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"It was like a light on top of the Empire State Building went out when he died," says filmmaker Ric Burns about Plimpton's death in 2003. "You felt like he couldn't die. His indescribably handsome, boyish quality kept on giving the older he got. His eternally adolescent, prep school energy promised to keep on going." A web exclusive outtake from "Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself."
Reed was always at the forefront of American avant-garde music, beginning with creation of the Velvet Underground in 1965. Gritty and realistic, the brutal honesty in Reed’s lyrics and sound made him a cultural icon of the disenfranchised throughout the ’60s and ’70s. From punk rock to grunge, he has had an unparalleled influence on the American music scene.
Bebop, a style of jazz developed in the 1940's, changed American music but wasn't taken seriously for much of Charlie Parker's life. This mid-century popcorn television commercial shows how the public's perception of bebop was riddled with stereotypes.
Charlie Parker's nickname "Yardbird" came to be while he was on the way to a gig with some fellow musicians and involved a bird in a yard that had an unfortunate fate.