Goree Carter born21 December 1930

Goree Chester Carter or Christer Carter (December 31, 1930* – December 29, 1990), known as Goree Carter, was an American singer, guitarist, drummer, songwriter and soldier. He was also credited with the stage names Little T-Bone, Rocky Thompson and Gory Carter, and recorded music in blues genres such as electric blues, jump blues and Texas blues, as well as rock and roll. One of rock’s first guitar gods, Goree Carter’s legacy only began to be recognized long after he passed away, but his impressive body of work and ahead of its time pyrotechnics on the instrument clearly created the template all other rock guitarists followed ever since. 

Goree Carter was born in Houston, Texas. He was born in the Fifth Ward, and lived at 1310 Bayou Street. He began playing blues music at the age of 12, and learned to play on a cousin's guitar. Because there were very few guitarists in his area back then, he had no one to teach him how to play the guitar, so he taught himself how to play it by listening to some of his favourite records on a Victrola machine and picking string-by-string on the guitar. He learned a few chords from listening and then learned more about them from a chord book. When he became a teenager, he began earning a living by hoisting sacks at the local Comet Rice Mill. He had a Gibson guitar and began fronting bands in his early teenage years. 

In 1949, he and his jump blues band, The Hepcats, also known as Goree Carter and His Hepcats or Goree Carter & His Hepcats, signed for Freedom Records, a local record label set up by Sol Kahal, and recorded the label's first release, "Sweet Ole Woman Blues." Kahal discovered him in either late 1948 or early 1949. 

As well as Carter's guitar, the band featured two saxophones, a trumpet, piano, bass, and drums. Carter's electric guitar style was influenced by Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, but was over-driven and had a rougher edge which presaged the sound of rock and roll a few years later. His single-string runs and two-string "blue note" chords anticipated, and may have influenced, Chuck Berry. 

At the age of 18, he recorded his best known single "Rock Awhile" in April 1949. It has been cited as a strong contender for the title of "first rock and roll record" and a "much more appropriate candidate" than the more frequently cited "Rocket 88" (1951) by Ike Turner. The intro to "Rock Awhile" resembles those in several later Chuck Berry records from 1955 onwards. 

                              

The music historian Robert Palmer regards "Rock Awhile" to be a more appropriate candidate for the "first rock and roll record" title, because it was recorded two years earlier, and because of Carter's guitar work bearing a striking resemblance to Chuck Berry's later guitar work, while making use of an over-driven amplifier, along with the backing of boogie-based rhythms, and the appropriate title and lyrical subject matter. 

Roger Wood and John Nova Lomax have also cited "Rock Awhile" as the first rock & roll record. Carter wrote and recorded the song at Bill Holford's Audiophile Custom Associates Studio. However, "Rock Awhile" was not as commercially successful as later rock & roll records. Nevertheless, he had some moderate success, touring and recording for a while.

In 1950, at the age of 19, he was drafted into military service. He served as a private first class infantry soldier in the Korean War for over a year. He was in Korea when many of the country's most vicious battles took place. After returning from Korea to Houston around 1951, his musical career began declining. Carter recorded for several labels in the early 1950s, including Imperial, Coral, and Modern, but last recorded in 1954. He wrote a number of songs during this time but said he "tore them up" because record labels wouldn’t let him record them, saying he "was ahead of" himself. 

After leaving the music industry, he continued working at the local Comet Rice Mill until its closure decades later. Carter continued to play occasional local gigs in Houston, and sat-in with visiting artist B.B. King; his last live performance was in 1970. He developed arthritis later in his life, and had not been heard from again until 1982, when he was visited at his Fifth Ward home by members of the band Juke Jumpers. 

Goree died in Houston, at the age of 59, in 1990 at the same house where he was born, and is buried at the Houston National Cemetery. Both his old house at 1310 Bayou and the Audiophile Custom Associates Studio at 612 Westheimer no longer exist. 

Carter never lived up to his early potential and broke through to wider acclaim. He had the misfortune to fall in with inexperienced and unscrupulous local wheelers and dealers. Only on record did his long suppressed drive and determination burst forth on a handful of incendiary tracks that at last have rescued him from obscurity to give his name more than just a little in the way of passing recognition as rock’s first transcendent guitar hero. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Spontaneous Lunacy) (* a few sources state he was born 1 January 1931). 

