|
Register Now!
|
|
Register now for vtap for the fastest and easiest way to watch web video on your mobile device!
|
|
"Body and Soul" is a popular song written in 1930 by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton and Johnny Green. It was introduced by Libby Holman in the revue Three's A Crowd and used as a soundtrack theme in the 1947 film named for the song.
"Body and Soul" became a jazz standard, with hundreds of versions performed and recorded by dozens of artists. The most famous of these is the take recorded by Coleman Hawkins and His Orchestra on October 11, 1939 at their only recording session for Bluebird, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. Hawkins' solo on this take is considered to be "one of the finest examples of pure, spontaneous creative artistry in the history of jazz." It was one of the first straight jazz records (as against swing) to become a commercial hit. This was unusual, as the song's melody is never directly stated in the recording; saxophonist Hawkins two-choruses worth of improvisation on the tune's chord progression constitute almost the entire take. Gary Giddins, "How Come Jazz Isn't Dead", p. 39–55 in Eric Weisbard, ed., This is Pop, Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01321-2 (cloth), ISBN 0-674-01344-1 (paper). p. 45. In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
Frank Conroy (January 15, 1936 - April 6, 2005) was an American author, born in New York, New York. He published five books, including the highly acclaimed memoir Stop-Time, published in 1967, which ultimately made Conroy a noted figure in the literary world. The book was nominated for the National Book Award.
Conroy graduated from Haverford College, and was director of the influential Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa for 18 years, from 1987 until 2005, where he was also F. Wendell Miller Professor. He was previously the director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1982-1987.
Conroy's published works included: the moving memoir Stop-Time; a collection of short stories, Midair; a novel, Body and Soul, which is regarded as one of the finest evocations of the experience of being a musician; a collection of essays and commentaries, Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now; and a travelogue, Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket. His fiction and non-fiction appeared in such journals as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Harper's Magazine and Partisan Review. He was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.
In addition to writing, Conroy was an accomplished jazz pianist, winning a Grammy Award in 1986. His book Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now includes articles that describe jamming with Charles Mingus and with Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. The latter session occurred when Conroy was writing about the Rolling Stones for Esquire. Conroy had arrived at a mansion for the interview, found nobody there, and eventually sat down at a grand piano and began to play. Someone wandered in, sat down at the drums, and joined in with accomplished jazz drumming; then a fine jazz bassist joined in. They turned out to be Watts and Wyman, whom Conroy did not recognize until they introduced themselves after the session.
Conroy died of colon cancer on April 6, 2005, in Iowa City, Iowa, at the age of 69.
Frank Parish Conroy (born October 14, 1890 in Derby, Derbyshire, England; died February 24, 1964 in Paramus, New Jersey) was a British-American film and stage actor who appeared in many movies, notably The Little Minister, The Ox-Bow Incident, All My Sons, The Threat, The Royal Family of Broadway, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. He was also the winner of a Tony Award for his performance in Graham Greene's The Potting Shed.




