Word: yardbird
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DIED. MARION HARGROVE, 83, best-selling author of See Here, Private Hargrove; of pneumonia; in Long Beach, Calif. A grinning account of yardbird misadventures during World War II, it instantly catapulted the 22-year-old North Carolina recruit to fame. The book and its sequel were made into movies starring Robert Walker. Hargrove went on to become a film and TV writer whose credits included The Music Man, I Spy, Maverick and The Waltons. Said Hargrove in 1947: "I was just an ordinary guy, writing for a small audience. Suddenly, success picked...
...Angeles when he was still a teenager. He'd back up Billie Holliday or Josephine Baker at night, then go to high school during the day. By 17, he had himself a heroin habit. He received a stern lecture on the evils of using hard drugs from the Yardbird, who undercut his position by promptly sampling Morgan's stash. "Like it or no," Morgan says, "what he was saying was not nearly as loud as what he was doing...
...film's contribution to jazz mythology will be modest. Eddie Durham tells of how Basie's "One O'Clock Jump" was renamed when radio censors vetoed the original title, "Blue Balls." McShann provides yet another anecdote about how Parker came to be called Yardbird. Ricker's 24 hours of rough footage doubtless contained many more interesting stories, but as a movie, not an oral history project, the film's wonderful sense of pace easily offsets an occasional choppiness in cutting from one bull session to another...
...Yardbird." Poor and black, Parker's father early deserted the family; his mother worked as a cleaning woman. By the time he was 13, she had scrimped enough to buy him a saxophone for $45. Silently fingering the battered 1898 sax, held together with tape and rubber bands, he would stand in the alleys outside the clubs waiting to talk to his heroes between sets-a practice that earned his nickname "Yard-bird." (It did not come about, as Russell claims, from a fondness for chicken...
Following Eric Clapton as a Yardbird. Beck's ideas and influences marked a shift in musical direction away from blues. The Yardbirds had little success as a seminal English blues band. Beck brought them "For Your Love," and, once they settled under him, he was free to experiment. Listen to "Beck's Bolero." "Hot House of Omagarashid," or particularly to the opening bars of "Over Under Sideways Down." Yet, with songs like "Train Kept a Rollin" Beck remained true to a concept of British blues...