May 2: British singer and talk show host Lily Allen is 26 today. (Adults ONLY!)

ADULTS ONLY!

Lily Rose Beatrice Allen was born in Hammersmith, London, England. She is the daughter of actor and musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. In 1988, at the age of three, Allen appeared on The Comic Strip Presents... episode "The Yob," which her father had co-written.

In her teenage years, her musical tastes evolved from glam rock to alternative. When Allen was 11, former University of Victoria music student Rachel Santesso overheard Allen singing Wonderwall by Oasis in the school's playground; impressed, Santesso, who would later become an award-winning soprano and composer, called Allen into her office the next day and started giving her lunchtime singing lessons. At that point Allen said she knew that music was something she needed to do either as a lifelong vocation or to get it out of her system.

Allen played piano to grade 5 standard and achieved Grade 8 in singing. She also played violin, guitar and trumpet as well as being a member of a chamber choir.

Allen made an appearance as a lady-in-waiting in the 1998 film Elizabeth, which was co-produced by her mother. Allen abandoned school at age fifteen to focus on her musical performing skills and song writing, not wanting to "spend a third of her life preparing to work for the next third of her life, to set herself up with a pension for the next third of her life."

Through her father's connections, Lily signed to London Records a part of the Warner Music in 2002, but the label lost interest and she left without releasing any records.
She created several demo songs, and in late 2005, created a profile on MySpace, where she posted some of her recordings. In March 2006, OMM included an article about Allen's success through MySpace. She received her first major mainstream coverage, appearing in the magazine's cover story two months later.

After tens of thousands of MySpace views, Lily signed with Regal Recordings. In 2006, she began to work on completing what would be her first studio album. Her first mainstream single "Smile" reached the top position on the UK Singles Chart in July 2006.

Her debut record, Alright, Still, sold over 2.6 million copies and brought Allen a nomination at the Grammy Awards, BRIT Awards and MTV Video Music Awards. She then began hosting her own talk-show, Lily Allen and Friends, on BBC Three.

Her second major album release, It's Not Me, It's You, saw a genre shift for her, having more of an electropop feel, rather than the ska and reggae influences of the first one. The album debuted at #1 on the UK Albums Chart and the Australian ARIA Charts. The album spawned the hit singles "The Fear" and "Fuck You," popular mostly in Europe. It's Not Me, It's You has been praised for trying to define the times. Allen said that she does not write songs with a big picture in mind.

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Allen was included on the NME Cool List for 2006. She was voted the third coolest person of the year in New Musical Express. She ranked "Number One Reason to Love '07" and "Hottest Woman of Pop/R&B." in Blender magazine. Allen was also rated number 10 on BBC Three's list of Most Annoying People of 2006. Allen was voted fourth coolest celebrity in a poll taken of 20,000 teenagers by the social networking website Bebo that was released in December 2008.

In 2009 Allen was the subject of cover stories for both Spin Magazine and Q Magazine. MTV said in February 2009 "She seems less like the model of a 21st century pop star and more like the kind of girlfriend you'd have when you're 22 – the awesome kind you'd go backpacking around Europe with, wear a sarong with. She is perfectly imperfect..."

Allen was on Esquire Magazine's list of 60 "Brilliant Brits 2009." In September of that year, Allen announced that she is considering a career in acting and that she will not renew her record contract. In a blog, her last before taking it down, Allen wrote that she has "no plans" to make another record. "The days of me making money from recording music have been and gone as far as I'm concerned." Allen's spokesperson said "She is not quitting pop music. She is not thinking about her next album right now because she is still in the middle of promoting her current record."

During autumn 2010, Allen opened a fashion rental shop "Lucy in Disguise" with her sister Sarah. In February 2010 Allen responded to a question about how her 2010 Brit Award for "British Female Solo Artist" would affect her hiatus: "This hasn't changed my plans to quit. It's actually been really good as something to work towards for the last six months, knowing I'd be doing this. It is the perfect way to say goodbye. I have so much I want to do now with my shop and record label."

In May she stated that following her remaining shows she still plans on taking a break saying "I'm ready to just take a break from it," "I'm still writing... I'm not writing for myself.."
In August a pregnant Allen banned photographers and began her hiatus following a performance at the Big Chill Festival in Herefordshire, England.

In January 2011 Allen's representatives confirmed she is launching her own record label In the Name Of. The first act signed to the label which is financially backed by Sony Music is New York noise pop act Cults.







