John & Ernest

John & Ernest was an American novelty song ensemble. composed of John Free and Ernest Smith. They scored a hit single in 1973 with the record "Super Fly Meets Shaft", which hit #31 on the Top 40. The record consisted of lines from popular songs of the day, which tell a story about the main characters from the movies Super Fly and Shaft. The record is done in the style of Dickie Goodman, who produced the hit. John & Ernest also released a second 45rpm, called "Soul President Number One", which did not chart.

References

John Ernest

John Ernest (May 6, 1922 – July 21, 1994) was an American-born constructivist abstract artist. He was born in Philadelphia, in 1922. After living and working in Sweden and Paris from 1946 to 1951, he moved to London, England, where he lived and worked from 1951. As a mature student at Saint Martin's School of Art he came under the influence of Victor Pasmore and other proponents of constructivism. During the 1950s together with Anthony Hill, Kenneth Martin, Mary Martin, Stephen Gilbert and Gillian Wise he became a key member of the British constructivist (aka constructionist) art movement.

John Ernest created both reliefs and free standing constructions. Several of his works are held at Tate Britain, including the Moebius Strip sculpture. He designed both a tower and a large wall relief at the International Union of Architects congress, South Bank, London, 1961. The exhibition structure also housed works by several of the other British constructivists.

John Ernest had a lifelong fascination with mathematics that is reflected in his work, and together with constructivist artist Anthony Hill he made contributions to graph theory, studying crossing numbers of complete graphs.