The James Logan Courier

Roy David Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989) was a jazz trumpet player in the Swing era. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, resulted in him sometimes being seen as the link between Louis Armstrong-era swing music and Dizzy Gillespie-era bebop.

Life
Eldridge was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and originally played drums, trumpet and tuba. His nickname was Little Jazz. He led bands from his early years, moving to St. Louis, and then to New York. He absorbed the influence of saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins, setting himself the task of learning Hawkins 1926 solo on "The Stampede" in developing an equivalent trumpet style.

Read an interview with Roy Eldridge, free from the University of Michigan's African-American Music Collection.

James Jamerson (January 29, 1936 - August 2, 1983) was an American musician. He was the uncredited bassist on most of Motown Records' hits in the 1960s and early 1970s, and he has become regarded as one of the most influential electric bass players in modern music history. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

Biography
A native of Edisto Island (near Charleston), South Carolina, Jamerson moved with his mother to Detroit, Michigan in 1954. He learned to play the double bass at Northwestern High School, and he soon began playing in Detroit area blues and jazz clubs.

Watch James Jamerson play bass with Marvin Gaye on the songs What's Goin' On and What's Happening Brother?, free from youtube.com.

Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe (September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986), better known simply as Christa McAuliffe, and prior to her marriage, Christa Corrigan, was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire who was selected from among more than 11,000 applicants to be the first teacher in space. She died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Early life
Born Sharon Christa Corrigan on September 2, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, McAuliffe was the oldest of five children of Edward (deceased) and Grace Corrigan. The year she was born, her father was completing his sophomore year at Boston College. Not long thereafter, he took a job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston department store and the family moved to the Boston suburb of Framingham, where she attended and graduated from Marian High School in 1966. As a youth, she was inspired by the Apollo moon landing program, and wrote years later on her astronaut application form that "I watched the Space Age being born, and I would like to participate!"

Watch video about the tragic flight on the Space Shuttle Challenger, during which Christa McAuliffe lost her life along with the rest of the flight crew free from Google Video.

Elmore James (January 27,1918 – May 24, 1963) was an American blues singer and guitarist. He was known as The King of the Slide Guitar.

James was born Elmore Brooks in Richland, Mississippi, 50 miles north of Jackson (not to be confused with another Richland just south of Jackson). He began playing as a teen, under the names Cleanhead and Joe Willie James, alongside musicians such as the first Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson. During World War II James joined the United States Navy and was stationed in Guam.

Listen to a clip of "Dust My Broom," performed by Elmore James, one of two clips available online in WAV format from the National Park Service.

Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an African American communist organizer and philosopher who was associated with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the Communist Party of the United States of America. She first achieved nationwide notoriety when she was linked to the murder of judge Harold Haley during an attempted Black Panther prison break; she fled underground, and was the subject of an intense manhunt. After 18 months as a fugitive, she was captured, arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. She is currently Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California and Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She works for racial and gender equality and for prison abolition. Davis is a founder of Critical Resistance.

Watch a 1979 film of Angela Davis speaking speaking at Florida A&M University’s Black History Month convocation,streaming in RealVideo or WMV formats, free from the Florida Memory Project.

Jamesetta Hawkins January 25, 1938 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Blues, R&B and Gospel singer. In the 1950s and 60s, she had her biggest success as a Blues and R&B singer. She is best-known for her 1961 ballad "At Last", which has been classified as a "timeless classic" and has been featured in many movies and television commercials since its release.

Childhood & Rise to Success
Few R&B singers have endured tragic travails on the monumental level of Etta James and remain to tell the tale.

Read an article by Blues star Bonnie Raitt about Etta James and her influence on modern blues music, free from RollingStone.com.

Ira Hamilton Hayes (January 12, 1923 – January 24, 1955) was a full blood Akimel O’odham, or Pima Indian, and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community. A survivor of World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima, Hayes was trained as a Paramarine in the United States Marine Corps (USMC), and became one of five Marines, along with a US Navy corpsman, immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima.

