Kid Thomas born 20 June 1934

Louis Thomas Watts, commonly known as Kid Thomas (20 June 1934 – 5 April 1970) was and is one of the great unsung heroes of the music that skirts the fine line between blues and straight-out rock & roll. Though success constantly eluded him throughout his career, it wasn't for lack of talent. 

He was born Louis Thomas Watts in Sturgis, Mississippi. About seven years later, his parents, Virgie and VT, moved the family up to Chicago. By the time young Louis reached street-wise, teenage manhood, he was taking harmonica lessons from Little Willie Smith, one of the many peripheral bluesmen on the Chicago scene, in exchange for giving Smith lessons on the drums, the Kid's original instrument. 

The late '40s and early '50s found him semi-gainfully employed blowing harp at Cadillac Babys and a dozen other clubs whose names are now lost to the mists of time. According to all accounts, he appears to have sat in with everybody at one time or another during the early to mid-'50s; Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and Bo Diddley all welcomed him on-stage on a regular basis, while Thomas found himself even deputizing for his harmonica hero Little Walter on the not-so-odd occasion when said hero was too drunk to make it up to the bandstand. 

By 1955, Kid Thomas decided he needed to make a record to help promote his club appearances. Walking by the King-Federal distributors one day, he simply poked his head and announced that he'd like to record. As luck would have it, he was immediately introduced to Ralph Bass, then working for Syd Nathan's label conglomerate as an A&R man. Bass listened to Thomas' spiel, then sent him off with instructions to put a band together and come back for a demo session. Deputizing Smith on drums, a guitarist only remembered as "James", and an unknown piano man, our hero headed back for the audition loaded down with tunes he had been working up on his gigs. 

                                    

In his only known interview, conducted in 1969 by Darryl Stolper, Thomas remembered that first session that led to his first record being issued: "The first few numbers didn't go over, so I started thinking about Howlin Wolf, and I came up with "Wolf Pack." And "The Spell" I got from Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Both of them were thought up on the spur of the moment, and Ralph Bass dug them." Rather than have Thomas come back in and do a formal session, Bass was so taken with the results of the Kid's ad-lib compositions that the results were duly pressed up as Federal single. However, it was not successful, and other recordings he made for Federal went unissued for many years. 

After a stint performing in clubs in Wichita, Kansas, where he joined up with Hound Dog Taylor, he travelled to Los Angeles with the idea of emulating the success of Little Richard. There, he met record producer George Motola, and in 1959 recorded the single "Rockin' This Joint To-Nite," which was released on Motola's Transcontinental Records label. The record has been described as "one of the wildest rock'n'roll discs of all time with Kid Thomas blowing his harmonica and shouting out the lyrics in a frantic frenzy." However, it was not a commercial success. 

He continued to perform with a band in Los Angeles clubs, often as Tommy Louis and the Rythm  Rockers or Tommy Louis and the Versatiles. In 1965, he recorded two singles for the Muriel Records label, "The Hurt Is On" and "Wail Baby Wail", another full-blooded rocker featuring guitar by Marshall Hooks, but neither were hits. His final record, as Tommy Lewis, was "(You Are An) Angel", on the Cenco Records label in 1969. In the late 60s, he worked for everything from cheap beer bars to private parties and was even hired by Dean Martin at one of them. 

Kid Thomas? from CD cover

Finding little commercial success, Kid Thomas worked as a lawn mowing man in Los Angeles in the latter half of the 1960s. On September 3, 1969, while pulling his van away from a lucrative Beverly Hills home he had just finished up, he ran over a young boy who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The boy died later that afternoon. A manslaughter indictment against Thomas was dropped because of insufficient evidence, but a few months later he was due back in court on charges of driving with a revoked license. Waiting for him outside the courthouse was the boy’s distraught father. The men spoke briefly and then Friedman pulled a 9mm automatic pistol from a briefcase and fired point-blank into the bluesman.  Thomas ran across the street toward the rear entrance of the police station with Friedman in pursuit still squeezing off rounds.  Thomas fell to the curb, but a stray shot struck Beverly Hills Police Sgt. John Carden in the leg as he was standing at the rear door of the station.  Friedman dropped his gun and was arrested without incident. 

