Ron Eckstine (born 1946) [1] is a former actor and music manager, and stepson of singer Billy Eckstine [2] by way of Billy's marriage to Ronnie's mother, Carolle Drake. [3]
He played high school football at Birmingham High School, where he and his older brother Kenny were the only African American students, [4] and attended the University of California, Los Angeles. [5]
He was conscripted into military service in 1965. [6] Six months after he completed his service, and with dramatic training by Lillian Randolph, [7] Eckstine made his acting debut in the 1967 film The Love-Ins . [8]
He appeared in the TV movie Shadow on the Land (1968), an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here , and had guest roles in the television series Room 222 and Cannon . [7]
In the 1970s, he organized and managed a six-person teen vocal group, Spicegarden, with Laddie Chapman as the musical director. [7] In the 1980s, Eckstine began promoting concerts and managing disco and other dance music groups and by the late 1990s had established Ron Eckstine Management, based in Beverly Hills. [9]
In February 1984, after Eckstine was arrested on charges of forgery and evasion of arrest, he escaped from jail the following month by exchanging identification bracelets with another prisoner and leaving on that prisoner's bail. [2] Eckstine's family then issued a press release asking the Los Angeles Police Department to be discreet in their attempts to recapture him. [10]
Eckstine met singer Leslie Uggams in June 1964 while she was performing at the Flamingo in Las Vegas and the two started dating. [11] Uggams announced her engagement to Eckstine the following month while she was performing in Australia. [5] When Eckstine was conscripted into military service, Uggams left him for Grahame Pratt, a European Australian man whom she married in 1965. [12]
Franklin Joseph Lymon was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of the New York City-based early rock and roll doo-wop group The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid-teens. The original lineup of the Teenagers, an integrated group, included three African-American members, Lymon, Jimmy Merchant, and Sherman Garnes; and two Puerto Rican members, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. The Teenagers' first single, 1956's "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", was also their biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957, both his career and that of the Teenagers fell into decline. In 1968, Lymon was found dead at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother's bathroom from a heroin overdose. Lymon was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 as a member of the Teenagers. His life was dramatized in the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall in Love.
The Ronettes were an American girl group from Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York City. The group consisted of lead singer Veronica Bennett, her older sister Estelle Bennett, and their cousin Nedra Talley. They had sung together since they were teenagers, then known as "The Darling Sisters". Signed first by Colpix Records in 1961, they moved to Phil Spector's Philles Records in March 1963 and changed their name to "The Ronettes".
Ronald "Ronnie" Kray and Reginald "Reggie" Kray were English organised crime figures, and identical twin brothers from Haggerston, who were prominent from the late 1950s until their arrest in 1968. Their gang, known as the Firm, was based in the Bethnal Green, where the Kray twins lived. They were involved in murder, armed robbery, arson, protection rackets, gambling and assaults. At their peak in the 1960s, they gained a certain measure of celebrity status by mixing with prominent members of London society, being photographed by David Bailey and interviewed on television.
Diahann Carroll was an American actress, singer, model, and activist. Before her death she was one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Carroll was the recipient of numerous stage and screen nominations and awards, including her Tony Award in 1962, Golden Globe Award in 1968, and five Emmy Award nominations.
William Clarence Eckstine was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing and bebop eras. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. In 2019, Eckstine was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award "for performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording." His recording of "I Apologize" was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. The New York Times described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone" and "full-throated, sugary approach to popular songs inspired singers like Earl Coleman, Johnny Hartman, Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock, and Lou Rawls."
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, dancer, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years, appearing in film, television, and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving on to Hollywood and Broadway.
Harry "Sweets" Edison was an American jazz trumpeter and a member of the Count Basie Orchestra. His most important contribution was as a Hollywood studio musician, whose muted trumpet can be heard backing singers, most notably Frank Sinatra.
Robert Dwayne Womack was an American singer, musician and songwriter. Starting in the early 1950s as the lead singer of his family musical group the Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist, Womack's career spanned more than 60 years and multiple styles, including R&B, jazz, soul, rock and roll, doo-wop, and gospel.
Veronica Yvette Greenfield was an American singer who co-founded and fronted the girl group the Ronettes. She is sometimes referred to as the original "bad girl of rock and roll".
David Ruffin was an American soul singer and musician most famous for his work as one of the lead singers of the Temptations (1964–1968) during the group's "Classic Five" period as it was later known. Ruffin was the lead voice on such famous songs as "My Girl" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." He later scored two top ten singles as a solo artist, "My Whole World Ended " and "Walk Away from Love."
Leslie Marian Uggams is an American actress and singer. Beginning her career as a child in the early 1950s, Uggams is recognized for portraying Kizzy Reynolds in the television miniseries Roots (1977), earning Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for her performance. She had earlier been highly acclaimed for the Broadway musical Hallelujah, Baby!, winning a Theatre World Award in 1967 and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1968. Later in her career, Uggams received renewed notice with appearances as Blind Al in the superhero films Deadpool (2016), its 2018 sequel and the upcoming 2024 third film, as well as a recurring role as Leah Walker on the Fox musical drama series, Empire (2016–2020) and for the comedy-drama film American Fiction (2023).
Helen Merrill is an American jazz vocalist. Her first album, the eponymous 1954 recording Helen Merrill, was an immediate success and associated her with the first generation of bebop jazz musicians. After an active 1950s and 1960s, Merrill spent time recording and touring in Europe and Japan, falling into obscurity in the United States. In the 1980s and 1990s, she was recorded by EmArcy, JVC and Verve, and her performances in America revived her profile. Known for her emotional, sensual vocal performances, she continues to perform today, her career now in its sixth decade of concerts and recordings.
The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16- to 18-piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie in 1935 and recording regularly from 1936. Despite a brief disbandment at the beginning of the 1950s, the band survived long past the big band era itself and the death of Basie in 1984. It continues under the direction of trumpeter Scotty Barnhart.
Ronald Leslie BurnsAM is an Australian retired rock singer-songwriter and musician.
Ronnie Stephenson was an English jazz drummer. He was one of the most in-demand drummers on the British jazz scene in the 1960s.
Guy Eckstine is an artist manager and record producer, known for his tenure as A&R executive at Verve Records in the 1990s. With jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock, Eckstine co-produced the Hancock album The New Standard.
William Mitchell Byers was an American jazz trombonist and arranger.
Norris Turney was an American jazz flautist and saxophonist.
The Prime of My Life is a 1965 studio album by the American singer Billy Eckstine. It was produced by William "Mickey" Stevenson, and was the first of three albums that Eckstine recorded for Motown Records.
My Way is a 1966 studio album by the American singer Billy Eckstine. It was produced by William "Mickey" Stevenson, and was the second of three albums that Eckstine recorded for Motown Records.