Author Topic: Strong, gorgeous women!  (Read 546739 times)

Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #160 on: May 10, 2007, 02:31:36 am »
Ella Fitzgerald
(1917 - 1996)

 


 
The woman who is perhaps the nation's greatest jazz and pop artist began singing by accident, as legend has it. When Ella was fifteen years old, she appeared as a contestant in a talent competition intending to dance. Her knees shook too much, and so she sang instead -- and was heard by a musician in the famed Chick Webb Band. Webb brought the young girl along to sing for a one-night stand tryout, and the rest is history.

By 1937, only three years after beginning her career, Fitzgerald won her first Down Beat Magazine award for most popular girl vocalist, and in 1938 she had her first major hit, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket." Dizzy Gillespie introduced her to the world of bop, and she began her lifelong improvising with "Lady Be Good." Of the magic her voice produced, the New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson wrote, "She manages things that the human voice can't do." Fitzgerald, with "Jazz at the Philharmonic" producer Norman Granz, began touring worldwide in 1948 -- and Granz and Fitzgerald demanded equal pay for her with white artists, forcing an important issue that affected many musicians and artists thereafter. Throughout her long career, Fitzgerald recorded the music of the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Ellington, Armstrong, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter and more, singing with the world's finest musicians, including Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson and Duke Ellington, to list a few.

Fitzgerald is also an inspiration for her lifetime of good works, receiving the Whitney M. Young, Jr., Award of the Los Angeles Urban League, the first woman to receive it, for those who build bridges among races and generations. She has received the National Medal of Arts, and is the first woman and first pop singer to receive the Lincoln Centre Medallion, previously awarded only to internationally-famed classical musicians.
Her honorary doctorates and Grammies and other awards are almost numberless -- and yet when we think of Ella, what we will always hear is that pure, passionate, endlessly creating voice, and the soul behind it, telling us what she knows about life and love and hope and courage.
Life is not a dress rehearsal

Offline Lynne

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #161 on: May 10, 2007, 02:32:00 am »
Here's another one - Maria Mitchell

From http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_mitchell_maria.htm:

Taught by her astronomer father, Maria Mitchell was the first professional woman astronomer in the United States and became a professor of astronomy at Vassar College (1865-1888). She was the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1848), and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

On October 1, 1847, she spotted a comet, for which she was given credit as the discoverer.

She was also involved in the anti-slavery movement. She refused to wear cotton because of its connection with slavery in the South, a commitment she continued after the Civil War ended. She also supported women's rights efforts and traveled in Europe.


"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline saucycobblers

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #162 on: May 10, 2007, 07:49:23 am »
Kathryn Dawn Lang
Singer, songwriter, activist..



I'm right with ya on KD Milli! You beat me to it!

The woman could sing the telephone directory and I'd be mesmerised. And she always comes across as such a together and centred person. Love her...
Will you stop playing with that radio of yours, I'm trying to get to sleep!

Offline opinionista

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #163 on: May 10, 2007, 10:05:56 am »
Mexican actress, María Félix. She was considered one of the most beautiful women of her time. She was gorgeous.



Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. -Mark Twain.

Offline Lumière

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #164 on: May 10, 2007, 01:08:53 pm »
The BBM Ladies...


Roberta Maxwell:



Michelle Williams:


Anne Hathaway:


Linda Cardellini:




Offline Lumière

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #165 on: May 10, 2007, 01:10:31 pm »
Susan Sarandon




Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #166 on: May 10, 2007, 01:31:32 pm »
Tenley Albright 
 
(June 18, 1935 - )
American figure skater who contracted polio at age 11, but won the U.S. figure skating championship in 1952 and the silver medal in the 1952 Olympics. Less than two weeks before the 1956 Cortina Olympics, Albright was practising when she hit a rut. As she fell, her left skate hit her ankle joint, cut through three layers of her right boot, slashed a vein, and severely scraped the bone. Her father arrived two days later and patched her up. In the Olympic competition she skated well enough to earn the first-place votes of ten of the 11 judges. Back in the United States she entered Harvard Medical School and eventually became a surgeon herself.   In 1976, Albright was appointed to a seat on the U.S. Olympic Committee, the first woman to hold that position.

Life is not a dress rehearsal

Offline southendmd

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #167 on: May 10, 2007, 02:59:39 pm »
Sophia Loren
(b. 1934) Simply gorgeous.


Offline Pipedream

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #168 on: May 10, 2007, 03:47:32 pm »

The opera singer Anna Netrebko. I have seen her on stage in New York last year, and all I can say is just: WOW! She's a goddess.   :)





Wow! This thread virtually has exploded since I came here last time. Thanks für contributing everybody! :D 

Offline Lumière

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #169 on: May 10, 2007, 03:49:17 pm »
Sara McLachlan
Singer, songwriter, philanthropist