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May 1: Kate Smith - Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" - was born on this date in 1907...

... she died on June 17, 1986.  

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Did you know...

When the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team played her rendition of "God Bless America" before their game on December 11, 1969, an unusual part of her career began.

The team began to play the song before home games every once in a while; the perception was that the team was more successful on these occasions, so the tradition grew.

At the Flyers' home opener against the Toronto Maple Leafs on October 11, 1973, she made a surprise appearance to perform the song in person and received a tremendous reception. The Flyers won that game by a 2-0 score.

She again performed the song at the Spectrum in front of a capacity crowd of 17,007 fans before Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals on May 19, 1974 against the Boston Bruins. Boston's captain, Phil Esposito, infamously tried to jinx the Flyers' "good luck charm" by presenting her with a bouquet of roses after her performance. The Flyers won their first of two back-to-back Stanley Cups, winning that playoff series against the Boston Bruins 4 games to 2, with Bernie Parent shutting the Bruins out 1-0 in that game.

On October 8, 1987, the Kate Smith statue was dedicated outside the Spectrum in Philadelphia before the Flyers game vs. the Montreal Canadiens.

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Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith was born in Greenville, Virginia. Her professional musical career began in 1930, when she was discovered by Columbia Records vice president Ted Collins, who became her longtime partner and manager. Collins put her on radio in 1931. She sang the controversial top twenty song of 1931, "That's Why Darkies Were Born." She appeared in 1932 in Hello Everybody!, with co-stars Randolph Scott and Sally Blane, and in the 1943 wartime movie This is the Army she sang "God Bless America."

Smith was 5'10" tall and weighed 235 pounds at the age of 30. She titled her 1938 autobiography Living in a Great Big Way. She credited Ted Collins with helping her overcome her self-consciousness, writing, "Ted Collins was the first man who regarded me as a singer, and didn't even seem to notice that I was a big girl." She noted, "I'm big, and I sing, and boy, when I sing, I sing all over!"

Smith began recording in 1926; in 1931, she sang "Dream a Little Dream of Me." Her biggest hits were "River, Stay 'Way From My Door" (1931), "The Woodpecker Song" (1940), "The White Cliffs of Dover" (1941), "Rose O'Day" (1941), "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" (1942), "There Goes That Song Again" (1944), "Seems Like Old Times" (1946), and "Now Is the Hour" (1947). Her theme song was "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain"; she had helped write the lyrics. Smith greeted her audience with "Hello, everybody!" and signed off with "Thanks for listenin'."

Her 1932 film, Hello, Everybody was released around the same time as Mae West's She Done Him Wrong at a time when Paramount was in deep financial trouble. Paramount initially promoted Smith's film and it proved to be disappointing at the box office. On the other hand, West's first starring film was a huge success. This situation added to the ridicule of Smith's size and appearance, but she was featured in a number of Paramount shorts without issue. She continued to be successful on radio throughout the 1930s into the 1940s.

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On October 26, 1982, Smith received the Presidential Medal of Freedom America's highest civilian honor.

Smith, who never married, was crippled by diabetes and her weight problem in her last years and was confined to a wheelchair. She died in Raleigh on June 17, 1986 at the age of 79.

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May 1: Rita Coolidge is 66 today.

Video of Rita's duet with Kris Kristofferson, "Help Me Make it Through the Night"
 is at end of this post. 
Born in Lafayette, Tennessee, multiple Grammy Award-winning vocalist Rita Cooledge is known as a versatile singer blessed with a clear, pure voice, capable of singing rock, pop, R&B, country, and folk.

Early in her career, RitA was  in-demand constantly as a session vocalist in addition to her own solo recording career. During the 1970s and 1980s, she charted hits on Billboard's Pop, Country, Adult Contemporary and Jazz charts.

Part Cherokee, Rita first sang in the church where her father was a minister. She studied art at Florida State University, but also sang and wrote songs on the side, and decided to give music a shot before settling into teaching.

She moved to Memphis after graduation and worked singing commercial jingles, sometimes with her sister, Priscilla, and soon landed a job touring with Delaney & Bonnie as a backup vocalist. She subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, where she sang on recording sessions by the likes of Eric Clapton, Stephen Stills, Leon Russell, and Joe Cocker, among others. After returning from the supporting tour for Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen, Coolidge landed her own solo contract with A&M.