Life
The son of Joeb E. and Nancy W. Hayes, Ira Hayes was born on the Gila River Indian Reservation in Sacaton, Arizona. Hayes left school in 1942 to enlist in the Marines. Trained as a paratrooper, he was nicknamed Chief Falling Cloud.

Chita Rivera (born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero on January 23, 1933 in Washington, D.C.) is a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical actress and dancer of Puerto Rican heritage, and the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award.

Her father was from Puerto Rico; he played clarinet and saxophone for the Navy band. Chita's mother, Katherine Figueroa, who was of mostly Scottish descent, went to work for The Pentagon when she was widowed when Chita was seven years old; Chita's mother died in 1983.


Watch Chita Rivera sing and dance to the song "Pretty for Me," in 1968, from Music on TV, via youtube.com.

Edwin Starr (January 21, 1942 – April 2, 2003) was an American soul music singer.

Born Charles Edwin Hatcher in Nashville, Tennessee, Starr is most famous for his Norman Whitfield produced Motown singles of the 1970s, most notably the number one hit "War".

Watch Edwin Starr describe his career "moves" in a short film from Pogus Caesar Gallery, in RealVideo format.

Huddie William Ledbetter (January 20, 1888 - December 6, 1949) was an American folk and blues musician, notable for his clear and forceful singing, his virtuosity on the twelve string guitar, and the rich songbook of folk standards he introduced. He is best known as Leadbelly or Lead Belly.

Although his most commonly-played instrument was the twelve string, he could also play the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, concertina, and accordion. In some of his recordings, such as in one of his versions of the folk ballad "John Hardy", he performs on the accordion instead of the guitar.

The topics of Lead Belly's music covered a wide range of subjects, including gospel songs, blues songs about women, liquor, racism, folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding, dancing, and songs concerning the newsmakers of the day, such as President Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, the Scottsboro Boys, and multi-millionaire Howard Hughes.

Watch Lead Belly and play "Pick a Bale of Cotton," free from youtube.com

John Harold Johnson (January 19, 1918 – August 8, 2005) was the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company, an international media and cosmetics empire headquartered in Chicago, Illinois that includes Ebony, and Jet magazines, Fashion Fair Cosmetics and EBONY Fashion Fair. Johnson was the first black person to appear on the Forbes 400 Rich List, and had a fortune estimated at close to $500 million.

Johnson was born in Arkansas City, Arkansas and in the 1930s moved to Chicago, Illinois with his family, where he attended Chicago's DuSable High School in 1936.

Read more about and watch an interview with John H. Johnson, streaming free from the National Visionary Leadership Project.

Alan Alexander Milne (January 18, 1882 – January 31, 1956), also known as A. A. Milne, was a British author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.

Biography
Milne (pronounced m?ln) was born in Scotland but raised in London at Henley House School, a small independent school run by his father, John V. Milne. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells. He attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied on a mathematics scholarship. While there, he edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor.

Read Not that it Matters by A. A. Milne, a collection of stories and essays, one of nine of his works available free from Project Gutenberg

Anne Brontë (January 17, 1820 – May 28, 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest of the Brontë literary family. She used the pen name Acton Bell.

She was born in the village of Thornton, Yorkshire, England, the last of six children. Anne's mother, Maria Branwell Brontë, died of cancer a year later in 1821, after the family had moved to Haworth where her father, Patrick Brontë, was appointed perpetual curate. In 1825 her two eldest siblings, Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis contracted at the Clergy Daughters' boarding school at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire and much has been written about the influence of these deaths on her and her siblings and its possible influence on their later writings.

Read Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë, one of three of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.

Robert W. Service (January 16, 1874 – September 11, 1958) was a Scottish-born Canadian poet and writer. He is most well known for his writings on the Canadian north, including the poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee".

