Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Edward Benjamin Britten (November 22, 1913, Lowestoft, Suffolk, England - December 4, 1976) was the son of a dentist and a talented amateur musician. He showed musical gifts very early in life, and began composing prolifically as a child. He was educated at Old Buckenham Hall School in Suffolk, a small all-boys prep school, and Gresham's School, Holt. In 1927, he began private lessons with Frank Bridge; he also studied, less happily, at the Royal College of Music under John Ireland, with some input from Ralph Vaughan Williams. Although ultimately held back by his parents (at the suggestion of College staff), Britten had also intended to study with Alban Berg in Vienna. His first compositions to attract wide attention were the Sinfonietta op. 1, "A Hymn to the Virgin" (1930) and a set of choral variations A Boy was Born, written in 1934 for the BBC Singers. The following year he met W. H. Auden, and they collaborated on the song-cycle Our Hunting Fathers Op. 8, radical both in politics and musical treatment, and other works.

Of more lasting importance to Britten was his meeting in 1937 with the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator and inspiration as well as his life partner. In the same year he composed a Pacifist March (words, Ronald Duncan) for the Peace Pledge Union, of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member, but the work was not a success and soon withdrawn.

Simple Symphony (1934)

In early 1939, Britten and Pears followed Auden to America, where Britten composed Paul Bunyan, an operetta (to a libretto by Auden), as well as the first of many song cycles for Pears.

The period in America was also remarkable for a number of orchestral works, including Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge Op. 10 (written in 1937 for string orchestra), the Violin Concerto Op. 15, and Sinfonia da Requiem Op. 20 (for full orchestra).

Sinfonia da Requiem (1940)

A Ceremony of Carols (1942)

Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, and both applied for recognition as conscientious objectors; Britten was initially refused recognition, but gained it on appeal. He completed the choral works Hymn to St. Cecilia (his last collaboration with Auden) and A Ceremony of Carols during the long sea voyage.

Peter Grimes (1945)

He had already begun work on his opera Peter Grimes based on the writings of Suffolk poet George Crabbe, and its première at Sadler's Wells in 1945 was his greatest success so far.

A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vbvhU22uAM

However, Britten encountered opposition from sectors of the English musical establishment and gradually withdrew from the London scene, founding the English Opera Group in 1947 and the Aldeburgh Festival the following year, partly (though not solely) to perform his own works.

Billy Budd (1951)

Grimes was the first in a series of English operas, of which Billy Budd (1951) and The Turn of the Screw (1954) were particularly admired. These operas share common themes. For example, most feature an 'outsider' character, who is excluded or misunderstood by society. Often this is the eponymous protagonist, as in Peter Grimes and Owen Wingrave.

The Turn of the Screw (1954)

Noye's Fludde (1957)

An increasingly important influence was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour with Pears in 1957, when Britten was struck by the music of the Balinese gamelan and by Japanese Noh plays. The fruits of this tour include the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957) and the series of semi-operatic "Parables for Church Performance": Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968).

War Requiem (1962)

Dies Irae I

Dies Irae II



The greatest success of Britten's career was, however, the War Requiem,



written for the 1962 consecration of the newly reconstructed Coventry Cathedral.

Britten developed close friendships with the Russians Dmitri Shostakovich and Mstislav Rostropovich in the 1960's: he composed his Cello Suites, Cello Symphony, and Cello Sonata for the latter, and conducted the first Western performance of the former's Symphony No. 14.

Shostakovich dedicated this score to Britten, and often spoke very highly of his music. Britten himself had previously dedicated 'The Prodigal Son' (the third and last of the 'Church Parables') to Shostakovich.

Death in Venice (1973)

In the last decade or so of his life, Britten suffered from increasing ill-health. His late works became progressively more sparse in texture. They include the opera Death in Venice (1973), the Suite on English Folk Tunes "A Time There Was" (1974) and String Quartet No. 3 (1975) -- which drew on material from Death in Venice -- as well as the dramatic cantata Phaedra (1976), written for Janet Baker.

Having previously declined a knighthood, Britten accepted a life peerage on July 2, 1976 as Baron Britten of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk. A few months later he died of heart failure at his house in Aldeburgh. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul's Church there. His grave lies next to that of his partner, Sir Peter Pears, and close to the grave of Imogen Holst, another close friend.

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Rudolph "Rudy" Toombs (c.1914–November 28, 1962), born in Monroe, Louisiana, was a black songwriter who wrote "Teardrops from My Eyes", Ruth Brown's first number one R&B successful song. He wrote more successes for Brown, including "5-10-15 Hours" as well as "One Mint Julep" for The Clovers.

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One Mint Julep is a rhythm-and-blues song written by Rudy Toombs that became a hit for The Clovers. It was recorded by Atlantic Records in New York City on December 19, 1951 and released in March of 1952. It was one of the first "drinking songs" to become a hit and one of the first to feature a tenor sax solo. It was an important step in the history of Ahmet Ertegün and Atlantic Records in its quest to become a hot rhythm and blues label.

Stylistically the The Clovers were moving away from the sentimental lyrics of the romantic doo-wop group songs and adapting a cooler group style, emphasizing rhythm more, nearing the style of a jump blues combo.

Toombs was hired by Atlantic to write humorous up-tempo rhythm and blues novelty songs. Atlantic wanted material that was true to life but also funny. The humor in this song comes in part from the idea of a young black man getting drunk on mint juleps, thought of as an aristocratic southern white woman's drink.

