Post a true but little known fact about someone famous, living or dead.

[solara]

255. About Bessie Smith & Billie Holiday, the Gershwin Bros & more.

On November 24, 1933, Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith, made her last recording, "Down in the Dumps" with 'Buck & His Band' including, Buck Washington, piano, Benny Goodman, clarinet; Jack Teagarden, trombone;

Four days later, November 27 1933 Buck, Benny, Jack, and most of the band were accompanying Ethel Waters on a Columbia session- in the same studio - and the last side they recorded that day featured Billie Holiday's first appearance on a record, "Riffin' the Scotch".

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One of the most popular songs in the American Songbook is "Our Love is Here To Stay", by the George & Ira Gershwin. Originally called "Love Is Here to Stay" it was the last musical composition George Gershwin completed before his death on July 11, 1937. Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics after George's death as a tribute to his brother. "It's very clear, our love is here to stay..not for a year, but ever and a day"

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1971 when "Jesus Christ Superstar" was a huge hit on Broadway, one of the first recordings by Luther Van Dross was from a musical by Teddy Vann called "The Song of Moses" Luther, of course sang the part of Moses, I don't believe it was ever finished or released.

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Last and perhaps the weirdest of all.. Pauline Pierce, Barbara Bush’s mother, may have been one of four people who helped Aleister Crowley explore sex magick, when he was living in Paris 1924-1929.in a ritual called the rite of Eroto-Comotose Lucidity in the Ordo Templi Orientis, the organization Crowley founded in the 1920s, which lead to the rumor that Crowley was Barbara Bush's grandfather. This ritual was supposed to help Crowley reach the “Grade of Ipsissimus, the highest magickal achievement within his order of Thelema.”

As an aside.. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard In 1945-46, was briefly involved with Jack Parsons, an American rocketry pioneer who was also a devoted Thelemite and member of the Agape Lodge of Aleister Crowley's magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis, in Pasadena, California.[