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Viral Art: How the internet has shaped street art and graffiti by RJ Rushmore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License except where otherwise noted on the credits page. The material listed on the credits page is copyright its respective copyright holders and its licensing is listed on the credits page.

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" Basketball Jones featuring Tyrone Shoelaces" is a song by Cheech and Chong that first appeared on the 1973 album Los Cochinos.

Sung in falsetto by Cheech Marin, playing the title character Tyrone (as in "tie-your-own") Shoelaces, it tells the story of Shoelaces' love of basketball. It is a parody of the No. 16 Billboard Hot 100 song "Love Jones" by Brighter Side of Darkness. In the album version, the song is preceded by a mock interview with Jones' basketball coach named "Umgwana Kickbooti", in a parody of a Wide World of Sports interview conducted by a character named "Red Blazer".

The song's opening lyric, "basketball jones, I got a basketball jones", references "jones" as slang for craving or addiction. A "basketball jones" thus refers to loving basketball so much that it overtakes all other thoughts.

Musicians who appeared on the record included George Harrison, Billy Preston, Tom Scott, Klaus Voormann and Carole King (so the record became the highest-peaking single on which she appeared during 1973). The Blossoms and Michelle Phillips (from The Mamas & the Papas) performed vocals as cheerleaders on the track.

Some notes on the recording of the track, taken from the booklet accompanying Where There's Smoke There's Cheech & Chong, read:

Cheech sings, and Tommy plays piano-that's all it was at first. In Cheech's words, "George Harrison and those guys were in the next studio recording, and so Lou [Adler] just ran over there and played [it for him]. They made up the track right on the spot." "That was a wild session," Lou Adler recalls. "I probably called Carole [King] and told her to come down, but with Harrison and [Klaus] Voorman-I didn't call and say come in and play. Everyone happened to be in the A&M studios at that particular time, doing different projects. It was spilling out of the studio into the corridors."

Other members of the ad hoc supergroup included Nicky Hopkins (piano), Tom Scott (sax), Billy Preston (organ), Jimmy Karstein (drums) and Jim Keltner (percussion).

The song was released as a single in August 1973 and reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the only spoof to peak higher than the corresponding original. It was backed with "Don't Bug Me", also from Los Cochinos. To coincide with the graffiti artwork from the album's cover, both sides of the single feature the Ode label covered with graffiti.

Tyrone Shoelaces

Basketball Jones is a 1973 animated short film based on the Cheech and Chong song. The cartoon was created to promote the song's release in the United States. It is about a teenager named Tyrone Shoelaces and his love of basketball. The short was designed by animator Paul Gruwell who worked on many series, including The Banana Splits, , , The Transformers, The Simpsons, and the film Heavy Metal.

In the animation, Shoelaces, who appears as a stereotypical African American, is shown from birth having a skill for "dribbling" (in which he is shown to be drooling) and, as a result, his mother gives him a basketball for a gift. Shoelaces takes an immediate liking to the ball and takes it wherever he goes. This sets up a trip to the "basketball championship," in which he begins preaching to potential teammates, coaches, cheerleaders (complete with "day of the week" panties visible) to "help him out." A gospel chorus begins singing, and slowly escalates. A few short shots of Shoelaces actually playing basketball, mostly dribbling downcourt on a breakaway, are visible, but the rest of the video is primarily devoted to shots of increasingly unusual and distant people in "the entire stadium" and "around the world" singing along to "Basketball Jones." At the end of the short, Shoelaces begins growing at a dramatic pace, breaking through the stadium roof and becoming big enough to use the moon as a basketball while Cheech and Chong, Viet Cong, King Kong, alley cats, men in business suits, a mountaintop guru, The Singing Nun, and The Beatles sing along to the song. The short film encapsulates the political moods of the 70s and predicts Richard Nixon's impeachment before the president actually resigned on August 8, 1974.

"Basketball Jones" was originally seen in theaters in late 1973, before showings of Hal Ashby's The Last Detail at select screens. It can be seen during the 1974 film California Split, directed by Robert Altman, although its use in the film prevented California Split from being released on VHS or Laserdisc due to Columbia Pictures' refusal to pay royalties for the song. Altman later removed the song (but not the cartoon) from the film so it could be released on DVD.

The film was broadcast in the United Kingdom on February 24, 1974, during an episode of the BBC television program, The Old Grey Whistle Test.

The cartoon was re-released in 1976, when it was shown before the film Tunnel Vision. The film is perhaps best known for being featured in another highly acclaimed Hal Ashby film, the 1979 Oscar-nominated Being There, where Peter Sellers's character, Chauncey Gardiner watches the cartoon in a limousine.

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Basketball Jones featuring Tyrone Shoelaces - Wikipedia

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" Basketball Jones featuring Tyrone Shoelaces" is a song by Cheech and Chong that first appeared on the 1973 album Los Cochinos . Sung in falsetto by Cheech Marin, playing the title character Tyrone (as in "tie-your-own") Shoelaces, it tells the story of Shoelaces' love of basketball.

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LONDON (AP) - The elusive artist Banksy displayed his latest work on a London street corner and it was taken less than hour after he confirmed its installation Friday.

A red stop sign with three military drones on it was taken in the middle of the day by a man with bolt cutters as witnesses snapped photos and shot video in the Peckham section of south London.

People commenting on Banksy's Instagram accurately predicted it wouldn't be there long after the artist posted a photo of it. Some of his work has sold for tens of millions of dollars.

"I went there thinking that people want that, I wanted to see it before something happened to it," a man who only wanted to be known as Alex told the Press Association.

He was among the many onlookers who watched in awe as a man in a red and black jacket climbed up on a bike next to the post where the sign was bolted to and began hitting it with his hands.

"We said, 'What are you doing?' but no one really knew what to do, we sort of just watched it happen," Alex said. "We were all a bit bemused; there was some honking of car horns."

The man then left and returned a few minutes later with bolt cutters to finish the job. Another man stabilized the Lime rental bike he stood on and he then removed it and ran away.

