Known by his colleagues as “Mr. Superharp” (“mouth harp” is another name for harmonica), Cotton made his instrument integral to the blues, making landmark recordings with Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf before forming his own band, which influenced an entire generation of blues-rock musicians.
Category: people
Advice From Anton Chekhov On How To Become A Cultured Person
Charles Chu offers excerpts from a letter the playwright/physician/author wrote to his older brother when they were in their mid-20s.
Fiora Corradetti Contino, Pioneering Female Opera Conductor, Dead At 91
Born on Long Island to a father who had been a leading baritone at La Scala, Dr. Contino founded her first opera company at age 27 and spent five decades as a verismo specialist, conducing and teaching at universities and regional companies across the U.S – including two decades as artistic director of Opera Illinois in Peoria.
The Journalists Who Have Actually Lied Or Plagiarized Or Misbehaved
“The surprise isn’t that journalists are hard on journalists who fake it: that’s right and just. The surprise is that the punishment is applied so consistently in a field where the practitioners agree on little else about how they do what they do.”
A Latin Teacher Who Changed Lives, A Secretary To Popes
Father Reginald Foster was one of the two chief Latin experts at the Vatican for four decades – and an instructor whose influence has spread through schools and universities all over the U.S. Says one prominent professor who’s a former student, “He is not just the best Latin teacher I’ve ever seen, he’s simply the best teacher I’ve ever seen.” Says another, “I saw him for an hour in Rome in 1985 and that one hour completely changed my life. His approach was completely different from every other Latin teacher out there, and it was totally transformative.”
Misha Mengelberg, 81, Pioneering Pianist Of Europe’s Jazz Boom
“[He] was one of the most creative jazz pianists to emerge in the first phase of Europe’s breakaway from American jazz styles in the 1960s … However, he was soon exposing those materials to creative pressures from non-jazz radicals including John Cage and the interdisciplinary experiments being pursued in the US and Europe by futurists, dadaists, and the 1950s Fluxus artists.”
Christopher Gray, Architectural Historian And ‘Streetscapes’ Columnist For New York Times, Dead At 66
“Mr. Gray did not serve up conventional architectural assessments. Mentions of muntins and mullions were few and far between. Instead, his columns were narratives of creation, abandonment and restoration that lovingly highlighted quirky design and backstairs gossip from decades past.”
Marilyn Young, Historian Of And Challenger To The U.S.’s Forever Wars, Has Died At 79
“In one form or another, she explained in 2012, since her childhood the United States had been at war —’“the wars were not really limited and were never cold and in many places have not ended — in Latin America, in Africa, in East, South and Southeast Asia.'”
Joni Sledge, Of ‘We Are Family’ Fame, Dies At 60
Sledge and her sisters (yes, the group’s name was Sister Sledge) “hailed from Philadelphia and formed the group in the early 70s, inspired by their opera-singing grandmother.” They were thinking about quitting when “We Are Family” started to take over the airwaves (and roller rinks, dance floors, raves and so much more).
The Woman Who Designed The New V&A Gallery Says Architects Need To Have A Passion For Public Spaces
Amanda Levete: “There’s only one thing in life that you can’t design … and that’s heritage, but we have a responsibility to breathe new life into it, to be radical as well as sensitive to the past.”