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Video description:
Shane Salerno’s 10-year investigation gets beyond the author's wall of seclusion. American Masters’ 200th episode is the never-before-seen director’s cut of "Salinger," featuring 15 minutes of new material. The intricately structured mystery reveals how World War II influenced his life, his writing methods, his relationships with young women, and literary secrets he left behind after his death.
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.