Monthly Archives: May 2006

Proving that Robert Capa's "Falling Soldier" is Genuine: A Detective Story When I began the research for my biography of Robert Capa, in 1980, one problem I inherited was that of dealing with an allegation of fakery regarding Capa's 1936 photograph of a Spanish Republican ...

Muddy Waters is, in many ways, the archetypal bluesman. He was raised as a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta, where he learned to play an acoustic guitar. He went to Chicago in 1943, and the band he assembled established the electric blues sound. Over the ...

Filmmakers Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville were kind enough to answer some questions about their film. Q: What first got you interested in doing a film of Muddy Waters? Robert Gordon: I was writing Muddy's biography for Little, Brown and, in order to get closer ...

In 1987, singer Aretha Franklin became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This was a testament to her impact on the music world over the course of her long and exciting career. From her teenage days singing ...

The AMERICAN MASTERS documentary on singing legend Nat King Cole offers a personal glimpse into Cole's family life through interviews with his wife and two of his five children, including his eldest, Carole Cole, the CEO of King Cole Partners. As CEO, Cole works in ...

Nat King Cole crowns a very short list of the most identifiable and memorable voices in American music. This ground breaking American icon's impact continues to cross the world's cultural and political boundaries. The story of his life is a study in success in the ...

They call him the "genius" and they call him the "father of soul." With perfect pitch and an expressive voice, he combines worlds as diverse as jazz, country, rhythm and blues, and gospel to break your heart or make you dance. His name is Ray ...

Director Sam Pollard remembers the first John Ford/John Wayne film he ever saw: THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, which he watched in 1962 at a theater in Harlem along with his brother, sister, and uncle Sammie. "What stands out in my mind is the ...