JERRY LEWIS
Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926) is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter, and film director. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis. In addition to the duo’s popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. Lewis is also known as the host, for more than 40 years, of the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s annual Labor Day Telethon and national chairman of the MDA. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. (More from Wikipedia)
Budd Granoff produced Milan’s album, I Am What I Am and also wrote the liner notes. He is best known for his work with Chuck Barris in creating legendary game shows like The Gong Show and The Newlywed Game – not to mention the creation of the first television syndication company to distribute these shows to independent TV stations. Along the way, he put on what has been described as the very first telethon, a marathon 1951 television broadcast to raise money for a cardiac hospital that also happened to showcase two of his clients at the time, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Of course, Jerry Lewis would become the most visible presence in the telethon world over the ensuing six decades.
(July 2012)
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Al Kooper is a New Yorker – he was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Queens. Early on, as part of a songwriting team in New York, he wrote “This Diamond Ring”, which was a 1965 hit for Gary Lewis and the Playboys (he is Jerry Lewis’s son).
(September 2012)
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One of the best songs on the Thomas Anderson album Moon Going Down – it was selected as a “Choice Cut” by Village Voice rock scribe Robert Christgau – is “Jerry’s Kids”. The reference is not to Jerry Lewis’s telethon children, but to the “Deadhead” followers of Jerry Garcia’s band the Grateful Dead.
(November 2012)