Banksy's thought-provoking street art is often seen as making a political statement. His Instagram followers widely interpreted his latest work as calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

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Now you see it, now you don't: Banksy stop sign taken from London street soon after it appears

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The elusive artist Banksy displayed his latest work on a London street corner and it was taken less than hour after he confirmed its installation Friday. A red stop sign with three military drones on it was taken in the middle of the day by a man with bolt cutters as witnesses snapped photos and shot video in the Peckham section of south London.

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Before there were any Dance Rock or Bboy Crews and certainly before any other Hustle Dance Teams, there were the Latin Symbolics Dance Company, founded by George Vascones, in the South Bronx, New York, circa 1972.

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From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Paul Winley Records Inc. (more commonly credited as Winley Records) was a doo-wop label founded in 1956 by Paul Winley. In 1979 the label became one of the earliest hip hop labels. It was situated on 125th Street, Harlem, New York City. Winley released doo-wop by The Paragons and The Jesters, and hip hop records by Paul Winley's daughters, Tanya and Paulette, produced by Winley's wife, Ann. The label can lay claim to a number of firsts: one of the earliest rock and roll compilations, one of the earliest breaks compilations, an early solo female rap artist and an early instance of social commentary in rap. Winley was also the first label to record one of hip hop's most important figures, Afrika Bambaataa.

Paul Winley

Paul Winley entered the music business through writing songs for his brother's Washington D.C. doo-wop group, The Clovers. Through them, he met Ahmet Ertegün, who-unusually for a label mogul-himself wrote for The Clovers subsequent to signing them. (Toop: 97) (Warner: 120) Winley moved to New York City to work with Ertegün's Atlantic Records, where he wrote for Ruth Brown and Big Joe Turner. He then became one of the songwriters working in and around the Brill Building in the 1950s, along with figures he met and knew there such as Otis Blackwell and Jesse Stone. Winley formed a songwriting partnership with Davey Clowney, better known as Dave "Baby" Cortez, and the two began recording doo-wop groups for the newly-founded Winley Records. (Toop: 96-98)

Doo-wop

Winley Records first recorded "Baby" Cortez, and then Little Anthony as part of The Duponts: "You"/"Must Be Falling in Love" (1955, technically predating the record company itself). (Toop: 98) (Warner: 239) Then came The Jesters, students at Cooper Junior High School in Harlem who graduated from singing under an elevated train station near 120th Street to the amateur night contest at the Apollo, where Paul Winley discovered them. The Jesters' b-sides often rivaled the lead cut. Their first three singles were all arranged by Clowney, and all three-"So Strange"/"Love No One But You", "Please Let Me Love You"/"I'm Falling in Love" (both 1957) and "The Plea"/"Oh Baby" (1958)-made the outer reaches of the national Pop chart, and generated considerable New York interest. Under a different line-up, The Jesters reached #110 on the Billboard chart in 1960 with a version of The Diablo's "The Wind" backed with "Sally Green". Two lesser singles followed: "That's How It Goes"/"Tutti Frutti" (1960) and "Uncle Henry's Basement"/"Come Let Me Show You How" (1961). (Warner: 230-231)

A brother group to The Jesters, and "equally fine" (Warner: 269) were The Paragons-"real hoodlums, real zip-gun, street-warring hoodlums", Paul Winley recalled to David Toop in 1984, "but at the time I was young and crazy myself, so it didn't make any difference". (Toop: 98) For Winley, they recorded "Florence" backed with "Hey Little Schoolgirl" (1957), "Lets Start All Over Again" with "Stick With Me Baby" (1957), the ballad "Two Hearts Are Better than One" with "Give Me Love" (1957), "Twilight" plus "The Vows of Love" (1958), and "So You Will Know"/"Don't Cry Baby" (1958). Then came their backing of Tommy Collins on "Doll Baby"/"Darling I Love You" (1959), as The Paragons alone on the re-cap "So You Will Know"/"Doll Baby" (1960) and recording under the name Mack Starr and the Paragons for their last Winley release, "Just A Memory"/"Kneel and Pray" (1961). Of these, the records "Florence" and "Let's Start All Over Again" are doo-wop classics, and "Twilight" a "New York mini-classic". (Warner, 270) Jay Warner is of the opinion that the obscure "So You Will Know" is a finer record even than these. (Warner: 270)

The Paragons Meet The Jesters (1959), with its street gang cover and vocal duels inspired by doo-wop's street corner singing battles and live show group competitions, was "one of the first rock and roll compilation LPs" (Warner: 231) and the most commercially successful doo wop compilation ever released. (Warner: 270) Hal Winley reformed The Clovers for Winley in 1961 and in that year recorded "Wrapped Up in A Dream"/"Let Me Hold You", "Be My Baby"/"They're Rockin' Down The Street" and "I Need You Now"/"Gotta Quit You" on the label. (Warner, 122-123) Other releases of this period include those of Charley White (of The Clovers), "Nobody's Fault But Mine" (1958), and Ann Fleming (Ann Winley), "Jive Time Baby" (1960). (Warner: 231) Relic Records have collected Winley doo-wop on The Best of Winley Records (RELIC 5019) with liner notes by Donn Fileti detailing their lo-fidelity, almost ad hoc independent approach creating a valuable and unique New York sound. Quoting Fileti, David Toop makes the point that these are comments that can equally apply to Winley's hip hop output. (Toop: 99)

Hip hop

Winley Records resurfaced in the 1970s with a series of releases which-like the street corner practices of doo-wop foreshadowing those of hip hop (see Toop: Ch. 2)-would in their different ways presage the advent of commercially recorded hip hop even as that movement blossomed in the Bronx and spread to the streets of Harlem. Winley released a series of speeches by Malcolm X, tied into a tradition of black oratory and to be sampled a decade later by Public Enemy and others. The label also recorded Harlem Underground Band (featuring a young George Benson), whose "Smokin' Cheeba Cheeba" (1976) would furnish a break for hip hop's burgeoning breakbeat culture. A "break" was a short percussive passage in a record which hip hop DJs would loop (using two copies, one for each turntable) in order for it to be rapped over and/or danced to. By the late 1970s, "b-boy" sections were appearing in some small New York record stores, catering to "b-boys", followers of this yet-to-be-named new subculture, who would buy 45s, 12"s or complete albums, old or new, of funk, rock or indeed any genre, as long as they were satisfied that each contained at least a few seconds worthy of being looped. (Toop: ix-x) Paul Winley's daughter Tanya was such a follower, a "rap fanatic" (Toop, 100); Paul began collecting songs containing popular breaks and compiling them on a series of records called Super Disco Brake's, beginning in 1979 and eventually running to six volumes. The first of these therefore was one of the earliest records released with hip hop culture in mind, and probably the first breakbeat record in history. (Shapiro: 384-385)

