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Samuel L. Jackson
Biography
Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor and producer. One of the most widely recognized actors of his generation, the films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed over $27 billion worldwide, making him the second highest-grossing actor of all time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an Academy Honorary Award in 2022 as "A cultural icon whose dynamic work has resonated across genres and generations and audiences worldwide".
Jackson started his career on stage making his professional theatre debut in Mother Courage and her Children in 1980 at The Public Theatre. From 1981 to 1983 he originated the role of Private Louis Henderson in A Soldier's Play Off-Broadway. He also originated the role of Boy Willie in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre. He returned to the play in the 2022 Broadway revival playing Doaker Charles. Jackson early film roles include Coming to America (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Patriot Games (1992), Juice (1992), True Romance (1993), and Jurassic Park (1993), Menace II Society (1993), and Fresh (1994). His collaborations with Spike Lee led to greater prominence with films such as School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Oldboy (2013), and Chi-Raq (2015).
Jackson's breakout role was in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) which earned him a BAFTA Award win and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He further collaborated with Tarantino, acting in Jackie Brown (1997), Django Unchained (2012), and The Hateful Eight (2015). He's known for having appeared in a number of big-budget films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), A Time to Kill (1996), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), The Negotiator (1997), Deep Blue Sea (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Shaft (2000) and its reboot (2019), XXX (2002), S.W.A.T. (2003), Coach Carter (2005), Snakes on a Plane (2006), Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), and Glass (2019).
He also gained widespread recognition as the Jedi Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005), later voicing the role in the animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) and the video game Lego Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2011). With his permission, his likeness was used for the Ultimate version of the Marvel Comics character Nick Fury; he subsequently played Fury in 11 Marvel Cinematic Universe films, beginning with a cameo appearance in Iron Man (2008), as well as guest-starring in the television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He will reprise this role in the upcoming Disney+ series Secret Invasion, which is set to premiere on June 21, 2023. Jackson has provided his voice for several animated films, documentaries, television series, and video games, including Lucius Best / Frozone in the Pixar films The Incredibles (2004) and Incredibles 2 (2018).
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C.C. Adcock
Biography
C. C. Adcock (born Charles Clinton Adcock) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and blues rock musician, noted for his cajun, zydeco, electric blues and swamp pop-influenced sound and for his efforts to preserve and promote swamp pop music. He's also a Grammy-nominated music and film producer and film and TV composer.
Adcock was first signed to Island Records at the age of 22 by noted record producer and A&R man Denny Cordell, who also produced Adcock's debut album. The two met when they were both working at a Hollywood soundstage in Lafayette, Louisiana. Adcock has worked with Academy-Award-winning composer and record producer Jack Nitzsche, and he has produced his own recordings as well as the work of artists including Robert Plant, Florence + The Machine, Nick Cave and Neko Case, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys and Doyle Bramhall. He has also worked as a composer and music supervisor for television shows and motion pictures including X Factor, 30 Beats and Academy-Award-winning director William Friedkin's Killer Joe.
He writes, records and tours with his band The Lafayette Marquis as well as swamp pop supergroup Lil' Band O' Gold. He has performed and toured with Bo Diddley, Buckwheat Zydeco, as well as alongside his mentor, Lafayette, Louisiana guitarist Paul "Lil' Buck" Sinegal in Cowboy Stew Blues Revue.
His music and productions have also been prominently featured in the HBO television shows True Blood and Treme.
Adcock has recorded two solo albums: the self-titled C. C. Adcock (produced by Tarka Cordell), issued in 1994 on the Island label, mixed at Chris Blackwell's Compass Point Studios by Terry Manning, and reissued in 2000 on the Evangeline label under the title House Rocker; and Lafayette Marquis, issued in 2004 on the Yep Roc label.
Adcock is also a co-founder of the south Louisiana supergroup Lil' Band O' Gold, which also includes swamp pop pioneer Warren Storm on drums, accordionist Steve Riley, pianist David Egan and saxophonist Dickie Landry. Together, they have released three albums: their eponymous debut on Shanachie Records; The Promised Land (2010, Dust Devil Music, and 2011, Room 609 Records); and Plays Fats, which features Lil' Band O' Gold performing the music of Fats Domino with guests including Robert Plant and Lucinda Williams, and which was released in 2012 on the Dust Devil Music record label.
