked as a bellhop at the Andrew Jackson Hotel, to make ends meet; he soon became known as the "singing bellhop."
Eventually, Roger was hired by Minnie Pearl to play fiddle in her band. Later, he met up with George Jones, who introduced him to music executives from the Starday Records label for an audition. The label was impressed with Miller and awarded him with a session in Houston, accompanied by Jones. Jones and Miller collaborated, writing "Tall, Tall Trees" and "Happy Child."
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After starting a family, Miller left for Amarillo, Texas to become a fireman, and while his music career wasn't completely abandoned, was put on the back burner.
Miller met with Ray Price, and was hired as a member of his Cherokee Cowboys. He moved back to Nashville, and penned the song "Invitation to the Blues," which was covered by Rex Allen and later by Price, for whom it became a number three hit on country charts.
Roger wrote "Half a Mind" for Ernest Tubb, "That's the Way I Feel" for Faron Young, and his first number one, "Billy Bayou," which along with "Home" were recorded by Jim Reeves.
Miller became one of the biggest songwriters of the 1950s. However, Bill Anderson would later remark that "Roger was the most talented, and least disciplined person that you could imagine" citing the attempts of Miller's Tree Publishing boss, Buddy Killen to force him to finish a piece. He was also known to give away lines, inciting many Nashville songwriters to follow him around since "everything he said was a potential song."
Miller signed a recording deal with Decca Records in 1958. He was paired with singer Donny Little, who would later gain fame under the name Johnny Paycheck, to perform the Little-penned "A Man Like Me,” and later "The Wrong Kind of Girl." Neither song made the charts.
To make extra money, Miller went on tour and joined Faron Young's band as a drummer, although he had never drummed before. During this period, he signed a record deal with Chet Atkins at RCA Records, for whom Miller recorded "You Don't Want My Love" (also known as "In the Summertime") in 1960, which marked his first appearance on country charts, peaking at #14. The next year, he would make an even bigger impact, breaking through the top 10 with his single "When Two Worlds Collide," co-written with Bill Anderson.
After appearing on late night comedy shows, Miller decided that he might have a chance to go to Hollywood and become an actor. With little money he signed with Smash Records, asking for $1,600 in cash, in exchange for recording 16 sides. Smash agreed to the proposal, and Miller performed at his first session for the company early in 1964, when he recorded the hits "Dang Me" (which took him under 5 minutes to write) and "Chug-a-Lug.”
Both songs were released as singles, peaking at #1 and #3 respectively on country charts. Both also fared well on the Billboard Hot 100 reaching #7 and #9. The songs transformed Miller's career. Later that year, he recorded the #15 hit "Do-Wacka-Do," and soon after the biggest hit of his career "King of the Road," which topped Country and Adult Contemporary charts while peaking at #4 on the Billboard 100.
Miller continued to record and tour into the 1990s, charting his final top 20 country hit "Old Friends" with Willie Nelson in 1982. Late in his career he wrote the music and lyrics for the 1985 Tony-award winning Broadway musical Big River, in which he also appeared.
Miller died from lung cancer in 1992, and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame three years later. His songs continued to be recorded by younger artists, with covers of "Tall, Tall Trees" by Alan Jackson and "Husbands and Wives" by Brooks & Dunn, each reaching the number one spot on country charts in the 1990s.
Xavier Cugat's full name was Francesc d'Asís Xavier Cugat Mingall de Bru i Deulofeu from Girona , Spain. A Catalan-American bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a key personality in the spread of Latin music in United States popular music. He was also a cartoonist and a successful businessman.
Cugat was born as His family emigrated to Cuba when Xavier was five. He was trained as a classical violinist and played with the Orchestra of the Teatro Nacional in Havana. On 6 July 1915, Cugat and his family arrived in New York as immigrant passengers on board the S.S. Havana.
He started his musical career with a band called The Gigolos during the tango craze. Later, he went to work for the Los Angeles Times as a cartoonist. Cugat's caricatures were later nationally syndicated. His older brother, Francis, was an artist of some note, having painted the famous cover art for F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby.
In the late 1920s, as sound began to be used in films, he put together another tango band that had some success in early short musical films. By the early 1930s, he began appearing with his group in feature films. He took his band to New York for the 1931 opening of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and he eventually replaced Jack Denny as the leader of the hotel's resident band.