Kid Thomas, was pronounced dead on arrival at UCLA Medical Center, Beverly Hills on April 5, 1970.  Since the man who died in that shooting incident was named Louis Thomas Watts, scarcely a word on Kid Thomas's death was heard in the blues community for quite some time.   (Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia & David K. Frasier article) 

Dave Lambert born 19 June 1917

David Alden Lambert (June 19, 1917 – October 3, 1966) was an American jazz lyricist, singer, and an originator of vocalese. He was best known as a member of the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Lambert spent a lifetime experimenting with the human voice, and expanding the possibilities of its use within jazz. 

David Alden Lambert was born in Boston, MA. His sole musical education came at age 10 when he played drums for a year. He picked up the drums again in the late 1930s when he worked summers playing with the Hugh McGuinness trio. Before joining the Army in 1940, he earned his living as a tree surgeon. Lambert was discharged from Army in 1943.   

Lambert's band debut was with Johnny Long's Orchestra in the early 1940s. Along with early partner Buddy Stewart, Lambert successfully brought singing into modern jazz (concurrently with Ella Fitzgerald). He  joined Gene Krupa's Orchestra in 1944 as a member of the G-Noters, which featured Lambert, Lillian Lane, Buddy Stewart and Jerry Duane. His first hit with Krupa was What's This? with Buddy Stewart, recorded in January 1945. Their scatting captured the essence of early bop, thanks to their close association with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and other burgeoning boppers on New York's 52nd St., and is considered the first vocal version of a bop line. 

The Pastels

In 1946, Lambert recorded with Buddy Stewart backed by Red Rodney's Beboppers, arranged by Neal Hefti. In the late 1940s, Lambert was so skilled that he often performed and recorded with top boppers like Benny Green, Al Haig, Allen Eager and Kai Winding. In 1947 Lambert put together a small short lived group he called “The Pastels” for Stan Kenton. They included Dave Lambert, Jerry Duane, Wayne Howard, Jerry Packer and Margaret Dale. 

                                    

Lambert appeared with Charlie Parker on a Royal Roost broadcast (1949) and his singers backed Bird on his 1953 recordings of "Old Folks" and "In the Still of the Night," renditions that are somewhat bizarre. Lambert recorded a few numbers with his vocal group for Capitol in 1949 and teamed up with John Hendricks (along with two other singers) for the first time in 1955 for an obscure version of "Four Brothers." The two were later joined by Annie Ross, and the lineup was a hit. 

After Lambert, Hendricks & Ross became popular in 1957, that group dominated his activities, although Lambert did record a solo album for United Artists in 1959. He stayed with the ensemble after it became Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan in 1962 (when Annie Ross was succeeded by Yolande Bavan) until its breakup in 1964.  He then formed a quintet called "Lambert & Co." which included the multiple voices of Mary Vonnie, Leslie Dorsey, David Lucas, and Sarah Boatner. 

The group auditioned for RCA in 1964, and the process was documented by filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker in a 15-minute documentary entitled Audition at RCA, It was one of the last images recorded of Lambert. The warm-voiced singer's last recording was a scat-filled version of "Donna Lee" performed at a 1965 Charlie Parker memorial concert. A year later he was killed in a highway incident. 

Accounts of Lambert's death vary slightly in details. It is established that he was on the Connecticut Turnpike and that a flat tire was involved and that he was struck by a tractor-trailer truck driven by Floyd H. Demby in the early hours of October 3, 1966. The disabled vehicle was not fully off the roadway and its lights were turned off. In addition, an account on D. A. Pennebaker's website states that the accident was on the Merritt Parkway, although that highway prohibits trucks. 

