Stephen Collins Foster, known as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour and minstrel music during the Romantic period. He wrote more than 200 songs, including "Oh! Susanna", "Hard Times Come Again No More", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer", and many of his compositions remain popular today.
The Music of Kentucky is heavily centered on Appalachian folk music and its descendants, especially in eastern Kentucky. Bluegrass music is of particular regional importance; Bill Monroe, "the father of bluegrass music", was born in the Ohio County community of Rosine, and he named his band, the Blue Grass Boys, after the bluegrass state, i.e., Kentucky. Travis picking, the influential guitar style, is named after Merle Travis, born and raised in Muhlenberg County. Kentucky is home to the Country Music Highway, which extends from Portsmouth, Ohio, to the Virginia border in Pike County.
Clara Blandick was an American character, film, stage and theater actress who portrayed Aunt Em in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz (1939). As a character actress, she often played eccentric elderly matriarchs.
Paul G. Blazer High School is a public high school in Ashland, Kentucky, United States. It was named for Paul G. Blazer and is part of the Ashland Independent School District. It replaced the former Ashland High School on Lexington Avenue and the former Booker T. Washington Grade and High School at Seventh Street and Central Avenue in 1962. It is designed in a campus-style layout with seven buildings which is unique among high schools in the region, as most consist of a single building.
Clara Brown (1800–1885) was a former enslaved woman from Virginia and Kentucky who became a community leader and philanthropist. She helped formerly enslaved people become settled during Colorado's Gold Rush. She was known as the 'Angel of the Rockies' and made her mark as "Colorado's first black settler and a prosperous entrepreneur".
Evelyn Venable was an American actress perhaps best known for her role as Grazia in the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday. In addition to acting in around two dozen films during the 1930s and 1940s, she was also the voice and model for the Blue Fairy in Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940). She is one of a number of women who have been suggested to have served as the model for the personification of Columbia in the Columbia Pictures logo that was used from 1936 to 1976.
Swanee River is a 1939 American biographical musical drama film directed by Sidney Lanfield and starring Don Ameche, Andrea Leeds, Al Jolson, and Felix Bressart. It is a biopic about Stephen Foster, a songwriter from Pittsburgh who falls in love with the South, marries a Southern girl, then is accused of sympathizing when the Civil War breaks out. Typical of 20th Century-Fox biographical films of the time, the film was more fictional than it was factual.
The Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy was the murder of Kentucky legislator Solomon P. Sharp by Jereboam O. Beauchamp. As a young lawyer, Beauchamp had been an admirer of Sharp until Sharp allegedly fathered an illegitimate child with Anna Cooke, a planter's daughter.[a] Sharp denied paternity of the stillborn child. Later, Beauchamp began a relationship with Cooke, who, according to legend, agreed to marry him on the condition that he kill Sharp to avenge her honor. Beauchamp and Cooke married in June 1824, and in the early morning of November 7, 1825, Beauchamp murdered Sharp at Sharp's home in Frankfort.
Hell-Bent Fer Heaven is a melodrama play by Hatcher Hughes.
The Case of the Velvet Claws is a 1936 American mystery film directed by William Clemens and starring Warren William, Claire Dodd and Wini Shaw. It is based on the first Perry Mason novel (1933) by Erle Stanley Gardner and featuring the fourth and final appearance of William as defense attorney Mason.
The Grand Lodge of Kentucky is one of two state organizations that supervise Masonic lodges in the state of Kentucky. It was established in 1800.
Turn Back the Clock is a 1933 American pre-Code MGM fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Edgar Selwyn, written by Selwyn and Ben Hecht, and starring Mae Clarke and Lee Tracy. The protagonist has 20 years of his life to live over.
The Bardstown Historic District, comprising the center of Bardstown, Kentucky, is a registered historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Prominent architecture located within the district include the Cobblestone Path, Nelson County Jail, Old L & N Station, Old Talbott Tavern, and Spalding Hall, all individually on the National Register, and the historic old Nelson County Courthouse.
Harmony Lane is a 1935 low-budget American film directed by Joseph Santley, based upon the life of Stephen Foster, released by Mascot Pictures.
The County Chairman is a 1935 American comedy film directed by John G. Blystone and starring Will Rogers, Evelyn Venable and Kent Taylor. It was produced and distributed by the Fox Film Corporation. It is based on the 1903 play of the same name by George Ade which had previously been adapted into a 1914 silent film The County Chairman.
Home on the Range is a 1935 American drama film directed by Arthur Jacobson and starring Jackie Coogan, Randolph Scott and Evelyn Brent. Andre Sennwald of the New York Times described the film "to be a strictly makeshift Western". The supporting cast features Dean Jagger, Fuzzy Knight and Ann Sheridan.
The Show-Off is a 1934 American comedy film directed by Charles Reisner and starring Spencer Tracy, Madge Evans and Henry Wadsworth. It is notable for being the first movie Tracy made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; he was on loan-out from Fox at the time and later moved to MGM.
The Star Maker is a 1939 American musical film directed by Roy Del Ruth, written by Frank Butler, Don Hartman and Arthur Caesar, and starring Bing Crosby, Louise Campbell, Linda Ware, Ned Sparks, Laura Hope Crews, Janet Waldo and Walter Damrosch. Filming started in Hollywood on April 17, 1939 and was finished in June. The film was released on August 25, 1939, by Paramount Pictures, and had its New York premiere on August 30, 1939. It was the only film in which Crosby played a happily married man.
Youth Will Be Served is a 1940 American musical film directed by Otto Brower and starring Jane Withers and Jane Darwell.
Larry Prentis Rice was an American mandolinist, singer, songwriter, and band leader in the bluegrass tradition. He is known for his solo albums and for his unique syncopated mandolin picking style.
