A00082 - Buddy Bolden, Founding Father of Jazz

Buddy Bolden, byname of Charles Joseph Bolden (b. September 6, 1877, New Orleans, Louisiana - d. November 4, 1931, Jackson, Louisiana), was a cornetist and is a founding father of jazz. Many jazz musician, including Jelly Roll Morton and the great trumpeter Louis Armstrong acclaimed him as one of the most powerful musicians ever to play jazz.

Little is known about the details of Bolden's career, but it is documented that by about 1895 he was leading a band.  The acknowledged king of New Orleans lower musical life, Bolden often worked with six or seven different bands simultaneously.  In 1906, Bolden's emotional stability began to crumble, and the following year he was committed to the East Louisiana State Hospital, from which he never emerged. 

A00081 - Shirley Verrett, Opera Singer

Shirley Verrett, (b. May 31, 1931, New Orleans, Louisiana - d. November 5, 2010, Ann Arbor, Michigan), an opera singer who was a mezzo-soprano who had a regal onstage presence and a colorful vocal range, she was best known in the United States and Europe for her roles as Georges Bizet's fiery Carmen, as both Dido and Cassandra in Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens, and as Azucena in Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore.  

Verrett studied  (1955) singing in Los Angeles before continuing her education at the Juilliard School, New York City.  She made her operatic debut in Ohio in 1957 in Benjamin Brittens The Rape of Lucretia.  Two years later she made her European debut in Cologne, Germany, where she portrayed the gypsy in Nicolas Nabokov's Rasputin's End.  Her first appearance at La Scala, in Milan, came in 1966, and she continued to perform there until 1984.  Italians dubbed her "La Nera Callas" ("The Black Callas").  By the late 1980s, however, her vocal quality was becoming inconsistent.  From 1996 to 2010, Verrett taught at the University of Michigan School of Music.  Her autobiography, I Never Walked Alone (written with Christopher Brooks), was published in 2003.

A00080 - Philippa Schuyler, Child Piano Prodigy

Philippa Duke Schuyler (b. August 2, 1931, New York City, New York – d. May 9, 1967, Vietnam) was a noted American child prodigy and pianist who became famous in the 1930s and 1940s as a result of her talent, mixed-race parentage, and the eccentric methods employed by her mother to bring her up.

Schuyler was the daughter of George S. Schuyler, a prominent African American essayist and journalist Josephine Cogdell, a European American Texan and one-time Mack Sennett bathing beauty, from a former slave-owning.  Her parents believed that inter-racial marriage could "invigorate" both races and produce extraordinary offspring. They also advocated that mixed-race marriage could help to solve many of the United States' social problems.

Cogdell further believed that genius could best be developed by a diet consisting exclusively of raw foods. As a result, Philippa grew up in her New York City apartment eating a diet predominantly comprised of raw carrots, peas and yams and raw steak. She was given a daily ration of cod liver oil and lemon slices in place of sweets. "When we travel," Cogdell said, "Philippa and I amaze waiters. You have to argue with most waiters before they will bring you raw meat. I guess it is rather unusual to see a little girl eating a raw steak."

Recognized as a prodigy at an early age, Schuyler was reportedly able to read and write at the age of two and a half, and composed music from the age of five. At nine, she became the subject of "Evening With A Gifted Child", a profile written by Joseph Mitchell, correspondent for The New Yorker, who heard several of her early compositions and noted that she addressed both her parents by their first names.

Schuyler began giving piano recitals and radio broadcasts while still a child and attracted significant press coverage. New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia was one of her admirers and visited her at her home on more than one occasion. By the time she reached adolescence, Schuyler was touring constantly, both in the US and overseas.

Her talent as a pianist was widely acknowledged, although many critics believed that her forte lay in playing vigorous pieces and criticized her style when tackling more nuanced works. Acclaim for her performances led to her becoming a role model for many children in the United States of the 1930s and 1940s, but Schuyler's own childhood was blighted when, during her teenage years, her parents showed her the scrapbooks they had compiled recording her life and career. The books contained numerous newspaper clippings in which both George and Josephine Schuyler commented on their beliefs and ambitions for their daughter. Realization that she had been conceived and raised, in a sense, as an experiment, robbed the pianist of many of the illusions of her youth.

In later life, Schuyler grew disillusioned with the racial and gender prejudice she encountered, particularly when performing in the United States, and much of her musical career was spent playing overseas. In her thirties, she abandoned the piano to follow her father into journalism.