Harlem Underground Band, augmented with the organ of the seemingly ever-present "Baby" Cortez, would function as the house band backing Winley's hip hop releases, hence having the same function, if not influence, as "Jiggs" Chase's band at Sugar Hill Records, or those of Pumpkin at Enjoy Records and elsewhere, i.e. solving the problem of how to translate the backing to raps heretofore provided live by DJs. In the case of the first of these Winley releases, "Rockin' and Rhymin'" by Tanya and Paulette Winley (1979), the backing was "straightforward r&b, without the percussive explosions that were hip-hop's raison d'etre" while the rapping was somewhat tentative. (Shapiro: 384) Tanya "Sweet Tee" Winley's "Vicious Rap" (1980) was a leap forward, with Tanya in confident flow and the band even replicating a break at points. Tanya Winley raps in the party spirit characteristic of early hip hop, but the lyrics nonetheless detail a case of false arrest, and prophecy that she will "scream and shout ... and tell the government what it's all about". Along with Kurtis Blow's punning " The Breaks" (Columbia, 1980) and the much more radical "How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise" by Brother D. (Clappers, 1980), "Vicious Rap" was among the first commercially recorded hip hop songs to feature social commentary rather than party rhymes. Such records would remain a rarity until the success of " The Message" by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five on Sugar Hill two years later. (Chang: 179) The label's erstwhile claim that "Vicious Rap" was recorded in 1978, making it the first hip hop to make it to the recording studio, is sometimes repeated, but the apparent improvement in technique from 1979's "Rockin' and Rhymin'" makes this likely a piece of historical revisionism. A last single from the Winley daughters followed in 1982: "I Believe in the Wheel of Fortune". (Shapiro: 384)

Afrika Bambaataa was, with Grandmaster Flash and DJ Kool Herc (originator of hip hop's breakbeat DJing style), one of the prime movers in the emergence of hip hop in the 1970s. By 1980, Flash was recording for Enjoy Records with his MC team, the Furious Five, while Herc's star had faded-he was working in a record shop in South Bronx. Bambaataa recorded "Zulu Nation Throwdown" (1980) for Winley with his MC crew named The Cosmic Force. He arranged and directed the percussion and rapping, but further live band accompaniment was added before release without his knowledge. (Hager, Village Voice, September 21 1982) According to Peter Shapiro, though the record is now "ancient-sounding" in hip hop terms, Winley's group here had moved to keep pace with Pumpkin at Enjoy and the Sugarhill band, with Lisa Lee of the Cosmic Force "absolutely destroying all the male MCs". (Shapiro: 384) Bambaataa was initially displeased with the record, but it found favor with the new wave crowds who were being presented with hip hop music, dance and graffiti at shows by Bambaataa and others in downtown New York at this time. Bambaataa returned to Winley for "Zulu Nation Throwdown 2" (1980) with Soul Sonic Force, but thoroughly dissatisfied with the label, he left for Tommy Boy Records, where he would record a single with a huge impact, " Planet Rock" (1982). (Hager, Village Voice, September 21 1982) Unruffled, Winley released Death Mix (1983) to cash in on the success of Planet Rock. Death Mix was a vinyl pressing of a third- or fourth- hand cassete tape copy of a bootleg recording of a Bambaataa Zulu Nation night at James Monroe High School in the Bronx in 1980. Death Mix features Bambaataa and Jazzy Jay using an eclectic mix of records-including "Computer Games" by Yellow Magic Orchestra, showing the sensibilities that would lead to the electro of "Planet Rock"-, cutting up breaks for Zulu Nation MCs, and demonstrating early scratching techniques. (Lewis: 101) (Shapiro: 4) (Toop: 99) Despite its extremely poor sound quality, it is "the best commercially-available snapshot of hip-hop's earliest days". (Shapiro: 385)

A new generation of acts appeared in the early- to mid- 1980s on labels like Def Jam, Profile and Cold Chillin', with a tougher image, musical style and lyrical delivery than their predecessors (see New school hip hop). This-what Shapiro calls "the Run-D.M.C. revolution"-signaled the end for labels like Enjoy, Sugar Hill and Winley. After releasing "Street Rock" by Rap Dynasty in 1984, the label folded, though two discs appeared in 2007 bearing the imprint's name and purporting to contain Bambaataa material from the 1970s. (Shapiro: 385) (Hsu, New York Times, September 15 2007) A collection of Winley hip hop, Death Mix: The Best of Paul Winley Records, was released on Landspeed Records in 2001.

References

Chang, Jeff. (2005). Can't Stop Won't Stop A History of the Hip Hop Generation, New York: Picador. ISBN 978-0312425791

Hager, Steven. (1982). "Afrika Bambaataa's Hip-Hop", Village Voice, September 21. Reprinted in Cepeda, Raquel (ed.). (2004). And It Don't Stop! The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years, New York: Faber and Faber, Inc. ISBN 978-0571211593

Hsu, Hua. (2007). "Sure, It Sounds Old School, but When Were They in Class?", New York Times, September 15. Link retrieved August 19, 2008.

Lewis, Miles Marshall. (2004). Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don't Have Bruises, New York: Akashic. ISBN 978-1888451719

Shapiro, Peter. (2005). The Rough Guide To Hip Hop 2nd ed., London: Rough Guides. ISBN 978-1843532637

Toop, David. (2000). Rap Attack 3rd ed., London: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 978-1852426279

Warner, Jay. (2006). American Singing Groups: A History from 1940s to Today, Milwaukie: Hal Leonard Corp. ISBN 978-0634099786

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Paul Winley Records Inc. (more commonly credited as Winley Records) was a doo-wop label founded in 1956 by Paul Winley. In 1979 the label became one of the earliest hip hop labels. It was situated on 125th Street, Harlem, New York City.