Adcock has also made guest appearances on other artists' albums, including several by Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, Ani DiFranco and Doyle Bramhall.
In addition to his solo recordings and work with Lil' Band O' Gold, Adcock has also produced the Grammy-nominated albums Grand Isle by Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys and Is It News by Doyle Bramhall.
In 2011, Adcock produced Florence + The Machine’s version of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" for the tribute compilation Rave On. Adcock has also produced Neko Case, Nick Cave and Jace Everett for soundtrack albums for the HBO television series True Blood.
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Dickie Landry
Biography
Saxophonist and flutist Dickie Landry's story is about as far-flung as one can imagine, moving from white R&B in the American South to improvised and contemporary minimal / process music in New York during the 1970s, all the while hanging around with the primary figures in New York's post-minimal and concept art scene. Though less visible from the 1980s onward, Landry has recently returned to his Louisiana homeland and splits his time between playing in a popular swamp-pop band and reinvestigating what made his playing so desirable to people like Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On 31 October 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sean Connery, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Tommy McLain
Biography
Tommy McLain is perhaps the last great artist from rock ‘n’ roll’s pioneering first generation awaiting rediscovery. The signature swamp pop sound that he helped create spawned multiple national hits in the 1960s and inspired artists like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Little Feat, and Tony Joe White, among others. His best known songs - “Sweet Dreams,” “Before I Grow Too Old” and “Try To Find Another Man” - are to this day considered cornerstones of the genre. He’s been inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame (twice!), earned a gold record for writing “If You Don't Love Me (Why Don't You Just Leave Me Alone)” for Freddy Fender, and even appeared - as himself - in the 1975 Paul Newman thriller The Drowning Pool.
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Steve Riley
Biography
Steve Riley, of Mamou, Louisiana, is a widely acknowledged master of the Cajun accordion and its singularly powerful sound. There has never been an official competition among Cajun accordionists. Whenever a contest does arise, Steve Riley usually wins it, or judges it. Despite the lack of official metrics or quantifying factors, it remains true that most people think Steve is the best there is, and very few would argue the point. His playing is a standard by which timing, phrasing and ingenuity are measured on the royal instrument of South Louisiana. That, combined with his searing, emotional vocals, songwriting, soulful fiddling and onstage front man charisma have led many to refer to the band simply as “Steve Riley.” For many, that would be enough, but for this band, and its devoted fans, there’s much, much more.
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Lil' Buck Sinegal
Biography
Paul Alton "Lil' Buck" Sinegal (January 14, 1944 – June 10, 2019) was an American blues and zydeco guitarist and singer.
Paul Alton Senegal was born in Lafayette, Louisiana. According to researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc, the spelling "Sinegal" rather than "Senegal" was the result of a passport error, which he never corrected. Senegal was nicknamed "Little Buck" (for buckwheat) or "Lil' Buck" because of his short stature. Senegal’s mother, Odette Broussard, played guitar. In the late 1950s Senegal began performing with other musicians, such as Carol Fran, James "Thunderbird" Davis, Lee Dorsey, and Joe Tex.
Senegal entered the music industry as a session musician at Excello Records, working with musicians such as Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester. Senegal recorded with Rockin' Dopsie, as well as Katie Webster and Lil' Bob. In the late 1960s Senegal recorded his own instrumentals, including "Cat Scream" and "Monkey in a Sack", for the La Louisiane record label.
Senegal joined Clifton Chenier's band in 1969, and toured regularly with him in Europe and elsewhere over the next decade. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, Senegal also toured internationally with Buckwheat Zydeco and Rockin' Dopsie.
Senegal founded the Cowboy Stew Blues Revue with C. C. Adcock. In 1999, Senegal released the album The Buck Starts Here, featuring songs predominantly written and produced by Allen Toussaint. Critic Richie Unterberger described the record as "a fairly straight blues album with faint or nonexistent traces of zydeco", Sinegal commented: "I am probably more known as a zydeco guitarist... [but] I've always been a bluesman...Zydeco is the blues. It's basically blues played with accordion. Clifton Chenier's music was blues throughout."
Sinegal was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1999. Lil Buck Senegal was Inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame on his Birthday January 14, 2013 at the Blue Moon Cafe, Lafayette, LA. in concert.
Senegal died at 75 in 2019 and was funeralized at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Lafayette.