Some accounts mention that Richard Hillman was killed in the same incident. Newspaper stories differ about whose vehicle was disabled. Jet magazine's account says it was a panel truck owned by Lambert. Jon Hendricks' telling of the story says that Lambert was a compulsive do-gooder and that he had stopped to assist another motorist. The newspaper follow-up stories say that Demby was not at fault and that Lambert and Hillman were in the roadway when they were struck. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic, Jazz Wax & A.A. Registry) 

Sara Martin born 18 June 1884

Sara Martin (June 18, 1884 – May 24, 1955) was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was billed as "The Famous Moanin' Mama" and "The Colored Sophie Tucker". She made many recordings, including a few under the names Margaret Johnson and Sally Roberts. 

A contemporary of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, Martin was born in Louisville, Kentucky and as a teenager started performing in vaudeville there. Hen she was 16 she . Around 1915, she took her act north to Chicago, and within five years had made it to the entertainment circuit in New York City. She was sought after as much for her dramatic performances and her versatility as for her voice, which was reportedly unexceptional and sometimes abrasive in tone. 

When Martin began singing in New York City clubs and cabarets, she attracted the notice of Clarence Williams (1898–1965), an African-American composer who was also the most frequently recorded jazz pianist in the 1920s. As a music publisher and promoter who founded a New York publishing house and opened several music stores, he recorded more African-American jazz musicians than anyone else at the time, frequently for the Okeh label, and through him Martin became one of the first female blues singers to be recorded. 

Martin & Weaver

Her first recordings with Okeh Records in 1922 included "Uncle Sam Blues" and "A Green Gal Can't Catch On," and "Sugar Blues" and its flip side, "Achin' Heart Blues." In the same year, she also recorded on the Columbia label with her own group, the Brown Skin Syncopators. In 1923, she recorded again on the Okeh label with Eva Taylor , Shelton Brooks, and Fats Waller; when Louisville guitarist Sylvester Weaver came to New York, Martin recorded with him, and so sponsored the first American recordings by a country bluesman. She also toured with Waller (1922–23) and with the W.C. Handy Band (1923) on the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA) circuit, the main circuit for black entertainers, performing among other places in Nashville, New Orleans, Atlantic City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. 

                                    

Sara Martin appeared in many 1920s revues, theatrical shows, and musicals, singing everything from traditional 12-bar and 16-bar blues to vaudeville comedy songs and even foxtrots which she delivered in the style of Sophie Tucker . She wore lavish gowns onstage, and frequently appeared in two or three different outfits in one show. At one point, she performed with her husband, William Myers, on banjo, and their three-year-old son onstage. She sang on radio in 1924 and 1927, and appeared in the 1927 film Hello Bill. 

In 1928, she toured Jamaica, Cuba, and Puerto Rico with the Get Happy Follies Revue, and the following year appeared with Mamie Smith in The Sun-Tan Frolics at the Lincoln Theater in New York City. Although Martin's reputation as a live act outshone her recorded output, the singer made more than 100 recordings during the 1920s. During 1930, Martin again toured East Coast theaters, and performed also in Cleveland, Ohio clubs. 

Martin's career, along with those of many other performers, suffered with the onset of the Great Depression. Her last major stage appearance was in Darktown Scandals Review in 1930. Shortly after that, Martin left blues and vaudeville behind and began singing gospel music with Thomas A. Dorsey, who had also recently switched from the blues. They toured Chicago-area churches in 1932. (She had earlier recorded gospel music with Sylvester Weaver, Arizona Dranes, and, in 1927, her future husband, Hayes Withers.) As a gospel singer, however, she never achieved the renown she had won on the vaudeville and blues club circuits. During the last decade of her life, having retired from performing, Sara Martin owned and managed a private nursing home in Louisville. She died of a stroke on May 24, 1955, and was buried at the Louisville Cemetery. 