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From the DJ History archives: The label boss and entrepreneur looks back on a career that spanned genres and generations

Paul Winley's life neatly joins the dots between 1950s doo-wop and old-school hip-hop. In fact, he views both artforms as part of an unbroken oral tradition that binds every facet of black American music.

Winley was impeccably placed to make such an observation. As a young man, he worked in Manhattan's fabled Brill Building, penning songs for the likes of Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown. In 1956, he set up his own label, which became home to groups such as the Paragons and the Jesters. By the late 1970s, however, Paul Winley Records had shifted its focus to New York's burgeoning hip-hop scene.

The imprint was at the vanguard of the movement. In addition to releasing some of the earliest rap records, which featured Winley's daughters Tanya and Paulette, it was the first label to record Afrika Bambaataa and pioneered the breakbeat compilation with its unauthorized Super Disco Brake's series.

Speaking to Frank Broughton for this interview in 1998, Winley remained a genuine Harlem character. As both men walked along 125th Street, Winley was greeted by almost everyone over 40. Over breakfast at Sylvia's - a diner where he was a regular for many years - he flirted with the waitresses, revealed that Al Sharpton was his godson and told stories of being "cursed out" by Billie Holiday and sharing a venue with Malcom X, as well as providing insights on the birth of hip-hop.

When did you first arrive in New York?

I was born in Washington, but my brother was in a group called the Clovers. I came up here when they were recording with Atlantic Records. I got close with Ahmet Ertegun and started writing songs for them. I wrote songs for the Clovers [and] for Big Joe Turner, who had a hit with " Shake Rattle and Roll."

You wrote that?

No, he had [a hit with] "Shake Rattle and Roll." The guy that used to do all the arrangements, Jesse Stone, wrote it. I wrote one called "Hide And Seek." After he did " Flip Flop & Fly," he did "Hide And Seek." And then I wrote for Ruth Brown, I wrote one for her called " Smooth Operator." I stayed around Atlantic, writing songs, and I started going all over just writing songs... I had some friends from Detroit... they had a group called the Pearls, and they had a kid in there that played piano, and him and I got very close. His name is Dave Clowney. He ended up calling himself Dave "Baby" Cortez and I ended up writing songs with him. We wrote songs for a living - there was a group of us, guy named Otis Blackwell -

He wrote for Elvis, right?

Yeah, there was Otis Blackwell, and then there was Winfield Scott - he wrote " Tweedly Dee." There was a lot of us.

And this was all in the Brill Building?

The Brill Building and 1650 [Broadway]. Otis used to be like a teacher. Him and Jesse Stone. Jesse wrote a lot of songs. " Don't Let Go " for Roy Hamilton, a lot of old songs.

Do you come from a musical family?

Not really. My brother was a singer, my other brother was a singer. We just picked it up, you know - just took it from there. After a while just writing songs, there on Broadway, a lot of people started trying to start their own record company. I saw it wouldn't get in the way of writing songs, so I thought I'd start mine. What the hell... had nothing to lose, wasn't getting nothing anyway, so I started the record company.

The doo-wop era and the hip-hop era, in the beginning it was the same thing. It was kids - young kids.

What year was that?

That was 1956. It was called Winley Records. The first artist I had was a group called Little Anthony & The Duponts. Then I recorded Baby Cortez... and, after that, we found this group out of Brooklyn - group of hoodlums - called the Paragons.

They were real hoodlums, believe me, rough guys. So, I finally got them to cool down and ended up recording them, you know. They did a record called " Florence" with me, which was a very big hit. That was the beginning of the doo-wop thing. And then I had another group come along called the Jesters. Then I had another group come along called the Collegians, they made a record called " Zoom Zoom." From there, I just went into recording everything. I recorded jazz, I recorded classical. I recorded an old jazz saxophonist, his name was Gene Ammons. And I tried to get Billie Holiday to record for me, but she wouldn't, she cursed me out.

Really?

Yeah. Billie Holiday was a rough woman. She cursed me out.

You met with her to talk about it?

She used to hang out here behind the Apollo on 126th and 8th Avenue. That's where all the old musicians and old hustlers would hang out... the Banks bar and the Braddock bar - she was round there, and I was backstage to record. She cursed me out a few times.

Talking about the doo-wop days it sounds very familiar - it was young kids, some were hoodlums...

Same thing, same thing, same thing. The doo-wop era and the hip-hop era, in the beginning it was the same thing. It was kids - young kids. So, after going from the doo-wop and recording all these different things, in the late '70s I started hearing about rap. My daughter, Tanya, would come home from school and they would be doing all these rhymes. Where she went to school, there were a lot of other people that were doing rapping, guys like Grandmaster Flash, Kool Moe Dee, Melle Mel, all in the same junior high school, and then everybody used to [go] up into the Bronx to Bambaataa's thing - the Zulu Nation. That was the main stomping ground for the rappers. I used to listen to my daughter rhyming and rapping, and I said to her, "I'm gonna take you [to the studio], and you can let me hear what you can do." So my daughter, she was just messing around in the studio, told the musicians to get with her, and she ended up doing this thing called "Vicious Rap." We put that out and she was the first female rapper.

What year was that?

That was '78. Then Tanya and my other daughter Paulette, they started hippin' and hoppin' and rhymin' and rappin' around the house, so I took them [both] into the studio, and we did a thing called " Rhymin' And Rappin'."

After a while, Afrika Bambaataa used to call me about recording. He had this group called the Zulu Nation, which I knew of - there was a million of them. One day I told him to come down to the store so we could talk. When he came down, as far as you could see, there was this group of kids. I was like, "What the hell's all this?" The whole Zulu Nation came down.

Really. How many people were there?

Jazzy Jay, Red Alert, all of them... I mean, a whole gang from the Bronx. They were from the Bronx River projects. So, I started talking to Bam and he wanted me to record Soulsonic Force and Cosmic Force, so I told him, "OK, we'll listen to them and see what they can do." We got a date in the studio, went in and we recorded [them both]. They ended up as pretty good records for that time, because records weren't really played. Radio stations wouldn't play them, so we had to go by the route of the hip-hop clubs and the dances.