Schuyler's personal life was frequently unhappy. She rejected many of her parents' values, increasingly becoming a vocal feminist, and made many attempts to pass herself off as a woman of Iberian (Spanish) descent named Felipa Monterro. Although she engaged in a number of affairs, and on one occasion endured a dangerous late-term abortion after a relationship with a Ghanaian diplomat, she never married.

Philippa Schuyler and her father, George Schuyler, were members of the John Birch Society.

In 1967, Schuyler traveled to Vietnam as a war correspondent. During a helicopter mission near Da Nang to evacuate a number of Vietnamese orphans, the helicopter crashed into the sea. While she initially survived the crash, her inability to swim caused her to drown. A court of inquiry found that the pilot had deliberately cut his motor and descended in an uncontrolled glide – possibly in an attempt to give his civilian passengers an insight into the dangers of flying in a combat zone – eventually losing control of the aircraft.

Her mother was profoundly affected by her daughter's death and committed suicide on its second anniversary.

A00079 - Della Reese, "Touched by an Angel" Star

Della Reese (born Delloreese Patricia Early) (b. July 6, 1931, Detroit, Michigan), an American singer, actress, game show panelist of the 1970s, one-time talk-show hostess and ordained minister. She started her career in the 1950s as a gospel, pop and jazz singer, scoring a hit with her 1959 single "Don't You Know?". In the late 1960s, she had hosted her own talk show, Della, which ran for 197 episodes. Through four decades of acting, she is best known for playing Tess, the lead role on the 1994–2003 television show Touched by an Angel. In later years, she became an ordained  New Thought minister in the Understanding Principles for Better Living Church in Los Angeles, California.

A00078 - Carmen de Lavallade, Actress, Dancer and Choreographer

^{Carmen de Lavallade (born March 6, 1931) is an American actress, dancer and choreographer.}

Carmen de Lavallade was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 6, 1931, to Creole parents from New Orleans, Louisiana. She was raised by her aunt, Adele, who owned one of the first African American history bookshops on Central Avenue. De Lavallade's cousin, Janet Collins, was the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. 

De Lavallade began studying ballet with Melissa Blake at the age of 16. After graduation from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles was awarded a scholarship to study dance with Lester Horton. 

De Lavallade became a member of the Lester Horton Dance Theater in 1949 where she danced as a lead dancer until her departure for New York City with Alvin Ailey in 1954. Like all of Horton's students, de Lavallade studied other art forms, including painting, acting, music, set design and costuming, as well as ballet and other forms of modern and ethnic dance. She studied dancing with ballerina Carmelita Maracci and acting with Stella Adler.  In 1954, de Lavallade made her Broadway debut partnered with Alvin Ailey in Truman Capote's musical House of Flowers (starring Pearl Bailey).

In 1955, de Lavallade married dancer/actor Geoffrey Holder, whom she had met while working on House of Flowers.  It was with Holder that de Lavallade choreographed her signature solo Come Sunday, to a black spiritual sung by Odetta.  The following year, de Lavallade danced as the prima ballerina in Samson and Delilah, and Aida at the Metropolitan Opera. 

She made her television debut in John Butler's ballet Flight, and in 1957, she appeared in the television production of Duke Ellington's A Drum Is a Woman.  She appeared in several off-Broadway productions including Othello and Death of a Salesman.  An introduction to 20th Century Fox executives by Lena Horne led to more acting roles between 1952 and 1955.  She appeared in several films including Carmen Jones (1954) with Dorothy Dandridge and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) with Harry Belafonte.
De Lavallade was a principal guest performer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company on the company's tour of Asia and in some countries the company was billed as de Lavallade-Ailey American Dance Company.  Other performances included dancing with Donald McKayle and appearing in Agnes de Mille's American Ballet Theatre productions of The Four Marys and The Frail Quarry in 1965.  She joined the Yale School of Drama as a choreographer and performer-in-residence in 1970.  She staged musicals, plays and operas, and eventually became a professor and member of the Yale Repertory Theater.  Between 1990 and 1993, de Lavallade returned to the Metropolitan Opera as choreographer for Porgy and Bess and Die Meistersinger.

In 2003, de Lavallade appeared in the rotating cast of the off-Broadway staged reading of Wit & Wisdom.  In 2010, she appeared in a one-night-only concert semi-staged reading of Evening Primrose by Stephen Sondheim.  Truman Capote's musical House of Flowers (starring Pearl Bailey). 