Nancy LaMott born 30 December 1951

Nancy LaMott (December 30, 1951–December 13, 1995) was an American singer, popular on the New York City cabaret circuit in the 1980s and breaking out into radio and the national and international scene in the 1990s. Along with Karen Mason, she was the first singer to do a continuous long run at Don't Tell Mama in New York City. She went on to play all of the smaller clubs in New York, and began to record in the early 1990s. 

As a young girl, LaMott would sing along with Barbra Streisand records, according to her father, a supervisor with the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan. At 15, she performed with her father's dance band, and also worked at a local Sears store. At 17, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, an incurable medical affliction that involves difficult intestinal problems and chronic pain and arthritis. 

LaMott moved to San Francisco. Her early years in San Francisco became a pattern of singing gigs at the Plush Room and other local clubs and also hospital visits, running up medical debts and taking any jobs to pay the rent. She suffered through with the help of painkillers, stomach remedies and steroids, and sometimes had to perform sitting to work against spasms caused by the disease. She struggled for twenty-five years to achieve recognition and success in the music business. 

She moved to New York City in 1979 where she worked as a cocktail waitress and a singer at the Duplex and Don't Tell Mama. She also did demonstration records of theater songs by composers like Alan Menken, Marvin Hamlisch and Cy Coleman. In 1983, she was featured in the cabaret revue "It's Better With a Band," a show at Don't Tell Mama that featured the lyrics of David Zippel. The next year, she teamed up with Christopher Marlowe, who became her longtime accompanist and musical director.

She was described as having an "all-American prettiness" which gave her a "vulnerable, doll-like demeanor" as she developed her singing style. She was named the "best cabaret singer" by New York Magazine. She performed at the White House for Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 1990, she met the composer David Friedman and his companion, Mr. Barnes, who became her manager. Together with Mr. Zippel they produced her first album, "Beautiful Baby," in 1991. 

                   Here’s “Cheek To Cheek” from above album.

                             

Four more recordings followed. For her second album, "Come Rain or Come Shine: The Songs of Johnny Mercer" (1993), she was named best female vocalist by the Manhattan Association of Cabarets. The following year, her third album, "My Foolish Heart," was chosen record of the year by the same organization. Her fourth album, a holiday collection, "Just in Time for Christmas," was released in 1994. 

In 1993, she underwent an ileostomy operation to remove a large portion of the third part of her small intestine; this operation dramatically improved her health. In the same year, she won the MAC Award for Outstanding Female Vocalist. In addition to her recordings, she made television appearances on "Good Morning America," "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee," "Today" and "The Charles Grodin Show." 

In March 1995, LaMott was diagnosed with uterine cancer, yet she postponed a hysterectomy in order to record Listen To My Heart, an album that took only a remarkable two days to complete. The operation revealed that the cancer had metastasized. In the spring of 1995, after singing at an AIDS benefit concert in San Francisco, Nancy attends a performance of Angels in America and meets actor Peter Zapp.whom she will later marry. 

"Listen to My Heart" (Midder Music), recorded with the arranger Peter Matz, received critical acclaim. In a cabaret field typified by showy histrionics, Ms. LaMott was a singularly unaffected voice. She brought to everything she sang a clean, clear sense of line, impeccable enunciation and a deep understanding of how a good song could convey a lifetime's experience. 

Her last public performance was on December 4, 1995, at one of WQEW's live performances. On that same day, she made her last TV appearance on CNBC's The Charles Grodin Show, singing Moon River. A few days after her last concert performances and an appearance on the night-time television talk show hosted by Charles Grodin, LaMott was rushed to the hospital and her shocked friends and family were told that she had just a couple of days to live. 

On December 13, 1995, whilst at St. Lukes Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan, Nancy married Peter Zapp on her deathbed. The wedding guests went to a local pub to hoist a few drinks, and when they got back to Nancy’s hospital room she was gone. Father Steven Harris blessed the union of Nancy to Pete a little more than an hour before she died. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & New York Times)

Clyde McCoy born 29 December 1903

Clyde Lee McCoy (December 29, 1903 – June 11, 1990), was an American jazz trumpeter whose popularity spanned seven decades. He came from a family that was among the best known in the country, possibly in the world, but not for music -- he was a direct descendant of the McCoys of Kentucky, renowned for their long-running (and, indeed, legendary) feud with the Hatfields. 

