Gene Summers

Gene Summers (born January 3, 1939 in Dallas, Texas) is an American rock/rockabilly singer and entertainer. Some of his classic recordings include "School of Rock 'n Roll", "Straight Skirt", "Nervous", "Gotta Lotta That", "Twixteen", "Alabama Shake" and his biggest-selling single "Big Blue Diamonds". Summers was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 1997 and The Southern Legends Entertainment & Performing Arts Hall of Fame in 2005. He still performs worldwide and celebrated his 50th anniversary as a recording artist in 2008 with the release of Reminisce Cafe.

Summers graduated from Duncanville High School in 1957 and attended Arlington State College, now known as the University of Texas at Arlington. That same year, he formed the rockabilly band The Rebels and performed on Joe Bill's Country Picnic on KRLD-TV where they were spotted by songwriter Jed Tarver. This led to the band being signed by newly founded Jan Records. Their first record was released on February 1, 1958, under the name of Gene Summers & His Rebels.

Gene Summers (architect)

Gene Summers (July 31, 1928 – December 12, 2011) was an American modernist architect. Considered to have been Mies Van Der Rohe's "right hand man, he assisted his famed employer in the design of the iconic Seagram Building on Park Avenue on the island of Manhattan in New York City. Later, in private practice, he designed the huge McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, Illinois.

Life and career

Gene R. Summers was born in 1928 in San Antonio, Texas. He studied architecture at Texas A & M, where he received his bachelor's degree, and at the Illinois Institute of Technology under Mies van der Rohe, where he received his master's degree in 1951. From 1950 until 1966 Summers served as project architect for Mies van der Rohe, working on important commissions such as the Seagram Building in New York City and the National Gallery in Berlin. In 1967 he became partner in charge of design in the Chicago architectural firm of C. F. Murphy Associates, where he remained until 1973. His best-known project from that time, the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, was completed in 1970. From 1973 until 1985 Summers, in association with Phyllis Lambert, worked as a real estate developer in California, where they restored, among other projects, several industrial parks, the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, and the Newporter Resort Hotel in Newport Beach. In 1985 Summers moved to France but returned to Chicago in 1989 to become dean of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a position he held until 1993. Summers was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1972, and later relocated to Healdsburg, California. Summers died on December 12, 2011 in Sebastopol, California at the age of 83.