Tony Rich

Antonio Jeffries Jr. (born November 19, 1971), better known as Tony Rich and The Tony Rich Project, is a contemporary R&B singer-songwriter best known for his single "Nobody Knows".

Biography

Early career

Rich first attracted attention through the production team of Tim & Bob. The duo convinced Perri "Pebbles" Reid (then the wife of L.A. Reid, co-founder of LaFace Records) to listen to Rich over the phone. Rich was hired as a house songwriter for LaFace Records. As incoming Vice President of A&R, Eddie F then convinced Reid to sign him as an artist. Later, Rich mixed elements of jazz, rock and soul music into his own tracks.

The Tony Rich Project

In January 1996 Rich released the hit single, "Nobody Knows", which made it to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Under the moniker "The Tony Rich Project", he released his debut album Words in early 1996. Both the album and single went platinum and in 1997, Rich won a Grammy Award for the Best R&B Album. The song was covered by country music artist Kevin Sharp in 1997, also as his debut single. The song "Like a Woman" was also nominated for a Grammy Award.

Harlem Shuffle

"Harlem Shuffle" is an R&B song written and originally recorded by the duo Bob & Earl in 1963. In 1986 it was covered by The Rolling Stones on their album Dirty Work.

House of Pain sampled the song's opening horn line in their breakthrough single "Jump Around" in 1992.

Bob & Earl

The original single, co-arranged by Barry White and Gene Page, peaked at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #36 on the Cash Box chart. However, the record was much more successful upon its UK re-release in 1969, making the Top 10 there. It was released on Marc Records, a subsidiary of Titan Records.

In 2003, the original Bob & Earl version of the song was ranked #23 by the music critics of The Daily Telegraph on their list of the "50 Best Duets Ever".

Chart performance

The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones' cover version, with Bobby Womack on backing vocals, appeared on their 1986 album Dirty Work, and went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and #13 in the UK. Keith Richards had been looking for songs to possibly include on the album and had been working up songs with Ronnie Wood and Womack while waiting for Jagger to return to the studio in Paris after doing promo work on his solo album. To Richards's surprise, Jagger liked the feel and cut the vocals quickly. It became the first cover song the Stones had released as an opening single off a new studio album since 1965. It opens with:

Harlem Shuffle (disambiguation)

Harlem Shuffle can refer to:

Harlem Shuffle (dance step)

The Harlem Shuffle is a dance maneuver that takes various forms. One form is as a complete line dance, consisting of approximately 25 steps. Other forms may include a simplified two-step followed by a shoulder-brushing motion with the back of the opposite hand.

In some respects, the maneuver is an homage to the vibrant dance culture that permeated dance clubs of the Harlem area during the Harlem renaissance. Such gestures became increasingly common from the 1980s onwards, as greater attempts were made to properly credit the influence of African-American artists and musicians on popular culture.

References

Harlem

Coordinates: 40°48′32.52″N 73°56′54.14″W / 40.8090333°N 73.9483722°W / 40.8090333; -73.9483722

Harlem is a large neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Since the 1920s, Harlem has been known as a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle.

African-American residents began to arrive en masse in 1905, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic work without precedent in the American black community. However, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. Harlem's black population peaked in the 1950s. In 2008, the United States Census found that for the first time since the 1930s, less than half of residents were black, and black residents only counted for 40% of the population.

Harlem (Ellington)

Harlem is a symphonic jazz composition by the American composer Duke Ellington.

Originally commissioned by Arturo Toscanini in 1950 to be part of a larger New York-inspired orchestral suite, Toscanini never conducted it. Ellington himself first recorded it in 1951 (as "A Tone Parallel to Harlem (Harlem Suite)" in his Ellington Uptown album), and it was given its live premiere in 1955 at Carnegie Hall by Don Gillis and the Symphony of the Air.

The piece lasts for around fifteen minutes and exists in Ellington's large jazz orchestra version as well as a full symphonic version orchestrated by Luther Henderson. Both versions begin with a distinctive trumpet solo which intones the word 'Harlem'.

In his own memoirs Ellington wrote:

Ellington re-recorded it in Paris in 1963 (on The Symphonic Ellington album). It has since been recorded by several ensembles and conductors including Maurice Peress (in his own orchestration) with the American Composers Orchestra, Neeme Jarvi with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and John Mauceri with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Mauceri also produced a new edition of the full symphonic score. In 2012, it was recorded by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in the Peress orchestration.

Harlem (band)

Harlem is an American garage rock band comprising vocalist/guitarist/drummer Michael Coomers, vocalist/guitarist/drummer Curtis O'Mara and bassist Jose Boyer, formerly of Chapel Hill-based The Gondoliers and The Kashmir.

History

Harlem started in Tucson, AZ before relocating to Austin where they generated a mountain of attention, both with their live shows and their self-issued 2008 album Free Drugs ;-), mastered by Nathan Sabatino at Loveland Recording Studios.

Matador signed the Austin, Texas trio to a multi-record, worldwide deal. Harlem recorded their 2nd album in the summer of 2009.Hippies, was released on April 6, 2010. It was recorded by Mike McHugh at "The Distillery" in Costa Mesa, California. As of April 2012, the band is on an indefinite hiatus as all members are busy with other projects.

Discography

Albums

EPs

References

External links