The man had sax appeal: tenor, alto, and soprano. James Moody, born in Savannah in 1925, began playing the saxophone at 16, despite being hard of hearing. After an Army Air Force hitch in World War II, he joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, mastering and helping create the complex, challenging new jazz called be-bop. His […]
The arts, he said, are not the privilege of the few, but the necessity of us all. Robert Shaw put the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra – and Chorus – on the international map. As a choral director, he was an innovator who had no equal. He singlehandedly elevated the symphonic chorus to parity with the symphonic […]
He streaked to the top of the charts. Singer-songwriter Ray Stevens was born Harold Ray Ragsdale in Clarksdale, Georgia. He attended high school in Albany and soon after got a recording contract in Nashville. In 1970, Stevens hit #1 and won a Grammy with the mainstream “Everything is Beautiful”, but it was the unorthodox songs […]