The story line is a classic one of a man who falls for the charms of a young woman only to realize a few years later that he has a ring on his finger. He remembers that it all started with "One Mint Julep."

"One early morning as I was walking,"
"I met a woman, we started talking,"

The last verse outlines the trap.

"I don't want to bore you, with my trouble,"
"But from now on I'll be thinking double."

This is one of the best of the many popular R&B drinking songs in the 1940's and 1950's.

It was the first of several successful up tempo drinking songs by Toombs on the horrible effects of alcohol, and who went on to write One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer for Amos Milburn, Fat Back and Corn Likker for Louis Jordan, and Nip Sip for The Clovers.

In 1961 "One Mint Julep" finally reached a mass audience when Ray Charles's recording reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and also No. 8 on the pop chart.

Among the many who covered or remade this song are the following:

Louis Prima
Chet Atkins
Ray Stevens
Duane Eddy
Pee Wee Ellis
Count Basie
Freddie Hubbard
Earl Palmer
Bob James
The Ventures
Jack Sheldon
Xavier Cugat
Mac Wiseman
Sarah Vaughan
Richard "Groove" Holmes
Poncho Sanchez
James Taylor Quartet
Booker T and the MGs
King Curtis
Tommy Emmanuel
Buddy Morrow

[8915 Willie Dixon / 8913 Britten / 8913 Muddy Waters]

Muddy Waters (1913-1983)

For many years a birth year of 1915 was reported for Muddy Waters (b. McKinley Morganfield, April 4, 1913, Issaquena County, MS - April 30, 1983); recent research uncovered documentation showing that, in the 1930's and 1940's, he reported his birth year as 1913 on both his marriage license and musicians union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest documentation of him shaving off a couple of years and giving 1915 as his year of birth, which he continued to use in interviews from that point onward.

His grandmother Della Grant raised him after his mother died in 1918, and a fondness for playing in mud earned him his nickname at an early age.

Waters started out on harmonica, but, by 17, he was playing the guitar at parties and fish fries, emulating two blues artists who were extremely popular in the south, Son House and Robert Johnson. "His thick heavy voice, the dark coloration of his tone and his firm almost solid personality were all clearly derived from House," wrote Peter Guralnick in Feel Like Going Home, "but the embellishments which he added, the imaginative slide technique and more agile rhythms, were closer to Johnson."

In 1940, Waters moved to St. Louis before playing with Silas Green a year later and returning back to Mississippi. In the early part of the decade he ran a juke joint, complete with gambling, moonshine, a jukebox and live music courtesy of Muddy himself. In the Summer of 1941 Alan Lomax came to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Waters recalled in Rolling Stone, "and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for 20 bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, `I can do it, I can do it.'" Lomax came back again in July of 1942 to record Waters again. Both sessions were eventually released as Down On Stovall's Plantation on the Testament label.

In 1943, Waters headed north to Chicago in hopes of becoming a full-time professional. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and playing at night. Big Bill Broonzy, one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago at the time, helped Muddy break into the very competitive market by allowing him to open for his shows in the rowdy clubs.

Waters's uncle gave him his first electric guitar in 1945, which enabled him to be heard above the noisy crowds.

In 1946, Waters recorded some tunes for Mayo Williams at Columbia but they weren't released at the time. Later that year he began recording for Aristocrat, a newly-formed label run by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess.

Two years later, Waters's I Can't Be Satisfied and I Feel Like Going Home became big and his popularity in clubs began to take off. Soon after, Aristocrat changed their name to Chess and Waters' signature tune, Rollin' Stone, became a hit. Muddy Waters also sings the lyric "I'm a rolling stone" in the song Mannish Boy.



[Willie Dixon - Hoochie Coochie Man]

Initially, the Chess brothers would not allow Waters to use his own musicians (Jimmy Rogers and Claude "Blue Smitty" Smith) in the studio; instead he was only provided with a backing bass by Ernest "Big" Crawford. However, by 1952 Waters was recording with arguably the best blues group ever: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica; Jimmy Rogers on guitar; Elga Edmonds (a/k/a Elgin Evans) on drums; Otis Spann on piano; Big Crawford on bass; and Waters handling vocals and second guitar. The band recorded a string of blues classics during the early 1950's, including the following written by bassist/composer Willie Dixon: Hoochie Coochie Man (Number 8 on the R&B charts), I Just Want to Make Love to You (Number 4), and I'm Ready. These three were "the most macho songs in his repertoire," wrote Robert Palmer in Rolling Stone. "Muddy would never have composed anything so unsubtle. But they gave him a succession of showstoppers and an image, which were important for a bluesman trying to break out of the grind of local gigs into national prominence."

His influence has been great, over a variety of popular music styles: blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, folk, jazz, and country. Waters also helped Chuck Berry get his first record contract.

His 1958 tour of England marked possibly the first time amplified, urban blues was heard there, although on his first tour he was the only one amplified.

The Rolling Stones named themselves after Waters's 1950 Rollin' Stone, (also known as Catfish Blues, which Jimi Hendrix covered as well). Cream recorded his song Rollin' and Tumblin' on their 1966 debut album Fresh Cream, as Eric Clapton was a big fan. The song was also adapted by Bob Dylan in the album Modern Times.

In 1983 Waters died in his sleep a few weeks after his 70th birthday. His funeral was attended by throngs of blues musicians and fans.

[8913 Britten / 8913 Muddy Waters / 8912 Nancarrow]