Word: took
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Cooke and Marvin Gaye, Franklin helped bring spiritual passion into pop music. In 1961 she signed with Columbia, which tried to turn her into a singer of jazzy pop. In 1966 she switched to Atlantic, delved into soul, and began to flourish. Unlike many of her performing peers, Franklin took a strong hand in creating her own sound. Her guiding principle with producers, she says, is "if you're here to record me, then let's record...
...addition to functioning as an affirmation of newfound physical liberty, travel served a practical purpose: many blacks--primarily men, who were less constrained by family ties than women--took to the road in search of work. These journeys, made by foot and by freight train, gave rise to the figure of the male blues singer--a lone black man with a guitar, traveling the countryside singing about his life. This rural genre became known as country blues...
Bessie Smith, who earned the title Empress of the Blues in part through the sale of some 750,000 copies of her first record, took women's blues to a new level. Among other things, songs like her Poor Man's Blues ("Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind/ Give the poor man a chance, help stop these hard, hard times") represented pioneering social protests in black American popular music. Smith became the first black woman "superstar," traveling with her own tent show and attracting huge audiences...
...world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone...
...challenge him. Musicians then were wont to have "cutting sessions"--battles of imagination and stamina. Fairly soon, young Armstrong was left alone. He also did a little pimping but got out of the game when one of his girls stabbed him. With a trout sandwich among his effects, Armstrong took a train to Chicago in 1922, where he joined his mentor Joe Oliver, and the revolution took place in full form. King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, featuring the dark young powerhouse with the large mouth, brought out the people and all the musicians, black and white, who wanted...