Coolidge's self-titled debut album was released in 1971, but despite critical acclaim for it and the follow-up, Nice Feelin', she failed to break through commercially. Over the course of the next few years, she moved into country-rock and Southern California soft rock, working territory not too dissimilar from Linda Ronstadt.

She became known as "The Delta Lady" and inspired Leon Russell to write a song of the same name for her. It was during this time that she met Kris Kristofferson while filming Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. They married in 1973.

With Kristofferson she recorded several duet albums which sold well, and earned them a Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1974 for "From the Bottle to the Bottom," and in 1976 for "Lover Please."

Their duet, Anytime, Anywhere climbed into the Top Ten and sold over a million copies. Coolidge and Kristofferson released one final duet album, Natural Act, in 1979, but their marriage was on the rocks, and they separated by the end of the year.

Coolidge previously had romantic liaisons with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash; her leaving Stills for Nash has been cited as a contributing factor behind the initial 1970 breakup of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Willie Nelson references her in Devil in a Sleepin' Bag on Shotgun Willie, saying 'Just got back from New York City, Kris (Kristofferson) and Rita (Coolidge) done it all/ Bought perfection there for all the world to see/ Lord, I heard an angel singing in that Philharmonic Hall/ Rita Coolidge, Rita Coolidge, cleft for me'.

Coolidge never repeated the pop success of Anytime, Anywhere, but she did continue to land hits on the adult contemporary charts through the early '80s, including "You," "I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love," and "All Time High" (the theme for the James Bond flick Octopussy).

She parted ways with A&M after 1984's Inside the Fire, and spent some time away from the music business to devote herself to various social causes. She returned to recording with 1992's Love Lessons, on Critique, and went on to cut several albums for other small labels during the latter half of the '90s.

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In 1997, Coolidge was one of the founding members of Walela, a Native American music trio, that also includes Coolidge's sister Priscilla and Priscilla's daughter Laura Satterfield. The trio released studio albums including  Walela in 1997, and Unbearable Love in 2000, a live album and DVD (Live in Concert) in 2004 and a compilation album, The Best of Walela in 2007. Walela means hummingbird in Cherokee.

Rita released anthology collections in the early 2000s. And So Is Love, an album of traditional jazz standards, marked Coolidge's first release for the Concord label in 2005. In Spring 2010, Rita released Lady's Not for Sale/ Fall Into Spring/ It's Only Love.


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May 1: Tim McGraw is 44 today.

(Watch Tim sing "Don't Take the Girl" at end of this post.)


Tim McGraw had 11 consecutive albums debut at Number One on the Billboard albums charts. Twenty-one singles hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. He has won 3 Grammys, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and 3 People's Choice Awards.

His Soul2Soul II Tour with Faith Hill is the highest grossing tour in country music history, and one of the top five among all genres of music. He is married to country singer Faith Hill and is the son of former baseball player Tug McGraw.

McGraw has also acted in films, with supporting roles in The Blind Side (with Sandra Bullock), Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom, and Four Christmases (with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon), and lead roles in Flicka in 2006 and Country Strong in 2010.

He was a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats. Taylor Swift's debut single, "Tim McGraw," refers to him and his song, "Can't Tell Me Nothin'."

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McGraw was born Samuel Timothy McGraw in Delhi, Louisiana, a town in Richland Parish, to a waitress, Elizabeth "Betty" Ann D'Agostino, and Frank Edwin "Tug" McGraw Jr., who later became a relief pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies.

In 1966, Tug was a pitcher for the Jacksonville Suns, and he lived in an apartment above Betty D'Agostino, who attended Terry Parker High School. The pair had a relationship, and when Betty became pregnant, her parents sent her to Louisiana to live with relatives and to have the baby.

McGraw grew up believing his stepfather, Horace Smith, was his birth father. From the time of his mother's marriage until the time he met his biological father, his last name was Smith. At age 11, McGraw discovered his birth certificate while searching his mother's closet to find pictures for a school project.

After his discovery, his mother revealed that his biological father was Tug McGraw, and took Tim to meet him for the first time. For seven years, Tug denied being Tim's father. Tim was 18 years old when Tug first realized how much Tim looked like him at that age, and he acknowledged paternity. They remained close until Tug's death in 2004.