She was married three times, the first marriage to Christopher Wooden when she was 16. Christopher Wooden died in 1901. Her second marriage was to Abe Burton. At the time of her death she was married to Hayes Buford Withers. 

Her performances live on in Martin's Complete Recorded Works, a four-volume set released in 1996 by Document Records.  (Edited from article by Timothy Borden @ All About Jazz & Wikipedia) 

( Edited from Encyclopedia.com & Wikipedia)

Sing Miller born 17 June 1914

James Edward "Sing" Miller (June 17, 1914* – May 18, 1990) was an American jazz pianist and a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, however, as Miller’s childhood nickname indicates, it would be his talent as a vocalist for which he would be best remembered. He delivered traditional jazz favorites that audiences loved. 

Miller was born in New Orleans. His first instrument was a primitive ukulele made from a cigar box, a stick and four cut strings. Later his mother bought him a violin which he tuned like a ukulele, but soon he would also take up the banjo and the string bass. Miller’s first job as a banjo player was at the Okey Lounge in 1927, after which he joined Kid Howard’s band. Miller also sang with the Harmonizing Browns Quartet, establishing his reputation as a talented vocalist. In 1928 Miller began teaching himself piano. According to early jazz researchers Larry Borenstein and Bill Russell, Miller was influenced by the piano playing of Steve Lewis, Jeannette Kimball, Isadore Washington, and Stack O’Lee.  O’Lee, a blues pianist who was Miller’s neighbor, was particularly instrumental in Miller’s decision to learn piano. 

Like many early New Orleans musicians, Miller had an alternate profession: as a paving contractor. On gigs he gave out business cards that read, "Let me pave the way for you." Miller joined Percy Humphrey’s band as a soloist in the 1930s. From there he went on to join several other groups, including drummer Earl Foster’s band, until he was called in 1942 to serve in World War II. Following his tour of duty, Miller rejoined Foster’s ensemble. In the years afterward, Miller played occasionally with Chris Kelly and Kid Rena, took traveling gigs in tent shows that toured throughout the South, played a long engagement at the Carnival Club in New Orleans, and performed for more than half a decade at the Club Plantation in Bogalusa. 

                      Here’s “I Don’t Know Why” from above album.

                                    

Miller also played with the Kid Clayton band at Mama Lou’s in the Little Woods section of New Orleans in 1937 and 1938. Miller performed with the James Brothers in Houma during this time as well, and upon Joe James’s death, Miller joined Kid Thomas’s band, with whom he recorded. In 1941 Miller performed with Kid Sheik, along with George Guesnon, at the Cotton Club in New Orleans. 

Miller has two solo albums that feature some of his most definitive work: Old Times with Sing Miller, released on Smoky Mary Records in 1975, and another released by Dixie Records in 1972. Old Times with Sing Miller features Miller (vocals, piano), Frank Demond (trombone), James Prevost (bass), and Louis Barbarin (drums). It boasts moving renditions of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Trust in Me.” Toward the end of his life, Miller appeared frequently at Preservation Hall with Percy Humphrey and Kid Sheik. When a reporter asked him, "Where did the blues begin?" Sing replied, "I'll tell you where the blues begin. Blues begin with fish fries." 

In his article for All About Jazz titled “Sing Miller: This Little Light of Mine,” William Carter writes that after seeing Miller perform one night at New York’s prestigious Lincoln Center, the  folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax told the author: “The first note he sang, I began to cry. That first note of Sing’s made me burst into tears. This little, humble, crushed-looking man was in great big Avery Fisher Hall, and he knew it. And the first note he formed was as beautiful as a garden of flowers. It was a sunburst of the soul.” 

Miller died on May 18, 1990, in New Orleans. (Edited from article by Holly Hobbs @ 64 Parishes & All About Jazz) (*other sources give 1913 as birth year) 

Tex Owens born 15 June 1892

Tex Owens (June 15, 1892 – September 9, 1962) was an American country music singer and songwriter, best remembered today for writing the Eddy Arnold hit Cattle Call. 