One of his trademarks was to hold a Chihuahua while he waved his baton with the other arm.
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For 16 years Cugat lead the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel's orchestra. He shuttled between New York and Los Angeles for most of the next 30 years, alternating hotel and radio dates with movie appearances in You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Bathing Beauty (1944), Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), On an Island with You (1948), and Neptune's Daughter (1949), among others.
Abbe Lane
Cugat followed trends closely, making records for the conga, the mambo, the cha-cha-cha, and the twist when each was in fashion. Several of the songs he recorded, including "Perfidia", were used in the Wong Kar-wai films Days of Being Wild and 2046. In 1943, "Brazil" was a big hit, reaching #17 in the Billboard Top 100.
Cugat recorded on Columbia Records, RCA Victor , Mercury Records and Decca Records. Dinah Shore made her first recordings as a vocalist with Cugat in 1939 and 1940.In 1940, his recording of "Perfidia" became a big hit.
Charo - "Coochie, Coochie!!"
Cugat was married five times. His first marriage was to Rita Montaner,his second to Carmen Castillo,his third to Lorraine Allen, his fourth to singer Abbe Lane, and his fifth to Spanish guitarist and comic actress Charo.
Joseph Allen McDonald was born in Washington, D.C. in 1942.At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy. After his enlistment, he attended the Los Angeles City College for a year. In the early 1960s, he began busking on Berkeley, California's famous Telegraph Avenue.
Berkeley String Quartet-Joe is 2nd from Right
McDonald has recorded 33 albums and has written hundreds of songs over a career spanning 40 years. He and Barry Melton co-founded Country Joe & the Fish which became a pioneer psychedelic rock band with their eclectic performances at The Avalon Ballroom, The Fillmore, Monterey Pop Festival and both the original and the reunion Woodstock Festivals.
Their best known song is his "The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag," a black comedy novelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus ("One, two, three, what are we fighting for?") is well known to the Woodstock generation and Vietnam Veterans of the 1960s and 1970s.
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The "Fish Cheer" was the band performing a call-and-response with the audience, spelling the word "fish," followed by Country Joe yelling, "What's that spell?" twice, with the audience responding, and then, the third time, "What's that smell?" followed immediately by the song. The "Fish Cheer" evolved into the "F*ck Cheer" after the Berkeley free speech movement.
The cheer was on the original recording of the I-Feel-Like-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag, being played right before the song on the LP of the same name. The cheer became popular and the crowd would spell out F-I-S-H when the band performed live.
During the summer of 1968 the band played on the Schaefer Beer Music Festival tour. Gary "Chicken" Hirsh suggested before one of the shows to spell the word "f*ck" instead of "fish."
Although the crowd loved it, the management of the Schaefer Festival did not and kicked the band off the tour for life. The Ed Sullivan Show then canceled a previously scheduled appearance by the band, telling them to keep the money they had already been paid in exchange for never playing on the show. The modified cheer continued at most of the band's live shows throughout the years, including Woodstock and the Isle of Wight Festival. In Massachusetts, McDonald was fined $500 for uttering "f*ck" in public.
Photo Courtesy of Bob Sanderson
In 2003 McDonald was sued for copyright infringement over his signature song, specifically the "One, two, three, what are we fighting for?" chorus part, as derived from the 1926 early jazz classic "Muskrat Ramble," co-written by Kid Ory.
The suit was brought by Ory's daughter Babette, who held the copyright at the time. Since decades had already passed from the time McDonald composed his song in 1965, Ory based her suit on a new version of it recorded by McDonald in 1999. The court however upheld McDonald's laches defense, noting that Ory and her father were aware of the original version of the song, with the same questionable section, for some three decades without bringing a suit.
In 2004, Country Joe regrouped with some of the original members of Country Joe and The Fish as the Country Joe Band – Bruce Barthol, David Bennett Cohen, and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh. The band toured the U.S. and U.K.
When the Bevis Frond met Country Joe McDonald in San Francisco in 1998 Country Joe had been one of their biggest musical heroes of the 60s. So, when Joe asked them to join him on stage at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall they readily agreed. Their joint performace was so successful, they did it again a few months later at His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen. An album of the performance is available in vinyl.