Which records were from the studio? Death Mix was from a tape...

Well, Bam had did the Death Mix up in the Bronx. He did that in the [community center there]. Said he couldn't do that in the studio...

It was a live tape?

It was like a novelty to me. I just wanted to get out something to show people how rapping in the raw was. Not from the studio, you understand, [but] how they were doing it in the dancehall, in the centers, and whatnot. That was my purpose for recording it all.

Did you go up to the parties?

I didn't, but I went to other places where they were... But after recording a few raps I saw it was changing, getting more gangsterish and kind of rough. It was a bad move on my part, but I just didn't want to record any gangster rap. It was very heavy... We're talking violence. Shootings and killings and all that stuff.

A couple of people I knew started getting deals, and after a while we had [our] work cut out, because radio stations wouldn't play rap. I ended up taking the bulk of [the hard work], because I [was] the leader of it. It was hard for me to get those records played.

Hip-hop was grassroots people. Grassroots kids. Just like the blues, just like gospel.

But the records were selling without airplay, right?

Yeah.

How quickly did people hear about your tracks?

Immediately when they came out, because there weren't that many of them. We used to go into The Wiz [a chain of electronics and music stores centered in the New York area] - the guys [who started the company] were very good friends of mine - with 1,000 records two or three times a week. It was just underground. The kids knew about it. They were selling like hell.

There were a few other guys, like Bobby Robinson, who had the Fury and Fire labels - Enjoy Records, I guess he called it at the time - and a couple more who were selling rap records underground. Then Sugar Hill Records came along. The Sugarhill Gang, they were Sylvia Robinson 's thing, from out in Englewood [New Jersey]. They got the first big rap records. [The label was financed by] Morris Levy [of] Roulette Tecords - that was the whole mob. Whatever they wanted, they got, so they got Sugarhill Gang promoted all over the country.

What was it that you saw in it?

It was grassroots people. Grassroots kids. Just like the blues, just like gospel. It was grassroots and it was earthy. It was just soul, it came from the soul, and it was natural writing and what they felt. Like a blues singer would just sing from his heart, making it up as he goes, the rappers would do the same thing. The bands with the rappers, they became very competitive with each other. In school, these kids would become competitive, seeing who had the best rhymes. I saw this as part of their education. It was very good in that sense, because it showed their ability to create.

Was that competitiveness something that the doo-wop groups would have?

Yeah. Same thing.

Did they ever have battles, in the same way the rappers did?

On the stage.

So, you'd get two doo-wop groups-

Yeah, always had them. I used to give those shows. Did shows at the Apollo like that.

How did they work?

They were good.

No, what was the format?

Nothing. It was a show; it wasn't a contest. They were just shows.

It wasn't the same as hip hop.

In hip-hop, they had the contest among themselves. It wasn't a thing of a prize. It wasn't that kind of competitive thing. It was just to the people out there in the audience. They would pick whoever they liked the best and would talk about it. That's what I saw in hip-hop.

I just wanted hip-hop to get a chance. I didn't see it going worldwide, which it ended up doing.

You said you saw it as very down-to-earth, but it didn't sound like doo-wop or the blues.

The blues is the blues, doo-wop is doo-wop, hip-hop is hip-hop.

But a lot of people heard it the first time and just thought, "This isn't music!"

I saw it as rhyming. Rhyming with a beat, with music. I just saw it as entertaining. I didn't say that it was music or that it was going to be a big thing. It was something that kids enjoyed doing. And I always look at things from this perspective - anything that the masses like to do and anything that the masses can compete and participate in would be big. It's like baseball, like football, like basketball, like boxing - if the masses could get into it and get involved, it would be big.

As to how big was another story. I just wanted it to get a chance. I didn't see it going worldwide, which it ended up doing. What happened was that they got back to the basics, back to the beat. It wasn't about big productions... Just a good rhyme, a good beat. That's where it started from and that's where it's at now.

I'm just glad to know that it went as far as it went. It's big in Japan, Italy and South America... It's a pleasure to know that.

Where did the idea to rhyme came from?

People have been doing that forever.

So it's an unbroken tradition.

Yeah. people like Jocko [Henderson] used to rhyme and rap on the radio. Frankie Crocker was a good rapper. Talking about "hips, lips" and all that stuff. The first one, as far as DJs are concerned, was [Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert] out of Baltimore. Jocko stole his whole format... The old-timers [also] used to do a lot of rapping, in jazz.

Like Cab Calloway and Slim Gaillard?

Yeah, they were rapping. That was their way of doing things.

Where did the kids get it from? What were they listening to that inspired them?

I used to ask them. I said, "Where y'all get this junk from?" They said, "Well, we picked up on a commercial for Great Bear [Auto Repair]." This man was in his car and he was driving his car and his brakes went, and he said something in a rhyme. That's where my daughter picked it up from.

How about the disco DJs, like Hollywood and people like that?

Hollywood used to play in bars. There were always DJs in bars around here.

From what sort of time?

The '50s.

Instead of jukeboxes?

Yeah. They would turn the jukebox off and let the DJs play the records.

Every week?

Yeah, Saturday nights. Bobby Robinson used to do that. Place called Wellswood, 126th and 7th Avenue. He used to go in there and take his records and get in his booth and play the blues and all that stuff. They'd cut the jukebox off and party like hell.

I used to do it. I did it. I owned a dancehall named Jazzland, right there on 125th between St. Nicholas and 8th Avenue. In those days, if you were a licensed dancehall with the musicians' union, they didn't want you playing records in a union hall. They used to threaten me about playing records in my hall.

They'd say, "If you play records, we ain't gonna let no musicians play here no more."

I said, "I don't care. No musician's telling me when I play records."

What year is this?

That was 1959, '60, '61, '62, when I had a dancehall. I left in '62. Me and Jocko got together and went to the Audubon Ballroom. I stayed in the Audubon Ballroom from '62 to '67. I had a thing up there, I used to have all the acts up there. Frankie Crocker, Jocko, Rocky G. I'd bring acts up there. Smokey [Robinson], Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Isleys... I had 1,500 kids in there every Sunday. We charged 99 cents and played nothing but records

[Someone from] the musicians' union would come up and give me a hard time, but I'd have my crew take him by the arm and read him the facts of life and slip him a couple of dollars, tell him to take a walk. "Be nice, you know, so that you [can] walk out of here." They knew me, and they knew that I was serious. They knew that I wasn't gonna stop just because of no musicians' union.

