Blow the Wind Southerly

The lilting folk song Blaw the Wind Southerly (now Blow the Wind Southerly) is an old bagpipe tune from the Northumbrian region in the south of Scotland. The tune was recorded by Laura Alexandrine Smith in The Music of the Waters (1888).

Many versions of the lyrics have developed over the decades. Most tell the story of a woman desperately hoping for the safe return of her love from across the sea. The lyric below was noted by Smith in The Music of the Waters (1888).

Blaw the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,
Blaw the wind southerly, south or south-west;
My lad's at the bar, at the bar, at the bar,
My lad's at the bar whom I love best.

Smith notes that sometimes the last two lines of this song are varied as follows:

Blaw the lad ti' the bar, ti' the bar, ti' the bar,
Blaw the lad ti' the bar that I love best.


The lyric below was noted by William Cole, et al., in Folk Songs of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales (1969).

Blow the wind Southerly, Southerly, Southerly,
Blow the wind South o'er the bonnie blue sea.
Blow the wind Southerly, Southerly, Southerly
Blow bonnie breeze, my true lover to me.

They told me last night there were ships in the offing
And I hurried down to the deep rolling sea.
But my eye could not see it wherever might be it,
The bark that is bearing my lover to me.

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Happy Anniversary, Compact Discs!

On March 2, 1983, compact discs and players were first available in the US. Shown, a Sony Compact Disc, scanned by Arun Kulshreshtha. This image is made available by the author under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

On March 2, 1983, compact discs and players were released for the first time in the United States and other markets. Prior to this date, CDs and players were only available in Japan.

For those of you who don't recall, or weren't around, the compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony and released in 1982. The format was originally developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data (CD-ROM). Several other formats were further derived from these, including write-once audio and data storage (CD-R), rewritable media (CD-RW), Video Compact Disc (VCD), Super Video Compact Disc (SVCD), Photo CD, PictureCD, CD-i, and Enhanced Music CD. The first commercially available Audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released October 1982 in Japan.

Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 millimetres (4.7 in) and can hold up to about 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or about 700 MiB of data. The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 millimetres (2.4 to 3.1 in); they are sometimes used for CD singles, storing up to 24 minutes of audio, or delivering device drivers.

At the time of its introduction in 1982, a CD could store much more data than a personal computer hard drive, which would typically hold 10 MB. By 2010, hard drives commonly offered as much storage space as a thousand CDs, while their prices had plummeted to commodity level. In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs. By 2007, 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide.

Beginning in the early 2000s CDs were increasingly replaced by other forms of digital storage and distribution, with the result that by 2010 the number of audio CDs being sold in the U.S. had dropped about 50% from their peak; however, they remained one of the primary distribution methods for the music industry. Then, in 2014, revenues from digital music services matched those from physical format sales for the first time.

To learn more about compact discs, check out these sites.

This History of the CD - Philips

History of the Compact Disc - Low End Mac

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Tommy Tune (born 1939)

Tommy Tune in 1977.

February 28 marks the birthday of Thomas James "Tommy" Tune. Born February 28, 1939, Tune is an American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer. Over the course of his career, he has won ten Tony Awards and the National Medal of Arts.

In 1965, Tune made his Broadway debut as a performer in the musical Baker Street. His first Broadway directing and choreography credits were for the original production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in 1978. His direction of Nine The Musical in 1982, which also won the Tony for Best Musical garnered him his first Tony for direction of a musical. He has gone on to direct and/or choreograph eight Broadway musicals. He directed a new musical titled Turn of the Century, which premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago on September 19, 2008 and closed on November 2, 2008.

Off-Broadway, Tune has directed The Club and Cloud Nine. Tune toured the United States in the Sherman Brothers musical Busker Alley in 1994–1995, and in the stage adaptation of the film Dr. Dolittle in 2006.

Tune is the only person to win Tony Awards in the same categories (Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical) in consecutive years (1990 and 1991), and the first to win in four categories. He has won ten Tony Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

On television, Tune was a recurring guest star and assistant choreographer from 1969–70 on The Dean Martin Show and its summer replacement series, Dean Martin Presents The Golddiggers. He also briefly appeared on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in 1988.

Tune appeared in a 1975 TV special titled Welcome to the "World" along with Lucie Arnaz and Lyle Waggoner to promote the opening of Space Mountain at Walt Disney World.

Tune's film credits include Ambrose in Hello, Dolly! (1969), and The Boy Friend with Twiggy (1971). Tune released his first record album, Slow Dancin', in 1997 on the RCA label, featuring a collection of his favorite romantic ballads.

In 1999, he made his Las Vegas debut as the star of EFX at the MGM Grand Las Vegas.

Tune staged an elaborate musical entitled Paparazzi for the Holland America Line cruise ship the Oosterdam in 2003. He works often with The Manhattan Rhythm Kings, for example touring in a Big Band revue entitled Song and Dance Man and White Tie and Tails (2002).

Tune performed in his musical revue, Steps in Time: A Broadway Biography in Song and Dance, in Boston in April 2008 and continuing in various venues from Bethesda, Maryland in January 2009 to California in February 2009.

The Tommy Tune Awards, presented annually by Theatre Under The Stars (TUTS) honor excellence in high school musical theatre in Houston. The current home of the Tommy Tune Awards is the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in Houston, Texas.

In 2013, he appeared as Argyle Austero in the revived fourth season of Arrested Development on Netflix.

In 2015, he made a return to the New York stage as a featured performer in City Center's staged concert Encores!. He was featured in two numbers in Lady, Be Good!; his first act number was the Gershwin standard "Fascinatin' Rhythm."

To learn more about Tune's life and career, click on these links.

IMDB

Internet Broadway Database

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Nanette Fabray (1920–2018)

Nanette Fabray, October 27, 1920 – February 22, 2018. Fabray as she appeared in 1963. No specific date or copyright information available.

Nanette Fabray, American actress, singer and dancer, passed away February 22, 2018 at her home in Palos Verdes, California. She was 97.

Born Ruby Bernadette Nanette Fabares, she began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and became a musical theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life. In the mid-1950s, she served as Sid Caesar's comedic partner on Caesar's Hour, for which she won three Emmy Awards, as well as co-starring with Fred Astaire in the film musical The Band Wagon. From 1979 to 1984, she appeared as Katherine Romano on the TV series One Day at a Time.

Fabray overcame a significant hearing impairment and was a long-time advocate for the rights of the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Her honors for representing the handicapped included the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award.

Fabray's first husband, David Tebet, was a vice president of NBC. Her second husband was screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, who's writing credits include Mildred Pierce and Cleopatra and who, in the early 1970s, served as president of the Writers Guild of America. The couple was married from 1957 until his death in 1973. They had one child: Jamie MacDougall. Fabray was the aunt of singer/actress Shelley Fabares. Her niece's 1984 wedding to actor Mike Farrell was at her home. Fabray was associated with Ronald Reagan's campaign for the governorship of California in 1966.

Nanette Fabray has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was awarded the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for her long efforts on behalf of the hearing impaired.

To learn more about Fabray's life and career, click on these links.

IMDB

Internet Broadway Database

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