De Lavallade had resided in New York City with her husband Geoffrey Holder until his death on October 5, 2014. Their lives were the subject of the 2005 Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob documentary Carmen and Geoffrey. The couple had one son, Léo. De Lavallade's brother-in-law was Boscoe Holder.  

In 2004 de Lavallade received the Black History Month Lifetime Achievement Award and the Rosie Award (named for Rosetta LeNoire and "given to individuals who demonstrate extraordinary accomplishment and dedication in the theatrical arts and to corporations that work to promote opportunity and diversity"), the Bessie Award in 2006, and the Capezio Dance Award in 2007,as well as an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Julliard School in 2008.

A00077 - James Earl Jones, Voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa

                                                                                                                                                           James Earl Jones, (b. January 17, 1931, Arkabutla, Mississippi) leading stage roles in Shakespeare's Othello and in The Great White Hope, a play about the tragic career of the first African American heavyweight boxing champion, loosely based on the life of Jack Johnson. Beginning in the 1970s, he appeared frequently on television and in film. 

His father, the actor Robert Earl Jones, left his family before James Earl Jones was born, and the youth was raised largely by his grandparents in Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan (B.A., 1953), majoring in drama, and, after a brief stint in the U.S. Army, went to New York City,  studying at the American Theatre Wing with Lee Strasberg.  He acted in his first Off-Broadway production in 1957 and subsequently with the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1961–73. He won a Tony Award for his boxer role in Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope (1968) and later starred in the film version (1970). He received critical acclaim for the two-character stage play Paul Robeson (1978) and in the title role of Othello (1981), opposite Christopher Plummer's Iago. In 1987, Jones starred in the Broadway premiere of August Wilson's Fences. His later Broadway credits include a 2008 production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that featured an all-black cast, as well as productions of Driving Miss Daisy (2010), Gore Vidal's The Best Man (2012), and George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's You Can’t Take It with You (2014).

A part in the film Dr. Strangelove (1964) began a prolific career in pictures for Jones, whose roles included an evil ruler in the fantasy film Conan the Barbarian (1982), a coal miner fighting for the right to form a union in John Sayles' Matewan (1987), an African king who lets his son (played by Eddie Murphy) travel to the United States in the comedy Coming to America (1988), and the author of Terence Mann in Field of Dreams (1989).  He appeared as Admiral James Greer in the film adaptations of Tom Clancy's novels about CIA agent Jack Ryan: The Hunt for Red October (1990), Patriot Games (1992), and Clear and Present Danger (1994).  In 1995, he portrayed the Reverend Stephen Kumalo in the film version of Alan Paton's classic novel Cry, the Beloved Country.  Jones next starred opposit Robert Duvall in A Family Thing (1996).  His big-screen appearances diminished in the 21st century, though he did take occasional supporting roles.  Jones received an honorary Academy Award in 2011. 

Known for his deep, resonant voice, Jones was cast in many voice-over roles in television advertising and in films, both as a narrator and for animated characters. He is perhaps best known for giving voice to the villain Darth Vader in the Star Wars series of movies, which began in 1977. In 1994 he provided the voice of the wise Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King. Jones’s television work also includes a role as a private detective in Gabriel’s Fire (1990–91; retitled Pros and Cons, 1991–92), for which he won an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. He continued to make guest appearances on television into the 21st century

A00076 - "Blind" Lemon Jefferson, Father of the Texas Blues

"Blind" Lemon Jefferson (born Lemon Henry Jefferson) (b. September 24, 1893, Coutchman, Texas – d. December 19, 1929, Chicago, Illinois) was an American blues and gospel singer, guitarist, and songwriter from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been called "Father of the Texas Blues." 

Jefferson's performances were distinctive as a result of his high-pitched voice and the originality on his guitar playing.  Although his recordings sold well, he was not so influential on some younger blues singers of his generation, who could not imitate him as easily as they could other commercially successful artists. Later blues and rock and roll musicians, however, did attempt to imitate both his songs and his musical style. 

Today, Jefferson is widely recognized as a profound influence upon the development of the Texas blues tradition and the growth of American popular music. His significance has been acknowledged by blues, jazz, and rock musicians, from Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and T-Bone Walker to Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Carl Perkins, Jefferson Airplane, and the Beatles.

Among Jefferson's most well-known songs are "Matchbox Blues," "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "That Black Snake Moan," "Mosquito Blues," "One Dime Blues," "Tin Cup Blues," "Hangman's Blues," "'Lectric Chair Blues," and "Black Horse Blues."