McCoy was born in Ashland, Kentucky. His family left its home state when he was nine and moved to Portsmouth, OH, and it was while living there that he first took up the trumpet, as well as the trombone. It was on the latter instrument that he played with the Loyal Temperance Legion Band, at age nine. Before his teens he had switched to the trumpet and was playing at school and church events, and at 14 he found work playing on the riverboats, which still plied the rural Midwest, Southern, and border states in those days. By 1920, at age 16, he'd assembled his first band for a two-week engagement at a popular Knoxville resort. Miraculously, though they'd never performed together before their first gig, they proved quite popular, and their contract was extended to two months. 

McCoy felt ready for the big time even though he was still in his teens and decided to make for New York City, but the next few years were frustrating as they never quite caught on in the right way, at the right moment to make the next step, whatever it might be, easy. Finally, in 1924, McCoy decided to try for a fresh start by moving the band to California, where they spent a few years working the area around Los Angeles. They started touring, and it was during this period that McCoy started using a mute on this trumpet, creating the "wah-wah" effect that became his signature on the instrument. 

                             

In 1930, lightning finally struck when he was appearing with the band at the Drake Hotel in Chicago and performed "Sugar Blues." The audience responded well and soon it was getting carried over the radio, and a recording contract with Columbia Records followed in late 1930 -- the resulting 78 rpm single ended up selling millions of copies early the next year, no small feat in the depths of the Great Depression, which had generally started tearing up record sales. He also enjoyed more modest but still substantial hits with "In the Cool of the Night," "The Goona Goo," and "Wah Wah Blues," and made a successful single release of "Smoke Rings," which was best known as Glen Gray's theme. 

McCoy & The Bennett Sisters

McCoy made Chicago his base until the middle of the decade, appearing regularly at the Drake and also doing vaudeville engagements. They had developed a special brand of Dixieland-flavoured swing music that found a ready audience in the midst of the big-band era, and the group also occasionally arranged musical face-offs with other, rival bands that proved extremely popular with patrons. They switched from Columbia to the Decca label in 1935 and continued to sell large numbers of records (including a new version of "Sugar Blues" that reportedly moved a million copies) for the remainder of the decade. He was also one of those responsible for co-founding Downbeat magazine. McCoy could have remained on the sidelines during World War II, but instead he and his band all enlisted in the United States Navy, where they were allowed to continue performing together, entertaining sailors and other troops, as well as patients at naval hospitals, for the duration of the war. 

He returned to civilian life in 1945 and tried to restart the band, and they still had an audience at the time. He put together a big band that did well for a time, and even cut some important records, including a superb rendition of "Basin Street Blues," expanding considerably on the version he'd cut for Columbia in the early '30s; but gradually their audience declined with the shifting in public taste, and in 1955, the year that rock & roll took over the charts, he disbanded the group. 

McCoy and his wife, Maxine Means -- who'd been part of the Bennett Sisters, the vocalists for his band in the late '30s -- opened a club in Denver, where they were frequently featured on the entertainment bill, but it failed to pay its way, and McCoy was forced to resume performing to make a living, fronting a septet. He finally retired to Memphis in the late '70s, and started teaching music, with occasional performances with Dixieland groups around Memphis until his health began to fail in the 1980s due to dementia. His wife Maxine adamantly rejected medical advice to admit her beloved Clyde to an extended care facility. She cared for him in their home in Memphis, Tennessee, where he died on June 11, 1990, at age 86. 

Clyde played an H. N. White King Liberty trumpet and also was known for playing “Sugar Blues" on his miniature King Liberty trumpet that is now on display at the Fiske Museum of Claremont University Consortium in Claremont, California. He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6426 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. 

(Edited mainly from Bruce Eder’s bio @ AllMusic)

Joe Diffie born 28 December 1958

Joe Logan Diffie (December 28, 1958 – March 29, 2020) was an American country music singer and songwriter. Between 1990 and 2004, Joe Diffie was one of the most commercially successful artists in country music, notching up 35 singles on Billboard’s country chart, including five No 1s. He built up a huge and loyal following with songs based around shrewd observations of everyday life, which he performed with rambunctious rowdiness and easygoing humour. 

It was in this uncomplicated spirit that he recorded hits such as Bigger Than the Beatles (No 1 in 1995), the tale of love between a waitress and a hotel lounge singer featuring a crafty nod to the Beatles’ She Loves You. John Deere Green (No 5, 1993) entwined the John Deere tractor, traditionally dear to the hearts of American farmers, with the lifelong romance of Billy Bob and Charlene. Perhaps his philosophy was best captured in Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox (If I Die) – No 3 in 1993 – in which Diffie sang: “Fill my boots up with sand, put a stiff drink in my hand / Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die.” 