Tex Owens was born Doie Hensley Owens in Killeen, Texas. He was the son of Curcley Sly and Susan (Frances) Owens. The youngest of thirteen children, he came from a large and musically talented family who moved to Cushing, Oklahoma while he was still a boy. The name "Tex" logically seemed to stick after the move to Oklahoma. Beginning when he was 15 years old, he worked lots of jobs, especially on ranches in the surrounding area, and even spent a stint as a chuck wagon cook. He did gravitate a little toward singing as he could play guitar well enough to accompany himself, and as a lanky 6'3" vocalist, he looked natural enough as the center of attention. He made his first foray into music at a traveling tent show as a blackface singer, doubling as a hired hand, and spent up to a year with one such tent show. The life didn't appeal to him enough to stay with music, however, and by his late teens Owens was back to working more conventional and reliable jobs. 

Owens worked oil fields in Texas, and then jobs in Missouri and Kansas, and after marrying Maude Neal in1916, he spent his early years as a cowboy and oilfield worker in Texas. He later held a series of jobs in the Midwest, until his friends urged him to take his musical talents to radio in 1931. For the next ten years he co-hosted the popular Brush Creek Follies, on KMBC in Kansas City, featuring his group, the Original Texas Rangers, and his two daughters Dolpha (Jane) and Laura Lee (Joy). In the summer of 1934, Owens was signed, along with the Texas Rangers, to the newly founded Decca label. (Curiously, Decca had also signed another "Tex," with the last name of Ritter, around the same time). In 1935 Owens penned his biggest hit song, "Cattle Call," which he recorded for Decca Records. 

                                   

According to his wife, he'd written it ahead of a show during a snowstorm when they were stuck at the hotel where the radio station was headquartered, borrowing the melody from "The St. Paul Waltz." The song, one of four he recorded in Chicago that day wasn't a success at the time, and Owens' relationship with Decca ended after that session. He next recorded ten songs for RCA in September of 1936, none of which including another version of "Cattle Call" was issued and all of which are lost today. The song later became a hit recording for singer Eddy Arnold. Owens was popular enough that in 1939 the governor of Texas declared him and the Texas Rangers honorary Texas Rangers. Owens also hosted the Boone County Jamboree on WLW in Cincinnati and appeared on several other radio shows. Most of Owens' career was spent not in the recording studio, but rather on the radio, performing with either the Texas Rangers or the Prairie Pioneers; he also made personal appearances and, on rare occasions, performed in movies. 

Though Owens went back to the oilfields during World War II, he later returned to entertainment as a movie cowboy, but most of Owens' career was spent not in the recording studio, but rather on the radio, performing with either the Texas Rangers or the Prairie Pioneers; he also made personal appearances and, on rare occasions, performed in movies. His postwar career was cut short, however, when a horse fell on him and broke his back during the filming of Red River, with John Wayne, in 1950. Owens spent a year recovering and never fully got over the injuries. He returned to performing with a new backing group, the Prairie Pirates, and cut a pair of sessions with them in 1953 and 1954. The four songs from these sessions were released on the Wrightman label but failed to excite any major public interest, despite the presence of such gorgeous songs as Alice Canterbury's "Give Me the Plains at Night" as well as the Tex and Chuck Owens-authored instrumental "Porcupine Serenade." 

Owens wrote more than 100 songs, but "Cattle Call" was far and away the biggest success he ever had. Unfortunately, he never achieved a fraction of the success as a recording artist that Arnold did during those decades, and by the time Arnold's second version was topping the charts, the author was past 60 and partly forgotten; most listeners assumed Arnold had written it. 

By the end of the 1950s, Owens was retired from Hollywood. Now past 60, he'd seen his oldest daughter, Laura Lee, embark on a successful career as the first female vocalist ever hired by Wills. He and his wife moved to Baden, Texas in 1960, and it was there that Owens died of a heart attack in 1962 at the age of 70. He was buried in Franklin Cemetery in Robertson County. Nine years later, in 1971, Owens was posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters' Hall of Fame in recognition of his work as a composer.

(Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia)

Junior Walker born 14 June 1931

Junior Walker (June 14, 1931 – November 23, 1995), was an American multi-instrumentalist (primarily saxophonist) and vocalist who recorded for Motown during the 1960s. He also performed as a session and live-performing saxophonist with the band Foreigner during the 1980s. 

Walker was born Autry DeWalt Mixon Jr. in Blytheville, Arkansas, but grew up in South Bend, Indiana. He began playing saxophone while in high school, and his saxophone style was the anchor for the sound of the bands he later played in. His career started when he developed his own band in the mid-1950s as the Jumping Jacks. His longtime friend and drummer Billy Nicks (1935–2017) formed his own group, the Rhythm Rockers. Periodically, Nicks would sit in on Jumping Jack's shows, and Walker would sit in on the Rhythm Rockers shows. 

Nicks obtained a permanent gig at a local TV station in South Bend, Indiana, and asked Walker to join him and keyboard player Fred Patton permanently. Nicks asked Willie Woods (1936–1997), a local singer, to perform with the group; Woods would learn how to play guitar. When Nicks was drafted into the United States Army, Walker convinced the band to move from South Bend to Battle Creek, Michigan. While performing in Benton Harbor, Walker found a drummer, Tony Washington, to replace Nicks. Eventually, Fred Patton left the group, and Victor Thomas stepped in. The original name, The Rhythm Rockers, was changed to "The All Stars." Walker's style was inspired by jump blues and early R&B, particularly players like Louis Jordan, Earl Bostic, and Illinois Jacquet. 

The group was spotted by Johnny Bristol, and in 1961 he recommended them to Harvey Fuqua, who had his own record labels. Once the group started recording on the Harvey label, their name was changed to Jr. Walker & the All Stars. The name was modified again when Fuqua's labels were taken over by Motown's Berry Gordy, and Jr. Walker & the All Stars became members of the Motown family, recording for their Soul imprint in 1964. 

                                    

The members of the band changed after the acquisition of the Harvey label. Tony Washington, the drummer, quit the group, and James Graves joined. Their first and signature hit was "Shotgun", written and composed by Walker and produced by Berry Gordy, which featured the Funk Brothers' James Jamerson on bass and Benny Benjamin on drums. "Shotgun" reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1965, and was followed by many other hits, such as "(I'm a) Road Runner", "Shake and Fingerpop" and remakes of two Motown songs "Come See About Me" and "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)", that had previously been hits for the Supremes and Marvin Gaye respectively. In 1966, Graves left and was replaced by old cohort Billy "Stix" Nicks, and Walker's hits continued apace with tunes such as "Pucker Up Buttercup". 

In 1969, the group had another hit enter the top 5, "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)". A Motown quality control meeting rejected this song for single release, but radio station DJs made the track popular, resulting in Motown releasing it as a single, whereupon it reached No. 4 on the Hot 100 and No. 1 on the R&B chart. From that time on, Walker sang more on the records than earlier in their career. He toured the UK in 1970 with drummer Jerome Teasley, guitarist Phil Wright, keyboardist Sonny Holley and the youthful Liverpool UK bassist Norm Bellis . The band played two venues on each of the 14 nights. The finale was at The Valbonne in London's West End. They were joined on stage by The Four Tops for an impromptu set. He landed several more R&B Top Ten hits over the next few years, with the last coming in 1972. 

In 1979, Walker went solo, disbanding the All Stars, and was signed to Norman Whitfield's Whitfield Records label, but he was not as successful on his own as he had been with the All Stars in his Motown period. Walker re-formed the All Stars in the 1980s. On April 11, 1981, Walker was the musical guest on the season finale of Saturday Night Live. Foreigner's 1981 album 4 featured Walker's sax solo on "Urgent". He later recorded his own version of the song for the 1983 All Stars's album Blow the House Down. Walker's version was also featured in the 1985 Madonna film Desperately Seeking Susan. In 1983, Walker was re-signed with Motown. In the same year, he appeared as a part of the Motown 25 television special which aired on May 16, 1983. 

