Marisha Data (died October 12, 1972) was a Polish-American comedian, singer, and composer. She was a successful performer for both English and Polish audiences. Her career encompassed numerous genres, ranging from serious opera to polka to vaudeville. Her comic performances were often in the character of Aggie Klepaczka.
She was an early performer on television, performing to pleasant reviews on WBKB in Chicago. [1] In 1948 she was performing Il Trovatore while touring with the Chicago Opera Artists Association, in the role of Azucena. Here her voice was reviewed as “big, warm, dramatic”. [2] The next year she was with the “Grand Opera Company of New York” performing in the opera Taras Bulba. The opera itself received a scathing review, but Data was again praised as someone who could “make a poor aria sound like a fairly good one”. [3]
Signed to Capitol, in 1950 she was releasing material in English on their regular pop series, and in Polish for the ethnic series. [4] [5] She then signed to Dana Records in 1952, and in quick secession a recording session took place in Chicago and several sides, performed In Polish, were released. [6] [7] Capitol Records released material by Data as part of their 1957 “Capitol of the World” campaign. [8]
In addition to her singing, she was a radio announcer, most commonly associated with WHFC, Chicago. One of her U.S. War Bond drives netted in excess of 1 million dollars. She was also a character actor, specializing in comic personalities. [9] In the character of "Aggie Klepaczka" she performed comic skits in both Polish and English, over a period that lasted from the early 1950s until the 1960s. [10] [11]
Marisha Data died on October 12, 1972. [9]
In 1974 she became, posthumously, the first woman to be inducted into the Polka Music Hall of Fame. [12]
Data remained popular among Polish and polka audiences long after her death. Richie Drongoski in 1992 included her name in his song with lyrical content similar to Rock and Roll Heaven but switched to Polka. [13] Similarly, Lenny Gomulka, in Polish via litania form, canonizes Data among polka luminaries in his song ‘’Where Were You Back Then Polka’’. [14]
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the Spanish play El trovador (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez. It was García Gutiérrez's most successful play, one which Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes as "a high flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident."
Lester William Polsfuss, known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype, called the Log, served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul. Paul taught himself how to play guitar, and while he is mainly known for jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music. In the 1950s, he and his wife, singer and guitarist Mary Ford, recorded numerous records, selling millions of copies.
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Polka is a music and dance style that originated in Bohemia in the 1830s and came to American society with immigrants from Europe. A fast style in 2
4 time, and often associated with the pre–World War II era, polka remains a dynamic "niche" music in America.
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Annamary Dickey, also known as Annamary Dickey Laue, was an American soprano and actress in operas, operettas, musicals, night clubs, and concerts who had an active performance career from the 1930s through the 1960s. She began her career as a regular performer with the Chautauqua Opera and the St. Louis Municipal Opera in the mid to late 1930s. In 1939 she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air which earned her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera (Met). She was a soprano in mainly secondary roles at the Met from 1939 to 1944; appearing in productions of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Massenet's Manon, Delibes' Lakmé, Charpentier's Louise, Bizet's Carmen, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Her most significant role at the Met was as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème. A strikingly beautiful woman with a passion for fashionable clothes, she gained the moniker the "Glamour Girl of the 'Met'" and headlined a fashion campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1945.
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