Diffie was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His mother, Flora, was a schoolteacher and also ran a flower shop. His father, Joe, held a variety of jobs including rancher, truck driver and welder, and would later become the tour bus driver for the country artist Toby Keith. Joe Sr also played the guitar and banjo, while Flora was a singer, and Joe Jr began singing while still an infant. At 14 he launched his performing career by appearing with his aunt Dawn Anita’s country band. The family moved around between San Antonio, Texas, Washington State and Wisconsin before settling in Velma, Oklahoma, where Joe attended high school. 

He developed his skills as a musician and harmony singer with a variety of gospel and bluegrass groups including Higher Purpose and Special Edition. He lived for a time in Duncan, Oklahoma, where he worked in a foundry and played in local bars and dancehalls, but the foundry closed and his first marriage, to Janise Parker, broke up. 

In 1986 he moved to Nashville, determined to succeed in the music business. While working during the day with Gibson guitars, he focused on his songwriting and sang on demo recordings. He enjoyed a breakthrough in 1988, when Hank Thompson, the “king of western swing”, recorded his song Love On the Rocks. “There’s really no magic formula,” Diffie commented, about his songwriting. “I’ve just always drawn on my own experience, whether it’s falling in love or hanging out in a bar. I feel like if I can relate to it, other people will too.” 

                             

A deal with Epic Records followed, and Diffie’s debut album, A Thousand Winding Roads, appeared in 1990. This gave him his first country No 1 hit with his debut single Home, a showcase for his smooth and supple voice and the beginning of a streak of six consecutive Top 5 singles including another chart-topper, If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets). 

He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1993, a year when he also released the platinum-selling album Honky Tonk Attitude. The following year brought his most successful long-player, Third Rock from the Sun, which reached 6 on the US country chart. This contained one of his biggest hits, Pickup Man, which played on the double entendre of sexual attraction and pickup trucks – “I met all my wives in traffic jams / There’s just something women like about a pickup man”. 

In 1998 he won a Grammy for his appearance on a star-studded recording of Same Old Train with Emmylou Harris, Marty Stuart, Merle Haggard and others. His songs were frequently covered by other artists, including Memory Lane by Tim McGraw, and Jo Dee Messina’s take on My Give a Damn’s Busted. In 2000, Diffie married Theresa (née Crump), whom he met at a concert, at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. The couple divorced in 2017. Diffie married Tara Terpening at The Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2018. 

 In 2013, Jason Aldean’s song 1994 name-checked several of Diffie’s hits, and contained a chorus consisting of the chant “Joe, Joe, Joe Diffie!” This supplied Diffie with the title of his final album, released in 2019. 

On March 27, 2020, Diffie announced that he tested positive for coronavirus in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two days later, on March 29, he died in Nashville at the age of 61 from complications of the disease. 

Diffie released seven studio albums, a Christmas album, and a greatest-hits package under the Epic label. He also released one studio album each through Monument Records, Broken Bow Records, and Rounder Records. Among his albums, 1993's Honky Tonk Attitude and 1994's Third Rock from the Sun are certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, while 1992's Regular Joe and 1995's Life's So Funny are both certified gold.   (sourced mainly from obit by Adam Sweeting @ the Guardian with help from Wikipedia)

Johnny Frigo born 27 December 1916

Johnny Frigo (December 27, 1916 – July 4, 2007) was an American jazz violinist and bassist. He appeared in the 1940s as a violinist before working as a bassist. He returned to the violin in the 1980s and enjoyed a comeback, recording several albums as a leader. He was considered to be perhaps the premier violinist in contemporary jazz up until his final days. 

Frigo was born of Italian stock on Chicago's South Side; he had a poverty-stricken upbringing and supplemented the family income by collecting rags and scrap metal. A ragman talked Frigo's mother into allowing her son to study the violin. "I started taking lessons with the ragman's son when I was seven-and-a-half. Twenty-five cents a lesson," he remembered. 