As a child, Tim McGraw loved to play competitive sports, including baseball, even though he did not know his biological father was a professional athlete. He attended Northeast Louisiana University, now the University of Louisiana at Monroe, on a baseball scholarship. While in college, he learned to play guitar, and would frequently perform and sing for tips, although he claims that his roommates often hid the guitar because he was so bad.

He attended Florida Community College at Jacksonville for one term, and occasionally sat in with local bands. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to head to Nashville and pursue a musical career.

McGraw came to the attention of Curb Records in 1990. After cutting a demo single, McGraw gave a copy to his father, Tug McGraw. A man who was friends with Curb Records executives heard the demo while driving with Tug McGraw one day and recommended that Curb contact the young singer. Several weeks later, they signed him to a recording contract.

Two years later, in 1992, he had his first minor hit with "Welcome to the Club" off his self-titled debut album. Although the album failed to make much of a dent on the charts, McGraw did have two other minor hits from it in 1993: "Memory Lane" and "Two Steppin Mind."

His second album, Not a Moment Too Soon, was much more successful, becoming the best-selling country album in 1994. The first single, "Indian Outlaw," caused considerable controversy, as critics argued that it presented Native Americans in a patronizing way. Some radio stations refused to play it, but the controversy helped spur sales, and the song became McGraw's first top-ten country single and reaching No. 15 on the pop chart.

The second single from the album, "Don't Take the Girl," became McGraw's first No. 1 country hit, and "helped cement his image as a ruggedly good-looking guy with a sensitive side."

The following year, the album's title track became a No. 1 country single, while "Down on the Farm" reached No. 2, and "Refried Dreams" reached the top 5. The album sold over 6 million copies, topping the Billboard 200 as well as the country album charts. On the strength of this success, McGraw won Academy of Country Music awards for Album of the Year and Top New Male Vocalist in 1994.

All I Want, released in 1995, continued his run of success, debuting at No. 1 on the country charts. The album sold over 2 million copies and reached the top 5 on the Billboard 200. "I Like It, I Love It" reached No. 1 on the country charts as the lead-off single, while "She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart" also went to No. 1 in 1996. "Can't Be Really Gone," "All I Want Is a Life," and "Maybe We Should Just Sleep on It" were all top 5 hits.

In 1996, McGraw headlined the most successful country tour of the year, The Spontaneous Combustion Tour, with Faith Hill as his supporting act.

Faith Hill broke off her engagement to her former producer Scott Hendricks so that she and Tim could start dating each other; they then married on October 6, 1996. The couple have since had three daughters: Gracie Katherine (born May 1997), Maggie Elizabeth (born August 1998), and Audrey Caroline (born December 2001).

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As his success has grown, McGraw has become increasingly interested in giving back to the community. When McGraw first reached fame in 1994, he established his annual Swampstock event. It began as a charity softball game to raise money for hometown little league programs; the event now includes a celebrity softball game and a multi-artist concert that attracts over 11,000 fans per year.

The combined events have funded new Little League parks and equipment, and have established college scholarship funds for students in the northeast Louisiana area.

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May 1: Former member of pop girl group 'The Teen Queens, Kellie Lynn Crawford, née Hoggart, is 37 years-old today.

Kellie Lynn Crawford (Hoggart) is an Australian singer, actress and children's performer. Crawford is most known as one of the original members of the pop group Teen Queens and their involvement in the children's entertainment program Hi-5. She left Hi-5 in December 2008, a few months after her marriage, and after ten years with the group.

Through the show, she became good friends and eventually began dating fellow Hi-5 cast member Nathan Foley. The couple became engaged in 2005 to be married in March 2007. On the 7th of December, 2006, it was reported that Kellie and Nathan had decided to end their engagement.

Kellie said she has been thinking of leaving the show for at least a year. "I'm getting older and I just wanted to try and do as much as I can with my life because I can't be a kids' performer for my whole life," the bubbly blonde said during an interview. "I guess I just wanted to open more doors so when I eventually do have kids I have stability, and I've got a job I can continue to do with that as well." Crawford said she plans to pursue an acting career.

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When she left, she said she was delighted with her 10 years in the group, which is now among Australia's highest entertainers and has won five ARIA awards and three Logies.
Crawford was born Kellie Lynn Hoggart in 1974. She began her career as a teenager appearing in Pizza Hut commercials.

In 1991, at age 17, Crawford along with Liza Witt and Roxanne Clark, would form an idea to bring back music from the past and recreate it as a pop music act. Initially, they tried to launch the project as a television idea set in the themed time of the 1960s. As the group experienced difficulties getting the television show off the ground, they diverted their attentions towards simply creating music.