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Kenny Bill Stinson
Biography
In northern Louisiana, country and blues came together, and a quirky breed of songwriter was born. Jerry Lee Lewis and his childhood friends and cousins Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart come out of here, as does swamp country singer/songwriter Tony Joe White. Kenny Bill Stinson is part of a long tradition. "Where I'm from is kind of like a train-wreck of country music and blues," Stinson says. "They kind of crashed together and blew up there. So I play a blend of country, blues, rock 'n' roll -- whatever I can throw together to make a living. I've been playing music, it seems like, ever since I was a baby. My mother said that I came out singing, not crying, and I've been hollering and yodeling and warbling ever since."
Stinson leads a band that rocks parties and barrooms throughout northern Louisiana, but River of Song filmed him doing a solo set on the porch of a riverside saloon in Natchez-under-the-Hill, Mississippi. With his guitar chopping out a solid boogie rhythm and a rack harmonica punctuating the verses, he sang good-time, party music that spoke of southern cooking, pretty women, and the bright side of the honky-tonk life.
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Warren Storm
Biography
Warren Storm (February 18, 1937 – September 7, 2021) was an American drummer and vocalist, known as a pioneer of the musical genre swamp pop; a combination of rhythm and blues, country and western, and Cajun music and black Creole music.
Born Warren Schexnider on February 18, 1937, in Leroy, Louisiana, he moved to nearby Abbeville, Louisiana, to attend first grade. Storm learned to play drums and guitar from his father, a Cajun musician. In the early 1950s, he began to perform publicly with Larry Brasso and the Rhythmaires.
Around this time he befriended fellow Abbeville musician Bobby Charles, and the two would travel to New Orleans to hear black rhythm and blues artists in the local nightclubs, particularly Fats Domino and drummers Earl Palmer and Charles "Hungry" Williams. These visits to New Orleans greatly influenced Storm's musical tastes and his own drumming style. Storm cites New Orleans rhythm and blues musician Charles "Hungry" Williams as a major drumming influence.
In 1956 Storm founded his own rhythm and blues/early rock and roll group, and in 1958 he began recording for Crowley, Louisiana, record producer J. D. "Jay" Miller. Miller convinced Nasco records of Nashville to release a 45 RPM record of Storm's version of the old country composition "Prisoner's Song"; the flip side was "Mama Mama Mama (Look What Your Little Boy's Done)." The release broke into the Billboard Hot 100 and both songs became lifelong standards for Storm. Storm also served as a session drummer for Miller in the late 1950s and 1960s and appeared on dozens of swamp blues sessions for Excello by artists such as Lazy Lester, Lightnin' Slim, Katie Webster, and Lonesome Sundown.
Over the following years Storm recorded swamp pop music for numerous labels, including Rocko, Zynn, American Pla-Boy, Top Rank, and Dot. In the early 1960s he teamed up with fellow swamp pop musicians Rod Bernard and Skip Stewart to form The Shondells, performing with the group and cutting tracks on the La Louisianne label until The Shondells disbanded around 1970.
Meanwhile, Storm released songs on several more labels, including ATCO, Sincere, and Teardrop, and, later, Premier, Showtime, Starflite, and Jin, among others. It was during this period that Storm recorded two more regional favorites, "Lord I Need Somebody Bad Tonight" and "My House of Memories".
During the 1980s and '90s, Storm appeared as a regular house musician at several south Louisiana danceclubs, and in 1989 recorded the Cajun Born LP for La Louisianne with fellow south Louisiana musicians Rufus Thibodeaux, Johnnie Allan, and Clint West.
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Tarka Cordell
Biography
Tarka Clay Cordell-Lavarack (28 July 1966 – 28 April 2008) was an English musician, writer, record producer, and model.
The son of record producer Denny Cordell, Cordell was born in Westminster, London, and was educated at Harrow School.
His debut studio album was titled Wide Awake in a Dream, self-released on his own label, Room 609 Records.
An enthusiast of South Louisiana music, Cordell produced C. C. Adcock's eponymous debut album, and co-produced (with Adcock) the Bayou Ruler album by the Cajun band, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.
On 28 April 2008, he was found dead at his London apartment, having committed suicide by hanging. His funeral was held at Mortlake Crematorium before being cremated.
In March 2009, a documentary co-produced by Cordell, Promised Land: A Swamp Pop Journey, made its premiere at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. Cordell was listed posthumously on promotional material as one of the documentary's makers.
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