In high school he started to play double bass in dance orchestras. While still a schoolboy, Frigo sang and played in Chicago hotels, nightclubs and amusement parks and occasionally sat in at Club DeLisa with the great boogie-woogie pianist, Albert Ammons. He performed with a popular cocktail combo, the Four Californians, and did radio work, until he was spotted in 1942 by Chico Marx, then leading a Ben Pollack-style dance band. Marx liked the idea of a bass player who dabbled with the violin, and built Frigo into his comedy act. The 17-year old Mel Tormé, who was also with the band, collaborated with Frigo in a vocal quartet. 

It was during the Second World War that Frigo served in the US coast guard band, playing alongside bebop stars pianist Al Haig and trombonist Kai Winding, later travelling to Europe to entertain troops. After his discharge, he toured with the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra for a year; when Dorsey announced a two-month layoff, Frigo, pianist Lou Carter and guitarist Herb Ellis formed a trio, and persuaded a hotelier in Buffalo, New York, to give them a run. 

The Soft Winds Trio specialised in tightly rehearsed instrumental routines and achieved great success both live and on record, with Detour Ahead, the song Frigo wrote with Carter in 1947. It was much covered by other jazz artists, among them Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. During that time, he also wrote the sardonic swing tune "I Told Ya I Love Ya Now Get Out" which was recorded by June Christy and the Stan Kenton Orchestra. 

Here’s “What A Difference A Day Made” from above 1957 album

                              

In 1951, Frigo returned to Chicago, where he settled into a comfortable, if obscure, life as a studio bassist, composing and playing jingles, and recording with everyone from Mahalia Jackson to Frank Sinatra, sometimes on electric bass while doing violin gigs on the side. 

Johnny Frigo & Dick Marx

He also led the band at Mr. Kelly's, a popular Rush Street nightspot. Between 1951 and 1960 he played fiddle hoedowns and novelties with the Sage Riders, the house band for the WLS radio program National Barn Dance. He played with the Sage Riders for another fourteen years after WGN revived the show in 1961, though the bass remained his main instrument until the 1980s. 

In that time he worked with Chicago jazz vocalist Anita O'Day in live and studio recordings done in Chicago. He was featured (on bass) on O'Day's quartet version of "No Soap, No Hope Blues". Frigo is credited as playing fiddle for the track "A Rectangle Picture" on the Mason Proffit album Wanted released in 1969 on the Happy Tiger label. 

In the mid-1980s Frigo was encouraged by pianist Monty Alexander and writer Leonard Feather to concentrate on the violin. He recorded as a jazz soloist for the Concord label with Alexander, and for the Chesky and Arbors labels, where his output included a Soft Winds reunion session with Ellis and Carter; his swing attack and rich, warm sound was comparable to that of Stéphane Grappelli. Johnny Carson asked Frigo why it took so long to start his career as a violinist. Frigo replied, "I wanna take as long as I could in my life so I wouldn't have time to become a has-been". 

He performed as a jazz violinist at festivals worldwide, including the Umbria Jazz Festival and North Sea Jazz Festival. He wrote and performed the 1969 Chicago Cubs fight song "Hey Hey, Holy Mackerel". He lived out his musical life as a virtuostic jazz violinist, booking regular gigs at Chicago’s Green Mill. 

In addition to his music, Johnny was also an artist and composed poetry and crossword puzzles. A book of his poetry and pastel drawings titled When My Fiddle’s in the Case was published.. Johnny said, “I’m in love with all things. Jazz is a part of what I do, but my life is much more than just that.” 

In his later years, Frigo had been battling cancer which forced him to cancel some appearances He was planning to play festivals in Italy and Holland before he fell in the lobby of his condo building. He died in a Chicago hospital on July 4, 2007. He was 90 years old. (Edited from a Peter Vacher obit @ The Guardian, Wikipedia & Downbeat)

In this clip of the first meeting of violinist Johnny Frigo and Manouche guitarist Dorado Schmitt, Frigo's antics leave Dorado in stitches but they finally manage to start, and eventually finish, the tune. Johnny Frigo, who once played with Chico Marx, was the Victor Borge of the violin. Regattabar, Boston, 2004.

Steve Allen born 26 December 1921

Steve Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was an American television personality, radio personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, writer, and an advocate of scientific scepticism. 

Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen was born in New York to parents who were part of a vaudeville team. His father, Carroll, worked under the name Billy Allen and was straight man to his mother, the former Isabelle Donohue, whose stage name was Belle Montrose. His father died when he was 18 months old. 