Early life
He was born into a Scottish family while they were living in Preston, England. He was schooled in Scotland, attending Hillhead High School in Glasgow. He moved to Canada at the age of 21 when he gave up his job working in a Glasgow bank and travelled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy. Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he was posted to the bank's branch in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service started writing his poetry about the things he saw.

Read The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses by Robert W. Service, one of five of his books available free from Project Gutenberg.

Berthe Morisot (January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris during the nineteenth century, who became known as, the Impressionists.
In 1864, her work began to be admitted for exhibition in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris.

Sponsored by the government and judged by academicians, the salon is the annual juried exhibition of the best new paintings and sculptures, the official art exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Her work continued to be selected for exhibition in the salon for ten years before, in 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which was foundered by Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. It was held at the studio of the photographer, Nadar.

See examples of Morisot's art at the WebMuseum

Ernest Edward Kovacs (January 23, 1919 – January 13, 1962) was a creative and innovative entertainer from the early days of television. His on-air antics would go on to inspire TV shows like Laugh-In, the Uncle Floyd Show, Saturday Night Live and TV hosts like David Letterman.
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Kovacs became a pioneer of television comedy as a distinct medium; earlier television comedians mostly continued comedy styles of vaudeville, film, or radio.

His shows were innovative for their time because of their ad-libbed routines; experimentation with video effects (including superimpositions, reverse polarity, and reverse scanning which flipped images upside down); the use of quick "blackouts" and running gags; abstraction and non-sequitur; and a willingness to break the "fourth wall" by allowing viewers to see activity beyond the set - including crew members and, on occasion, outside the studio itself. He would also talk to the off-camera crew, or introduce segments from the control room.

Read more about the Ernie Kovacs show from the Museum of Broadcast Communications website.

Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American suffragist leader. Along with Lucy Burns (a close friend) and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in granting the right to vote to women in the U.S. federal election in 1920.

Paul was born into a Quaker family at Paulsdale, her family farm in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. In 1901, she graduated first in her class from the Moorestown Friends School. She later attended Swarthmore College (BA, 1905), the New York School of Philanthropy (social work), and the University of Pennsylvania (MA, sociology). In 1907, Paul moved to England where she attended the University of Birmingham and the London School of Economics (LSE). Returning to the U.S. in 1910, she attended the University of Pennsylvania, completing a PhD in political science in 1912. Her dissertation topic was: The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania. In 1927, she received an LLM followed by a Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1928, both from American University's Washington College of Law.

Read more about Alice Paul at the Alice Paul Institute's website.

Ethan Allen (January 21,1738 – February 12, 1789) was an early American revolutionary and guerrilla leader during the era of the Vermont Republic and the New Hampshire Grants. He fought against the settlement of Vermont by the Province of New York, and then for its independence in the American Revolutionary War.

Biography
Allen was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the first child of Joseph and Mary Baker Allen. Ethan was the oldest of the eight children. He was the only one to be born in Litchfield, since the family moved to Cornwall shortly after his birth. His brother, Ira, figured prominently in the early history of Vermont. Joseph Allen was the leader of a rebellious group of land owners and speculators who held New Hampshire title to land grants in the New Hampshire Grants. New York, which held substantial claim to the area, refused to honor the New Hampshire titles and sold competing titles to different people, who generally did not live in Vermont. This led to open rebellion among the population in much of Vermont. In April of 1755, Joseph Allen died, leaving Ethan to take care of the family farm and title claims, which made him very upset.

Read Ethan Allen's essay Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man, A Compendious System Of Natural Religion, free from libertyonline.com.

Jeanette (Jennie) Jerome, known also as Lady Randolph Churchill (January 9, 1854 – June 9, 1921) was an American society beauty, best known to history as the mother of British prime minister Winston Churchill.

Early life
She was born at 197 Amity Street, in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, New York[2]. She was the middle daughter of financier Leonard Jerome and his wife, Clara Hall.

