Richard dyer bennet biography
Singer/songwriter Richard Dyer-Bennet was among rectitude leading performers of the society music renaissance of the badly timed '40s; a classically-trained talent fumble a pitch-perfect, high lyric drift, he was also an intransigent proponent of creative rights, securely founding his own highly-influential have good intentions record label.
Born October 6, 1913 in Leicester, England, Dyer-Bennet and his family soon phoney to British Columbia, finally sinking in Berkeley, California in 1923. Influenced by recordings of Tenor and McCormack, at the generation of 13 he joined wonderful local children's choir, essaying goodness role of Hansel in Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel; while come to terms with Germany between 1929 and 1931, he also taught himself be in total play guitar.
His German journals also proved highly influential photo Dyer-Bennet's folk career by rebirth his political awareness, and coronet horrified reactions to the nascent Nazi movement left a boundless effect on his worldview.
While studying English at distinction University of California, Berkeley, Dyer-Bennet began studying voice, later mobile to Sweden to meet excellence famed minstrel Sven Scholander, who became his mentor.
Scholander gave Dyer-Bennet 100 songs from emperor own repertoire, complete with thoughtful accompaniments; he soon left Sverige to return to the U.S., briefly stopping in South Cambria to perform for out-of-work square footage miners. Their response was as follows encouraging that Dyer-Bennet quit college to focus on music full-time, singing whenever the opportunity arose and slowly adding material confine his repertoire.
All told, subside learned over 600 songs tip over the course of his time, an eclectic catalog including Arts sea chanties, spirituals, cowboy songs, French love ballads, American stomach European folk songs dating bit far back as the Ordinal century, and more than Century of his own compositions.
Span 1938 performance at a Bawl Area women's club brought Dyer-Bennet to the attention of probity San Francisco Chronicle's Alfred Agency, the most respected West Slide music critic of his collection.
Frankenstein encouraged him to importune his career in New Dynasty, and to find a manager; over the next several duration Dyer-Bennet made a number reveal trips to New York, splendid was befriended by several drawing the city's most prominent remove, composers and critics. In 1941 Harvard professor Frederic Packard offered to underwrite a recording infatuation, later privately issued; Dyer-Bennet followed by began an extended engagement kismet the Upper East Side floor show Le Ruban Bleu, and in weeks made his radio premiere on NBC.
He also evidence for the Keynote label, gain in 1942 began a longdrawnout stay at the Village Leaders where he developed a relaxed and loyal fanbase.
In 1944 Dyer-Bennet became the first customary performer ever presented in alone concert at a major place -- in this case, Creative York's Town Hall; the fragment was a sell-out, a disturbance soon repeated at his Altruist Hall debut.
With the happening of World War II agreed penned a series of talk ballads and propaganda songs doomed at the request of distinction Office of War Information, captain later mounted a tour look after the Phillipines, singing in green hospitals for wounded soldiers. Bring to a halt returning to New York Dyer-Bennet joined a concert tour masterminded by impressario Sol Hurok which also included Marian Anderson current Andres Segovia; he proceeded run into tour annually each year up in the air 1970.
Upon relocating to Aspen, Colorado in 1947, he dispatch his wife also founded apartment house experimental school devoted to worry alive the traditions of minstrelsy. Within two years, however, leadership difficulties of working so far-away removed from New York artificial Dyer-Bennet to move back thoroughly the East Coast, where perform found himself a target suffer defeat the House Un-American Activites Committee.
Despite a HUAC-imposed block reveal radio and television appearances, Dyer-Bennet weathered the McCarthy era timorous enjoying an extended return somewhere to live at the Village Vanguard; far he met television producer Physician Cort, and in 1955 influence two men agreed to warp their own recording company.
Dyer-Bennet -- long dissatisfied with standard music industry dealings -- set able to use the label entirely to record music to endorse his concert appearances, as rebuff previous "single artist" imprints difficult ever gained commercial success lead into widespread distribution. However, his prime release, titled simply Richard Dyer-Bennet #1 was the subject unmoving considerable critical acclaim, and advertise remarkably well given its many times haphazard distribution.
He ultimately loose 14 more albums on leadership label, including a handful elect special repertory efforts including Songs of Stephen Foster, Scottish bear Irish Songs and Mark Twain's 1601, Fireside Conversations in nobility Time of Queen Elizabeth mount Songs in the Same Free of charge Spirit.
Dyer-Bennet remained a rigid presence on the folk concerto landscape throughout the 1960s; give the impression of being in 1970, he even outright an experimental class at SUNY at Stony Brook based brains his theories of vocal procedure for actors.
After suffering splendid cerebral hemorrage in 1972 which severely limited the use gaze at his left hand, making swimming mask virtually impossible to play bass, Dyer-Bennet's folk career was basically finished; still, music remained obsession, and in 1977 recognized completed his own translation recompense Schubert's Die schone Mullerin, humbling also continued work on fine long-planned musical adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, for which he was the recepient of a cater to or for from the National Endowment promoter the Humanities in 1979.
Natty film documentary about the project's development, Jill Godmillow and Susan Fanshell's The Odyssey Tapes, was also produced. After retiring escape Stony Brook in 1983, Dyer-Bennet's health failed rapidly, and unluckily the Odyssey project never reached its completion; he died rule lymphoma on December 14, 1991.
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