Mr. Allen spent his formative years in Chicago, living with his mother's family, whom he later described as ''sarcastic, volatile, sometimes disparaging, but very, very funny.'' In 1941 he briefly attended Drake University in Des Moines on a journalism scholarship and then Arizona State Teachers College. He was drafted into the Army but was discharged after five months because of recurring attacks of asthma. After his discharge, he started working in radio, first in Phoenix, then in Los Angeles. In 1947 he was hired by KNX, the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, to be a disc jockey. Fans were greatly attracted to his chatter, and he soon spent more time talking than he did playing records. As many as a thousand people would visit his studio broadcast each Saturday night, and Mr. Allen would interview them as well as celebrity guests. 

He made a bet with Frankie Laine, the singer, that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. He remained in the window of a Hollywood music store and did it, winning $1,000 from Mr. Laine. One of the songs, ''Let's Go to Church Next Sunday,'' was recorded by both Perry Como and Margaret Whiting. CBS invited him to Manhattan and gave him his own half-hour television show from 1950 to 1952. He moved to NBC in 1953 as host of ''Tonight.'' The predecessor of what would become Johnny Carson's long-running ''Tonight,'' it began as a local program on WNBT, which was then the New York outlet for NBC. It moved to the network 15 months later. 

                             

Allen began his recording career in 1951 with the album Steve Allen At The Piano for Columbia Records. He then signed with Decca Records, recording for their subsidiaries Brunswick Records and then Coral Records. Allen would release a mixture of novelty singles, jazz recordings and straight pop numbers for Decca throughout the 1950s, before switching to Dot Records in the 1960s. 

Allen with Elvis 1956

Allen's best known song, "This Could Be the Start of Something", dates from 1954, the same year he married Jayne Meadows, the actress and sister of Audrey Meadows. Though it was never a hit, the song was recorded by numerous artists, including Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Aretha Franklin, Lionel Hampton, Claire Martin, and Oscar Peterson. Allen used it as the theme song of The Tonight Show in 1956/57, and as the theme song to many of his later television projects. He also wrote the music and lyrics for ''Sophie,'' a Broadway musical based on the life of Sophie Tucker, which ran for only eight performances in 1963. 

Allen with Connie Francis & Frankie Avalon

Mr. Allen cut back his ''Tonight'' schedule in the summer of 1956 to begin ''The Steve Allen Show,'' which NBC offered as a prime-time Sunday night competitor to ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' on CBS and ''Maverick'' on ABC, and left late-night television for good in January 1957.  ''The Steve Allen Comedy Hour,'' with some of the ''Tonight'' regulars, ran on CBS during the summer of 1967, and Mr. Allen was host of a similar variety show on NBC in 1980 and 1981. 

Mr. Allen never stopped performing, making personal appearances and doing radio broadcasts. In January 1995 he played the title role in a production of ''The Mikado'' by the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players. In his later years he began speaking out against what he saw as a rising tide of smut on television, condemning shows that he felt had ''taken television to the garbage dump.'' At the time of his death he was completing a book on the subject, ''Vulgarians at the Gate.'' 

Jayne Meadows & Steve Allen

Although Allen was thought initially to have died of a heart attack, it was eventually determined by the coroner's office that the official cause of death was hemopericardium, a leaking of blood into the sac surrounding the heart, and that this was secondary to a minor automobile accident Allen was involved in earlier that day. He was driving to his son's Encino home about 7:45 p.m. on October 30, 2000, when his car was struck by a sport utility vehicle backing out of a driveway on the 16000 block of Valley Vista Blvd in Encino. The impact was enough to break four ribs and rupture a blood vessel in Allen's chest, which allowed blood to leak into the pericardium. 

He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – a television star at 1720 Vine Street and a radio star at 1537 Vine Street. Jayne Meadows was buried next to Allen following her death in 2015.

 ( (Edited mainly from New York Times  & IMDb) 

Steve Allen visits the Andy Williams Show and recalls the days of the original Tonight Show with the host. Then Steve and Andy join with guests Petula Clark and Eddy Arnold for a medley of Steve's songs. Aired in living color on NBC, Sunday, October 23, 1966.

Chris Kenner born 25 December 1929

Christophe Kenner (December 25, 1929 – January 25, 1976) was an American, New Orleans-based R&B singer and songwriter, best known for two hit singles in the early 1960s, "I Like It Like That" and "Land of 1000 Dances", which became staples in the repertoires of many other musicians. 