And you were actually paying records yourself?

Yeah, sure. I used to be on the radio doing a commercial, and a lot of people, especially Frankie Crocker, used to pick up on what I was saying. I used to say "Hey, hey, hey y'all, This is Paul, Paul Winley. Come on up to the Audubon Ballroom, 166th and Broadway, 99 cents." I did that for a long time. until I got tired of it, after Malcolm X got killed up there. [Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity held weekly meetings at the Audubon, and it was there that he was assassinated in 1965]. Him and I used to be up there every Sunday, until he got killed.

Were you there the night he was killed?

No, they had a dance that night, a calypso dance, so I wasn't there. But when I heard he had got shot, me and Ralph Cooper, we went up there, because he was very close to him. After that, I stopped giving dances at the Audubon. I just backed out in '67, '68, and then in the '70s, I did other things.

How about the hip-hop DJs - the fact that they were scratching and cutting, when did you first hear that?

Well, Flash and them used to do that with Bambaataa. That's when that started.

Because you put out breakbeat albums.

Yeah, [a lot of DJs] couldn't get the records, and even when they could find them I was disgusted [by the prices] the record shops was charging. They used to charge so much, just because the record was hard to find - $25, $30 just for one record. I mean, not a 12" - there were no 12"s - just for a 45. Then they'd put it on a 12". They would go to a studio and have a 12" plate made.

When did that start?

When the DJs first started, so '76, '77. Getting plates made cost them a fortune. I was pissed off with a lot of that stuff, so I started putting out the breaks and it picked up from there... I put out six volumes of those things.

Where did you first see a DJ cutting and scratching?

One of the dances around here... I liked to watch them, because these things were educational and it was artistic. Those kids took a lot to [learn to scratch]. My son was one - called himself DJ Gangster, played with Flash and them, and he would collect records. I used to watch him a lot, and then when I bought my [store on 125th], I used to let a lot of them rehearse there. They'd be cutting and scratching, and they'd get gigs and they'd do all the dances. That's when I really paid attention to it. Bambaataa brought it in from Bronx River, and there was a club where they all used to go, in the Bronx.
Disco Fever?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a madhouse. I used to go past there. Bobby Robinson used to hang in there. I didn't... They were fascinating times. You know, you go through these eras and you don't pay it that much attention, when you're involved with it. It's just a day-to-day thing. You look up years later, and people [are asking] you about this and about that, and at the time it wasn't that important.

You really saw hip-hop as [part of an] an unbroken tradition, from jazz and blues and doo-wop?

It was just taking another step higher.

Is that how most people saw it?

No!

Most people saw it as just a lot of noise?

Yeah, and today a lot of them resent a lot of the language. It got to the point where it got disgusting. When it became commercial, the dirtier it got, the more violent and ugly it got, the bigger it got. That's what happened, until people started putting their foot down and screaming and hollering... It [used to be] like dance music - play it in the clubs, and people will start looking for it. That way, it's still underground.

Where do you think it's headed?

It's headed wherever it is headed. I wouldn't put an end to it. I may put a change to it. People change, their tastes change, times change, [things fall off] and then come back years later. It's like anything else - like the old blues, the old jazz... At this time, I would say to people, "Just enjoy it... because it's gonna be here a while."

This interview was conducted in October 1998. © DJhistory.com

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From Doo-Wop to Hip-Hop: Paul Winley and the Invention of the Breakbeat Compilation

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The label boss and entrepreneur looks back on a career that spanned genres and generations

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Interview w/ Cindy Campbell (Kool Herc's Sister) -The first Hip Hop party 1520 sedgewick Ave

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This article has been handpicked to be included in our Hip Hop 50 collection as a noteworthy inclusion to the genre's rich and diverse narrative.
On Friday, August 11, 2023, anyone sufficiently enraptured by rap music and/or its associated forms - writing (aerosol art), b-boying (breakdancing), and DJing - will, as if on a hair trigger, declare what happened exactly half-a-century ago: was born. Or, said another way, on that day Jamaican expat Clive Campbell godfathered it, performing break-based turntable music in public for the first time as DJ Kool Herc, for his sister Cindy's back-to-school party in the community room of their 1520 Sedgwick Avenue apartment building home in the Bronx.

It was a radical musical act, akin to an earlier one in physics. Like an anti-Oppenheimer, a then 18-year-old Herc formed two critical masses by pulling one apart. This atypical gesture required going back and forth between two identical discs on two identical record players. Doing so extended the "break" - the chewy center of a bass-snare-and-timbale-rich record - and unlocked the core formula of what would change the world as hip-hop.

Further aided that night by syncopated delicacies from his key emcee Coke La Rock, the duo laid down the fundamental rapper-over-music paradigm that has since made vocalists like JAY-Z, Eminem, and Drake multi-multi-millionaires and cultural paragons. In short, Herc's incipient act ultimately gave hip-hop life, then license. The cachet to cross the borders of every nation on the planet, including ones English itself, has barely broached.

As an origin myth, you'd need to rummage through the MCU's best to top it. It's got real underdogs in a battle none would have thought they would wage, let alone win; loads of actual villains; and, despite multitudinous setbacks, a global, celebratory conclusion. If all the ongoing "Hip-Hop at 50" concerts, news coverage, and sober reflections came with confetti, we'd be cleaning it up for weeks.

It is an amazing story. It's inspired this writer for decades. But...is it true?

The following is not so obvious now because we're so used to it. However, when you really think about it, the idea of taking the middle part out of a record and just playing that section over and over - particularly in front of a live, paying audience - is kind of weird.

You wouldn't do that with a movie, TV show, or poem, even today. You wouldn't even do it with a musical concert. But according to the origin myth, that's what Kool Herc did on August 11, 1973, thus inventing hip-hop.

What good reasons do we have to think this actually took place? Well, no one's ever put forward a more satisfactory narrative. The story is useful, and compactly describes how the important roles in hip-hop performance (DJ, rapper, dancer) came to be. As a result, the story makes sense and seems to correlate with historical developments - musical, technological, social, and otherwise - taking place at that time.

