On October 1, 2018, Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian aka Charles Aznavour died aged 94. He was singer, lyricist, actor, public activist and diplomat, regarded as one of the most popular and respected French music artists. In his career long more than 70 years, he wrote and co-wrote 1000 songs, and recorded more than 1200 songs. In 1998, “CNN” named Aznavour “Entertainer of the Century”. In 2017, he was awarded star on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame”.
Tag Archives: Hollywood Walk of Fame
James Brown
On December 25, 2006, James Joseph Brown died aged 73. He was singer, songwriter, producer and bandleader, regarded as the creator of funk music, and one of the most important artists in the history of the modern music. Named the “Godfather of Soul” and the “Hardest Working Man in the Show Business”, for all the achievements in his six decades long career, Brown received many honors including” inductions into the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”; “Songwriters Hall of Fame”; “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the 34th annual “Grammy Awards”; “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the 4th annual “Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards”; a star on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame”; inductee to the “New York Songwriters Hall of Fame”; honored as the first “BMI Urban Icon” at the “BMI Urban Awards”, “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the “BET Awards”, and induction into the “UK Music Hall of Fame”.Magazine “Rolling Stone” ranked him at number seven on its list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”; in Joel Whitburn’s analysis of the “Billboard R&B” charts from 1942 to 2010, Brown was ranked as number one in “The Top 500 Artists”.list, magazine “Rolling Stone” cited him as the most sampled artist of all time, and In an article for the same magazine, critic Robert Christgau cited Brown as “The Greatest Musician of the Rock Era”. Brown is also one of the best sold artist of all times.
Bing Crosby
On October 14, 1977, Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby, Jr. died aged 74. Being singer and actor, Crosby is the best-selling recording artist of the 20th century. He has sold over one billion records, tapes, compact discs and digital downloads worldwide. Crosby is one of the 22 people to have three stars on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame” (a star for motion pictures, radio, and audio recording); in 1944, he won an “Academy Award for Best Actor” for his role as Father Chuck O’Malley in the movie “Going My Way” and he received the first “Grammy Global Achievement Award”.
Benny Carter
On July 12, 2003, Bennett Lester “Benny” Carter, died aged 96. He was musician (alto saxophone, clarinet, trumpet), composer, arranger, and bandleader, regarded a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s. In his career the “King” performed with Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Coleman Hawkins, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Django Reinhardt, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa, Tommy Dorsey, Phil Woods, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Ben Webster, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, Lou Rawls, Louis Armstrong, Freddie Slack and Mel Torme.
For his work Benny Carter received big number of awards including: “The NEA Jazz Masters Award by The National Endowment for the Arts”, “Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award” , “Grammy Award” for his solo “Prelude to a Kiss”, “A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame”, “National Endowment for the Arts”, “National Medal of Arts”.
Ray Charles
On June 10, 2004, Ray Charles Robinson died aged 74. He was a singer, songwriter, musician, and composer, regarded as one of the most important artists in the history of modern music, referred to as “The Genius”. Charles is important not only as a pioneer in combining rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues into soul music but he also played the main role in the racial integration of country and pop music – he was one of the first African-American musicians who gained artistic control by a mainstream record company. In 2004, “Rolling Stone” magazine ranked Charles at number ten on their list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time” and number two on the 2008 list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time”.
Frank Sinatra: The only true genius in show business.
Billy Joel: This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley.
Henry Pleasants (music critic and musicologists): Sinatra, and Bing Crosby before him, had been masters of words. Ray Charles is a master of sounds. His records disclose an extraordinary assortment of slurs, glides, turns, shrieks, wails, breaks, shouts, screams and hollers, all wonderfully controlled, disciplined by inspired musicianship, and harnessed to ingenious subtleties of harmony, dynamics and rhythm… It is either the singing of a man whose vocabulary is inadequate to express what is in his heart and mind or of one whose feelings are too intense for satisfactory verbal or conventionally melodic articulation. He can’t tell it to you. He can’t even sing it to you. He has to cry out to you, or shout to you, in tones eloquent of despair—or exaltation. The voice alone, with little assistance from the text or the notated music, conveys the message.
Awards and honors
- In 1979 – induction into the Georgia State Music Hall of Fame. Charles’ version of “Georgia on my mind” was also made the official state song for Georgia.
- In 1981 – star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
- In 1986 – induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
- In 1986 – awarded with the Kennedy Center Honors
- In 1987 – awarded with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
- In 1991- induction to the Rhythm & Blues Foundation
- In 1991 – awarded with the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement
- In 1993 – awarded the National Medal of Arts.
- In 1998 – awarded with the Polar Music Prize
- In 2004 – induction to the National Black Sports & Entertainment Hall of Fame
- In 2003 – awarded an honorary degree by Dillard University
- In 2005 – The Grammy Awards were dedicated to Ray Charles
- In 2010 – Performing arts center at Morehouse College was named after Ray Charles
- In 2013 – The United States Postal Service issued a forever stamp honoring Ray Charles as part of it Musical Icons
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