Leonard Jerome, a man who loved opera almost as much as he loved opera singers, named his second daughter after the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. Unluckily, her mother didn't discover the motive why Leonard Jerome liked the name so much until it was too late.

Read the My Darling Clementine: The Story of Lady Churchill, by Jack Fishman, free from the Internet Archive.

Idris Davies (Born in Rhymney (then Monmouthshire) on January 6, 1905 - Died, Rhymney, April 6, 1953) was a Welsh poet, originally writing in Cymraeg, but later writing exclusively in English. He is now known mostly for The Bells of Rhymney, a ballad on a mining accident on the pattern of the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons that was set to music by Pete Seeger, and became a folk rock standard.

He was born and brought up in Rhymney, Caerphilly, Wales, and began work as a coal miner on leaving school at 14.

Read Idris Davies' poem, "High Summer on the Mountains," free from PoemHunter.com.

By Diamond Floyd, Courier Staff Writer

The Good Shepherd, another 3-hour movie epic now available for your viewing pleasure. The movie, which is directed by and co-stars Robert DeNiro, features Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Tammy Blanchard, and Michael Gambon.

When I first saw the previews of this movie, I was interested, but at first, I didn't quite get what the movie was all about right off the bat. When I finally went to go see it, it was much longer and more interesting than I had expected. DeNiro has really outdone himself.

Matt Damon plays a CIA agent rather well; he's serious about his work and a little surprising at times. There were times, however, that Damon was downright cold.

Max Eastman (January 4, 1883–March 25, 1969) was a socialist American writer and patron of the Harlem Renaissance, later known for being an anti-leftist.

He was born in Canandaigua, New York; both his parents were members of the clergy. Eastman attended Williams College in 1905, two years later moving to Columbia University to work toward a Ph.D. in philosophy. Settling in Greenwich Village with his sister, Crystal Eastman, he became involved in political matters, helping to found the Men's League for Women's Suffrage in 1910. While at Columbia he was an assistant in the philosophy department as well as a lecturer with the psychology department. After completing the requirements for his degree, however, he refused to accept it, leaving in 1911.

Read The Nice People of Trinidad, an article by Eastman published in 1914. Read more of Eastman's writing, free from the Max Eastman Archive.

ZaSu Pitts (January 3,1894 (?) – June 7, 1963) was a United States movie actress. She was one of the more popular stars of the early motion picture era.

Name and birth date
Her unusual first name was coined from parts of the names "Eliza" and "Susan", female relatives who both wanted Pitts's mother to name the child after them. In many film credits and articles, her name was rendered as Zazu Pitts or Zasu Pitts. Though her name is commonly mispronounced as "Zazz-oo", in her 1930s film shorts with Thelma Todd (see below) it is clearly pronounced on-screen (by Todd) as "ZAY-sue;" her name was also consistently pronounced "ZAY-sue" during her recurrent guest appearences on Fibber McGee and Molly's show in 1939.

Watch Zasu Pitts' in the 1942 film, So's Your Aunt Emma, streaming free from the Internet Archive.

Maria Edgeworth (January 1, 1767-May 22, 1849) was an Anglo-Irish novelist.

Maria Edgeworth was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, the second child of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Edgeworth nee Elders. On her father's second marriage in 1773, she went with him to Ireland, where she eventually was to settle on his estate, Edgeworthstown, in County Longford. There, she mixed with the Anglo-Irish gentry, particularly Kitty Pakenham (later the wife of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington), Lady Moira, and her aunt Margaret Ruston of Black Castle. She acted as manager of her father's estate, later drawing on this experience for her novels about the Irish. Edgeworth's early literary efforts were melodramatic rather than realistic. One of her schoolgirl novels features a villain who wore a mask made from the skin of a dead man's face. Maria's first published work was Letters for Literary Ladies in 1795, followed in 1796 by her first children's book, The Parent's Assistant, and in 1800 by her first novel Castle Rackrent.

Read Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth, one of 17 of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.