There's also the fact that so many people who have deep roots in hip-hop also hold this origin story to be true, and have for a very long time.

"All the great DJs were directly influenced by something that Herc did very early," said Jay Quan, a hip-hop journalist, historian, and lecturer. "Now, was he the first? I don't know. But he was the one that everybody saw. Flash never said that he saw anybody else do it. He said he saw Herc do it."

"The young Sha-Rocks, the , the Scorpios, all those from the Bronx was goin' to Herc parties," legendary promoter and historian Van Silk added. "He was anointed." The same sentiment is held by many other very early hip-hop pioneers of the pre-vinyl era.

Lastly, we appear to have documentary evidence in the form of the widely-circulated "A DJ Kool Herc Party" invite, which many believe was given out in advance of the event.

Given all of this, what, if any, are good reasons to think the origin myth is untrue, or at least flawed?

Well, for one, there seem to be few people who've said they were there that night. Where are the people today who attended the August 11 party? There don't seem to be many, if any, and even Van Silk agreed: "There's nobody in hip-hop, in its current space today, who was there."

Also, writers (aerosol artists) - purveying hip-hop's fourth element - were doing pieces on trains years before August 11, 1973. Herc was a would-be artist and b-boy before he became a DJ. I went to elementary school in NYC and remember seeing pieces on the outside of elevated trains in 1970. If writers are part of hip-hop (let alone b-boys), how could Herc be father to something that precedes him?
Photo by F. Roy Kemp/BIPS/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
But perhaps the most notable point - one that really speaks to this complicated origin story - is that the widely-shared invite card that has become so synonymous with this party, doesn't actually exist. It always seemed a little too complete, a little too perfect, though I ultimately accepted it for what it seemingly wasn't. In August 2022, Christie's Auction House sold a number of Herc's possessions, bringing in over $850,000. The sale included a few 1975 notecards. However, the ubiquitous "A DJ Kool Herc Party" notecard wasn't included, with Christie's deeming it "an artistic recreation." Per an article in , Cindy Campbell also clarified the notecard wasn't real, and "attested that the flier strewn over the internet purported as an actual August 11, 1973 invitation does not exist."

In other words, it's a retro-facsimile with its own complicated backstory (if you want to read more about this object, a recent essay in Perfect Sound Forever outlines its knotty history). According to Van Silk, Herc told him by phone the card was created to launch the extortionate Sedgwick & Cedar clothing line just a few years back. Silk also shared something that, perhaps, highlights at least one temporal error of that notecard, too - that Herc hadn't met Clark Kent ("Klark K"), one of his DJs, until two years later in 1975. And yet, the invite mentions Kent as a special guest.

Also, these promotional cards were hand-written one at a time by Cindy, as noted in the Forbes article. So, when one sees the authentic auctioned ones from 1974, the handwriting is simple, clear, and expeditious, presumably because whatever one writes must be repeated over and over, in order to make as many handouts as possible. But that's in stark contrast to the card we've all come to associate with the party, above.

In other words, the first problem is we must believe Herc's invite designs got far less graphically sophisticated from 1973 to 1974. That's not how designers typically work. Then, because these were handwritten one at a time, this would preclude making a card with, for example, the complicated shadow detail in the August 11 card's headline text, the "SCHOOL'S STILL OUT" inset, and/or even the blocky "PLACE, DATE, TIME" font. The entire layout would form a huge time-waster when doing it one card at a time. Like trying to render fine fleur-de-lis patterns in the sand. This all supports the following hypothesis: the card was designed to look old and authentic but it isn't. It was never handed out, and was only drawn once - for the internet.

Lastly, Herc was not the first DJ to play breaks. This is, perhaps, the most complicated part of these objections, particularly for those of us who were not there. Basically, Herc learned to DJ from working with his dad (who also deejayed); from his own desire, drive, and hard work; and from attending jams in the area at long-gone clubs like the Puzzle, Rat Hole, Plaza Tunnel, and more.

In a 2015 interview with the late Reggie "Combat Jack" Ossé, Herc admitted first hearing Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun" when DJ John Brown played it at the Plaza Tunnel. He learned of The Whole Darn Family's sinuous "Seven Minutes of Funk" at a party he attended, upon which he went right up to the DJ and asked him for the track info (a direct tactic Herc's own scrubbed-off record labels would have certified a major fail).

This was an era dominated by disco and by renowned DJs: Disco King Mario, Smokey and the Smokatrons, Pete DJ Jones, King Charles, Grandmaster Flowers, Master D, Vaughn K, Brown and more. None of these DJs would acquire the legendary and global renown Herc ultimately did, but many would make a profound impression on him. All had their devotees and specialties, and all were trying new techniques, kinds of equipment, and types of records.

In other words, Herc came of age in a rich, fairly mature, and highly influential Black disco subculture, and drew from a buffet of possible approaches. Gifted and dogged researchers are still teasing out the neural pathways of what he saw, but what we can best say is it was profoundly nonlinear. Tentatively, what may ultimately become clear is Herc observed everything he performed in some other setting - including funk breaks and repetition - but not necessarily in one place. Most of all, none of what he saw was aimed at a teenage audience eager to be beguiled, and for whom every aural delight was new. Herc filled this void.

So, with all of this, was hip-hop born on August 11, 1973? Is the godfather of hip-hop? The answer depends on who one, additionally, considers the father and mother of hip-hop and, even more, what one considers hip-hop. As one-time Enjoy Records artist Kool Kyle the Original Starchild told me: "When I started on the microphone it wasn't called hip-hop, because 'hip-hop' didn't exist back then. They were just 'parties.' They were 'the jam.'" So, even the framing of the question can be non-neutral and impose a bias.

Rather than saying hip-hop was born, I prefer to say hip-hop cohered. This is the result of multitudinous actors working over time and laying in details that form a profound mosaic - work which continues now and into the foreseeable future. Hip-hop will decohere when that work ceases and/or when the work which has been done is no longer observed, studied, exchanged, maintained, or valued.