Unfortunately, in 1993 his activities were severely curtailed by cancer, which claimed his life on November 23, 1995. In the wake of his death. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Battle Creek under a marker inscribed with both his birth name of Autry DeWalt Mixon Jr. and his stage name. 

(Edited from Wikipedia) 

 

Bob McGrath born 13 June 1932

Robert Emmett McGrath (June 13, 1932 – December 4, 2022) was an American actor, singer, and children's author best known for playing original human character and music teacher Bob Johnson on the educational television series Sesame Street from 1969 to 2016. 

McGrath was born in Ottawa, Illinois, the son of Flora Agnes (née Hallagan) and Edmund Thomas McGrath, a farmer He was named for the Irish patriot Robert Emmet. As a child he sang for his family while his mother played the piano. His mother enrolled him in the Roxy Theater's Amateur Program and he finished in second place. He graduated from Marquette High School. 

McGrath graduated from the University of Michigan in 1954; he went to the school of music there. He was a member of the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club and the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta. During fraternity events he washed dishes while David Connell, a fraternity brother, waited tables, a connection Connell used when Sesame Street casting began. After graduating, McGrath was inducted into the U.S. Army; he was in Germany for two years performing for the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra and booking for them. 

McGrath earned a Master of Music degree in voice from the Manhattan School of Music in 1959. McGrath worked with Mitch Miller and was the featured tenor on Miller's NBC-TV television singalong series Sing Along with Mitch for four seasons from 1960 to 1964. He was a singer on the Walt Kelly album Songs of the Pogo. In the mid-1960s, McGrath became a recording artist in Japan, releasing a series of successful albums of Irish and other folk songs and ballads sung in Japanese. This aspect of his career was the basis of his "secret" when he appeared on the game shows To Tell the Truth in 1966 and I've Got a Secret in 1967. 

                                   

From 1969 to 2016, McGrath was a regular cast member on Sesame Street, playing Bob Johnson. Along with series matriarch Susan Robinson, played by Loretta Long, McGrath was one of the two longest-lasting human characters on the series since the show's debut. A Noggin segment proclaimed the four decades of Bob when promoting Sesame Street on that network. In July 2016, Sesame Workshop announced that McGrath would not return to the show for its 47th season because it would be retooling the series, but that McGrath would continue to represent the Workshop at public events. 

Sesame Workshop later announced that there would be talks to bring him back and that he would still represent Sesame Street. Although McGrath had not been in any new material since season 45, he subsequently appeared in online videos for the show. He also returned for the 2019 TV special Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Celebration. McGrath said that his two favorite moments on Sesame Street were Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (a 1978 Christmas special that included a pastiche of "The Gift of the Magi") and the 1983 sequence that candidly addressed the death of longtime character Mr. Hooper, played by his friend Will Lee, who had died the previous year. 

For 38 years, McGrath was a regular fixture on Telemiracle, a telethon broadcast annually on CTV outlets in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. His final regular appearance at Telemiracle was in 2015, where performers at the show paid tribute to him. He returned for a special appearance in 2018. On March 3, 2006, he was awarded the Commemorative Medal for the Centennial of Saskatchewan for this work by Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan Lynda Haverstock. He was given the Saskatchewan Distinguished Service Award in 2013 by the Premier of Saskatchewan, Brad Wall. 

He received a Distinguished Service Award for his decades of service by the Variety Children's Charity Telethon in British Columbia. McGrath wrote many children's books, including Uh Oh! Gotta Go! (1996) and OOPS! Excuse Me Please! (1998). In 1995, he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

McGrath's Sing Me a Story was nominated for the 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for children's Album of the Year. On April 10, 2010 he was the first recipient of the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club Lifetime Achievement Award. 

