John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Hooker was ranked 35 in Rolling Stone's 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists.
Helen Hayes MacArthur was an American actress whose career spanned 80 years. She eventually received the nickname "First Lady of American Theatre" and was one of 16 people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. She was also the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In 1988, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund and also known as Joseph Hillström, was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York to San Francisco. Hill, an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular songwriter and cartoonist for the union. His most famous songs include "The Preacher and the Slave", "The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which express the harsh and combative life of itinerant workers, and call for workers to organize their efforts to improve working conditions.
David "Honeyboy" Edwards was a Delta blues guitarist and singer from Mississippi.
Mitzi Gaynor is an American actress, singer, and dancer. Her notable films include There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), The Birds and the Bees (1956), and South Pacific, the 1958 motion picture adaptation of the stage musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Delano Floyd McCoury is an American bluegrass musician. As leader of the Del McCoury Band, he plays guitar and sings lead vocals along with his two sons, Ronnie McCoury and Rob McCoury, who play mandolin and banjo respectively. In June 2010, he received a National Heritage Fellowship lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 2011 he was elected into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
Michael Jay Feinstein is an American singer, pianist, and music revivalist. He is an interpreter of and an anthropologist and archivist for the repertoire known as the Great American Songbook. In 1988 he won a Drama Desk Special Award for celebrating American musical theatre songs. Feinstein is also a multi-platinum-selling, five-time Grammy-nominated recording artist. He currently serves as Artistic Director for The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana.
David Porter is an American record producer, songwriter, singer, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
Hunter Easton Hayes is an American multi-genre singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He is proficient at more than 30 instruments.
Joe Glazer, closely associated with labor unions and often referred to as "labor's troubadour," was an American folk musician who recorded more than thirty albums over the course of his career.
The Labor Heritage Foundation is a non-profit organization which preserves and disseminates information and artifacts about the labor history of the United States.
The Great Labor Arts Exchange is an annual arts festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, which celebrates the labor history of the United States as well as preserves, advances and promotes the culture of the American labor movement.
Patricia Lamond Lawman AM,, professionally known as Toni Lamond, is an Australian vaudevillian, cabaret performer, singer, stage and television actress, dancer, and comedian, she has also had a successful career internationally including the United States and United Kingdom She was given the nickname of "Lolly-Legs Lamond" by fellow performer Noel Ferrier after being voted as having the second-best pair of legs in television while appearing on TV show In Melbourne Tonight.
"I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" is a song by Bob Dylan that was originally released on his 1967 album John Wesley Harding. It was recorded at the first John Wesley Harding session on October 17, 1967. It has been covered by many artists, including Joan Baez on her all-Dylan album Any Day Now, as well as by Vic Chesnutt, Eric Clapton, John Doe, Thea Gilmore, Adam Selzer and Dirty Projectors. In addition, Jimi Hendrix at one point intended to cover this song, but felt it was too personal to Dylan and instead covered a different song from the album, "All Along the Watchtower".
Darren Robert Yap is an Australian actor and director.
Sharon Hayes is an American multimedia artist. She came to prominence as an artist and an activist during the East Village scene in the early '90s. She primarily works with video, installation, and performance as her medium. Using multimedia, she "appropriates, rearranges, and remixes in order to revitalize spirits of dissent". Hayes's work addresses themes such as romantic love, activism, queer theory, and politics. She incorporates texts from found speeches, recordings, songs, letters, and her own writing into her practice that she describes as “a series of performatives rather than performance.”
Clark "Bucky" Halker is an American academic, music historian, labor activist, singer and songwriter who specializes in American folk music. Halker is best known for his work on labor protest songs, Illinois folk music, and his involvement with the preservation of Woody Guthrie's musical legacy. He is a recipient of the American Folklife Center's Archie Green Fellowship.
Dominique Flemons is an American old-time music, Piedmont blues, and neotraditional country multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. He is a proficient player of the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones. He is known as "The American Songster" as his repertoire of music spans nearly a century of American folklore, ballads, and tunes. He has performed with Mike Seeger, Joe Thompson, Martin Simpson, Boo Hanks, Taj Mahal, Old Crow Medicine Show, Guy Davis, and The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.
Bev Grant is an American musician, photographer, filmmaker, and activist based in New York City.