In the words of musicologist Joe Schloss: "People's definitions of hip-hop are generally expressions of what they personally find meaningful or valuable about hip-hop culture. And, because of that, rather than get down in the dirt about the different arguments, I try to take the attitude of, 'It's beautiful that - after 50 years - people are still so passionate, about hip-hop and what it means to them, that they're bothering to argue about it in the first place."

-

Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist & Media Assassin, has covered rap music & its associated forms for over 35 years. He hosts and produces the GRR: Global Race Report podcast, and runs harbanger, a turntablist septet, under HARD: Harry Allen R&D, a boutique for developing "singular and outrageous" projects. Allen is a 2017 Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University. He is also a 2020 CAST (Center for Arts, Science, and Technology) Visiting Artist at M.I.T.
Special thanks to Davey D, Kyra Gaunt, Grandmixer DXT, Loren Kajikawa, Mark Katz, Pete Nash and Gregor Scott for their excellent counsel, ideas and insights. Happy August 11th!

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The story of hip-hop's birthday on August 11, 1973 is an amazing one. But...is it true?

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Hip-hop 50: The party that started hip-hop

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On 11 August 1973, a ‘back to school jam’ in New York’s West Bronx kick-started a movement and birthed a whole culture, writes Rebecca Laurence.

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Street in South Bronx to be Co-Named Hip Hop Boulevard

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A street in the Bronx is being renamed to honor the borough as the birthplace of hip-hop.

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Mayor DiBlasio Renames 1520 Sedgwick Ave. to HIP HOP Blvd. Al Pizarro, Kool Herc, Jacob Morris

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Bronx's Hip Hop Boulevard Marks Where it All Began

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A building located at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue is widely considered the birthplace of this music known as Hip Hop, and on Thursday it became official.

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Chuck D and Will Smith talk impact of Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay on Hip-Hop | Class of '88

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Will & Jaden Smith, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Alfonso Ribeiro Rap! - The Graham Norton Show - BBC

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Dame Dash On Starting Rocawear, His Football League, NFTs, & More | Assets Over Liabilities

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Fatback - King Tim III (Personality Jock)  " Funk 1979 "

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Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message (Official Video)

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Like any style of music, hip hop has roots in other forms, and its evolution was shaped by many different artists, but there's a case to be made that it came to life precisely on August 11, 1973, at a birthday party in the recreation room of an apartment building in the west Bronx, New York City. The location of that birthplace was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, and the man who presided over that historic party was the birthday girl's brother, Clive Campbell-better known to history as DJ Kool Herc, founding father of hip hop.

Born and raised to the age of 10 in Kingston, Jamaica, DJ Kool Herc began spinning records at parties and between sets his father's band played while he was a teenager in the Bronx in the early 1970s. Herc often emulated the style of Jamaican "selectors" (DJs) by "toasting" (i.e., talking) over the records he spun, but his historical significance has nothing to do with rapping. Kool Herc's contribution to hip-hop was even more fundamental.

DJ Kool Herc's signature innovation came from observing how the crowds would react to different parts of whatever record he happened to be playing: "I was noticing people used to wait for particular parts of the record to dance, maybe [to] do their specialty move." Those moments tended to occur at the drum breaks-the moments in a record when the vocals and other instruments would drop out completely for a measure or two of pure rhythm. What Kool Herc decided to do was to use the two turntables in a typical DJ setup not as a way to make a smooth transition between two records, but as a way to switch back and forth repeatedly between two copies of the same record, extending the short drum break that the crowd most wanted to hear. He called his trick the Merry-Go-Round. Today, it is known as the "break beat."

By the summer of 1973, DJ Kool Herc had been using and refining his break-beat style for the better part of a year. His sister's party on August 11, however, put him before his biggest crowd ever and with the most powerful sound system he'd ever worked. It was the success of that party that would begin a grassroots musical revolution, fully six years before the term "hip hop" even entered the popular vocabulary.

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Hip hop is born at a birthday party in the Bronx | August 11, 1973 | HISTORY

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Like any style of music, hip hop has roots in other forms, and its evolution was shaped by many different artists, but there's a case to be made that it came to life precisely on August 11, 1973, at a birthday party in the recreation room of an apartment building in the west Bronx, New [...]

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John Leguizamo vs. Crazy Legs: The History of Breaking in NYC | The Daily Show

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Grandmaster Flash 50 Year of Hip Hop - Full Performance

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On August 11, 1973, the nostalgic teenage coming-of-age movie American Graffiti, directed and co-written by George Lucas, opens in theaters across the United States. Set in California in the summer of 1962, American Graffiti was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, and helped launch the big-screen careers of Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford, as well as the former child actor and future Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard. The film's success enabled Lucas to get his next movie made, the mega-hit (1977).

George Lucas was born May 14, 1944, in Modesto, California, and attended film school at the University of Southern California. He made his directorial debut in 1971 with the futuristic feature THX 1138, which was based on an award-winning project he produced in film school. His next movie was American Graffiti, which followed two young men (Howard and Dreyfuss) who spend a final night cruising around town with their buddies before they are both scheduled to leave for college the next morning. One of the producers of the film was Francis Ford Coppola, who a year earlier had emerged from relative obscurity to direct the instant classic The Godfather. In addition to his Best Director nod, Lucas was also nominated for the American Graffiti screenplay, which he co-wrote with Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck.

Lucas' career-making space odyssey, Star Wars, broke box-office records and ushered in a new wave of filmmaking centered around special effects and fast-paced storylines. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and ultimately collected six Oscars, for Best Effects, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, Best Music, Best Sound and Best Film Editing. Star Wars made millions in merchandise tie-ins and spawned multiple sequels, becoming one of the most popular franchises in movie history. Lucas struck gold again with the screenplay for 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Ford (whom Lucas also directed in three Star Wars films) as the globetrotting archaeologist Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark also became a successful multi-film franchise.

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"American Graffiti" opens | August 11, 1973 | HISTORY

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On August 11, 1973, the nostalgic teenage coming-of-age movie American Graffiti, directed and co-written by George Lucas, opens in theaters across the United States. Set in California in the summer of 1962, American Graffiti was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, and helped launch the big-screen careers of Richard Dreyfuss [...]

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Stay Gold (From "The Outsiders" Soundtrack)