They decided to name the group the Teen Queens and from 1991 to 1993 the group released three top ten ARIA singles.
After the group split in 1993, Crawford continued to act in television and movies, and appear in commercials for companies such as Pizza Hut.

Crawford's next breakthrough came in 1998 when she was enlisted to join the new children's band and television show Hi-5 as the group's oldest and most commercially experienced member. She was featured with a puppet named "Chatterbox," better known as "Chats" voiced originally by co-cast member Charli Delaney.

Kellie and Chats' segment of the show promoted and educates children on language skills and recognition of sounds and noises. Her American counterpart is Jennifer Korbee.

In April 2009 Kellie raised the ire of several conservative family groups after appearing in several photos wearing lingerie for men’s magazine Ralph. She defended her decision to appear in the magazine.

"After working in children's television for 10 years, and always being pinned into your clothes so no one can see your belly button if you lift your hands up, and always having your cleavage covered, and me being the tomboy of the three girls, it was something I did for myself to remind myself that I am a woman."

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May 1: Judy Collins is 72 years-old today.

(Video of Judy Collins performing is at end of post.)

Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. As a child, Collins studied classical piano with Antonia Brico, making her public debut at age 13, performing Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos. Dr. Brico took a dim view, of Collins's developing interest in folk music - especially the music of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and the traditional songs of the folk revival of the early 1960s - which led her to discontinue her piano lessons. She met many musicians through her blind father, a Seattle radio disc jockey.

Three years after her debut as a piano prodigy, she was playing guitar at the University of Connecticut where her husband taught. She eventually made her way to Greenwich Village, New York City, where she busked and played in clubs until she signed with Elektra Records; which she was associated for 35 years.

In 1961, Collins released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at the age of 22. At first, she sang traditional folk songs or songs written by others — in particular the protest poets of the time, such as Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan. She recorded her own versions of important songs from the period, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn."

Collins was also instrumental in bringing little-known musicians to a wider public. For example, Collins recorded songs by Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who became a close friend over the years. She also recorded songs by singer-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Robin Williamson and Richard Fariña long before they gained national acclaim.

While Collins' first few albums comprised straightforward guitar-based folk songs, with 1966's In My Life, she began branching out and including work from such diverse sources as the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, and Kurt Weill. The album was regarded as a major departure for a folk artist and set the course for Collins' subsequent work over the next decade.

With her 1967 album Wildflowers, Collins began to record her own compositions, the first of which was entitled "Since You Asked." The album also provided Collins with a major hit, and a Grammy award, in Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now," which reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Collins' 1968 album, Who Knows Where the Time Goes, featured back-up guitar by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash), with whom she was romantically involved at the time. (She was the inspiration for Stills's CSN classic "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"). The album also featured Collins' composition "My Father" and one of the first covers of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire."

By the 1970s, Collins had a solid reputation as an art song singer and folksinger and had begun to stand out for her own compositions. She was also known for her broad range of material: her songs from this period include the traditional Christian hymn "Amazing Grace," the Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns" (both of which were top 20 hits as singles), a recording of Joan Baez's "A Song for David," and her own compositions, such as "Born to the Breed."

In the 1970s, Collins guest starred on The Muppet Show, where she sang "I Know An Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly," "Do Re Mi" and "Send in the Clowns." Collins also appeared several times on Sesame Street, where she performed "Fishermen's Song" with a chorus of Anything Muppet fishermen, sang a trio with Biff and Sully using the word "yes," and even starred in a modern musical fairy tale skit called "The Sad Princess."

In more recent years Collins has taken to writing, producing a memoir, Trust Your Heart, in 1987, and a novel, Shameless. A more recent memoir, Sanity and Grace, tells of her son Clark's death in January 1992.

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Though her record sales are not what they once were, she still records and tours in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. She performed at US President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993, singing "Amazing Grace" and "Chelsea Morning." (The Clintons have stated that they named their daughter, Chelsea, after Collins' recording of the song.)

In 2008, she oversaw an album featuring artists ranging from Dolly Parton and Joan Baez to Rufus Wainwright and Chrissie Hynde covering her compositions; she also released a collection of Beatles covers, and she received an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute on May 18 of that year. In 2010, Collins sang The Weight of the World at the Newport Folk Festival.


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