Chris Kenner was an important figure on the New Orleans music scene, both as a singer and a songwriter. He had his biggest success in the first half of the 1960s, especially with “I Like It Like That” and “Land Of 1,000 Dances”. But he ended up as a tragic figure who didn’t know how to handle his fame and his money.  Kenner was born on Christmas Day, 1929, in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans. Valuable singing experience was acquired in his father’s church choir and later in a number of gospel groups. After moving to New Orleans to work as a longshoreman, Kenner began to write secular songs and switched over to R&B, influenced by Willie Mabon and Joe Turner. 

His first record, “Don’t Let Her Pin That Charge On Me”/“Grandma’s House”, was released in February 1956 on the Baton label. In spite of a good Billboard review, the disc didn’t sell and Kenner continued to work on the docks. Dave Bartholomew gave him the chance to record for Imperial in April 1957. The resulting single, Kenner’s self-penned “Sick and Tired”, was a # 13 R&B hit. In February 1958 the song was covered by Fats Domino, who took it to # 22 on the pop charts. Despite this success, Chris had only one more release on Imperial (“I Have News For You”/“Will You Be Mine”). Imperial’s owner, Lew Chudd, didn’t like him and couldn’t handle him. 

                               

After one-off records for the Ron (“Rocket To the Moon”) and Pontchartrain labels (“Don’t Make No Noise”) in 1960, Kenner was signed to Joe Banashak’s Valiant label in early 1961. Allen Toussaint became his producer and would play an important role in his career. Kenner's first session for his new label resulted in the two-part single “I Like It Like That”, a repetitive, but infectious number. Soon after its release in March, though, Banashak had to change the name of his Valiant label (to Instant Records), owing to conflict with the identically named Los Angeles label. This may have been a factor in the slow start of the record, but by August it was sitting comfortably at the # 2 slot on both the pop and the R&B charts, only being kept from the top by the biggest hit of 1961, “Tossin’ and Turnin’” by Bobby Lewis.

Kenner received a Grammy nomination for “I Like It Like That”, appeared on American Bandstand and toured with the Coasters, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Jackie Wilson and Roy Hamilton. Unfortunately, Chris was ill-suited for rock n roll stardom. His drinking and spending sprees were legendary. He constantly frustrated promoters by missing gigs and forgetting the words to his songs. The next two Instant singles, “Packin’ Up” and “Something You Got”, sold few copies outside out of New Orleans, though “Something You Got” would later be widely covered and was a hit for Alvin Robinson, the Ramsey Lewis Trio and the duo of Chuck Jackson & Maxine Brown in 1964-65. 

In 1962 Kenner wrote and recorded “Land Of 1,000 Dances”, based on an old spiritual (“Children Go Where I Send You”). Initially it didn’t sell. In April 1963 Fats Domino agreed to record the song (and also “Packin’ Up” and “Something You Got") in exchange for half of the song’s royalties. However, the first charting version of “Land Of 1,000 Dances” was Kenner’s original, peaking at # 77 in the summer of 1963. In 1965 it became a # 30 hit for Cannibal and the Headhunters, who were the first to add the “na na na na na” hook (by accident, when the lead singer forgot the lyrics). Many others have covered the song, including Tom Jones, Ike & Tina Turner, Little Richard and Roy Orbison, but the artist with the biggest success was Wilson Pickett. His version of “Land Of 1,000 Dances” went to # 1 R&B in 1966 and # 6 pop (Pickett’s biggest pop hit). 

Other artists who scored hits with covers of Kenner’s tunes were Alvin Robinson (“Something You Got”, # 52, 1964) and The Dave Clark Five (“I Like It Like That”, # 7, 1965). As a result , Kenner was on the receiving end of a tremendous amount of BMI songwriters’ royalties, but it would all be squandered within a few days.Apart from a brief excursion to Uptown Records in 1964, Kenner continued to record for Instant until 1968, but there were no further hits. 

Throughout much of his career Chris was beset by serious alcohol problems. He had a reputation as a poor and unreliable live performer. In 1968 he was convicted of statutary rape of a minor (though he was probably framed) and had to serve three years in Angola prison, alongside James Booker. Released from prison, he attempted a comeback, which never came. Chris Kenner was found dead in his apartment in New Orleans in January 1976. The cause was a heart attack, triggered by his alcohol problems.  (Sourced from tims.blackcat.nl)