McGrath and his wife Ann married in 1958. They had five children and eight grandchildren. The couple lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, from 1958 until 2017, after which they moved to a ranch in Norwood, New Jersey. McGrath died from complications of a stroke at his home in Norwood on December 4, 2022, at the age of 90. 

(Edited from Wikipedia)

 

Geri Allen born 12 June 1957

Geri Antoinette Allen (June 12, 1957 – June 27, 2017) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator who was dedicated to the advancement of women in jazz. She taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Pittsburgh. 

Fortunately for music-making, creators emerge in every generation who balance deep understanding of the evolution of their art with a fearless relish for changing the rules moment by moment in restless working lives – and by doing so, change the game for their successors. Geri Allen was one of those. 

Geri was born in Pontiac, Michigan, and raised in Detroit. Her father, Mount Allen Jr, was a school principal, her mother, Barbara, a government administrator in the defence industry. She learned the piano from the age of seven, and by her early teens had decided to be a jazz pianist. At Cass technical school, in Detroit, she studied with the free-thinking trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, and in 1979 was one of the first graduates of the new jazz course at Howard University, directed by the hard-bop trumpet star Donald Byrd. Allen studied with the mainstream-to-bop piano virtuoso Kenny Barron in New York, and then pursued an ethnomusicology degree at Pittsburgh, studying with the saxophonist and academic Nathan Davis, and the acclaimed Ghanaian musicologist Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia. 

                                    

                         Here’s “Stoned Love” from above album.

Graduating in 1982, Allen returned to New York to immerse herself in the M-Base collective, imaginatively contributing to Steve Coleman’s debut album Motherland Pulse in the process. In the late 1980s, she began her rich association with Haden and Motian, took up the synthesiser in the album Open on All Sides in the Middle, worked with a variety of prominent soloists including the saxophonists Arthur Blythe, Dewey Redman and Wayne Shorter, and the trumpeter Woody Shaw, and played with the rock group Living Colour. 

In 1993, she accompanied Carter, and the following year recorded Ornette Coleman’s Sound Museum albums – the first pianist in over 35 years that he had worked with. In 1995, she married a regular playing partner, the trumpeter Wallace Roney. They later had a daughter and a son but the marriage ended in divorce. 

In 1996 Allen was awarded the Jazzpar Prize. She continued to be a prolific contributor to contemporary music as a composer, as the leader of a succession of diverse recording projects, and eventually as an inspiring teacher. In 2004, she made the dynamic trio album The Life of a Song, with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette, and also shared the antics of the Scottish drummer Tom Bancroft’s surreal Orchestro Interrupto band on tour. In 2006, she composed the jazz suite For the Healing of the Nations as a tribute to 9/11 victims and survivors, and contributed to Lisa Gay Hamilton’s prizewinning documentary Beah: A Black Woman Speaks. In 2008 she received a Guggenheim fellowship. 

In 2011, Allen released an astonishing sequence of albums, beginning with the flat-out dance-inspired Timeline Live, featuring the explosive percussion input of the young tapdancing phenomenon Maurice Chestnut. Later that year came Flying Toward the Sound – a solo homage to pianists from Cecil Taylor to Hancock and Monk that Allen had composed during her Guggenheim fellowship – and then the Christmas album A Child Is Born(2011) . Two years later, in the kind of double-taking contrast the pianist had sprung on listeners throughout her career, Allen made the Motown tribute Grand River Crossings (2013), bringing her own vision to classic songs by such musicians as Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. 

Allen was a longtime resident of Montclair, New Jersey. For 10 years she taught jazz and improvisational studies at the University of Michigan, and she became director of the jazz studies program at the University of Pittsburgh in 2013. 

Allen died on June 27, 2017, two weeks after her 60th birthday, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after suffering from cancer. 

(Edited from John Fordham’s obit @ the Guardian & Wikipedia)