IN: Ronald Shannon Jackson (January 12, 1940 - October 19, 2013) was an American jazz drummer and composer from Fort Worth, Texas. A pioneer of avant-garde jazz, free funk, and jazz fusion, he appeared on over 50 albums as a bandleader, sideman, arranger, and producer. Jackson and bassist Sirone are the only musicians to have performed and recorded with the three prime shapers of free jazz: pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.

Once in New York, Jackson performed with many jazz musicians, including Charles Mingus, Betty Carter, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson, Kenny Dorham, McCoy Tyner, Stanley Turrentine, and others. Whenever he would ask Charles Mingus to consider him for his group, Mingus used to push him "rudely out of his way". After Jackson sat in with pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi, he heard loud clapping behind him. It was Mingus, who asked him to play with his band. In 1966 Jackson recorded drums for saxophonist Charles Tyler's release, Charles Tyler Ensemble. Between 1966 and 1967, he played with saxophonist Albert Ayler and is featured on At Slug's Saloon, Vol. 1 & 2. He is also on disks 3 and 4 of Ayler's Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Records (1962-70). Jackson said Ayler was "the first (leader) that really opened me up. He let me play the drums the way I did in Fort Worth when I wasn't playing for other people." John Coltrane's death in July 1967 devastated Jackson. He spent the next few years addicted to heroin. He said, "I couldn't play drums then, spiritually.... I just didn't feel right." From 1970-74, he did not perform, but continued to practice. In 1974, pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs introduced Jackson to Nichiren Buddhism and chanting. Although initially reluctant, Jackson decided to try it for three weeks. "Then three months had passed. It pulled me together and pulled me out and I was able to focus. I was a Buddhist and a vegetarian for 17 years." By 1975 he joined saxophonist Ornette Coleman's electric free funk band, Prime Time. During his stint in Prime Time, Coleman taught Jackson composition and harmolodics. Jackson says that Coleman told him he was hearing music "in that piccolo range," and encouraged him to compose on the flute. Jackson went to Paris with Prime Time in 1976 to perform concerts and record Dancing in Your Head and Body Meta. In 1978, Jackson played on four albums with pianist Cecil Taylor: Cecil Taylor Unit, 3 Phasis, Live in the Black Forest, and One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye.
QUESTION: Did his album hit the charts?
IN: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (November 25, 1960 - July 16, 1999), often referred to as JFK Jr. or John John, was an American lawyer, journalist, and magazine publisher. He was a son of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and a younger brother of former Ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy. His father was assassinated three days before his third birthday. From his early childhood years at the White House, Kennedy was the subject of great media scrutiny, and he became a popular social figure in Manhattan.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was born at Georgetown University Hospital on November 25, 1960, two weeks after his father was elected president. His parents had a stillborn daughter named Arabella four years before John Jr.'s birth. John Jr. had an older sister, Caroline, and a younger brother, Patrick, who died two days after his premature birth in 1963. His putative nickname, "John-John", came from a reporter who misheard JFK calling him "John" twice in quick succession; the name was not used by his family. John Jr. lived in the White House during the first three years of his life and later remained in the public spotlight up until his death. His father was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and the state funeral was held three days later, on John Jr.'s third birthday. In a moment that became an iconic image of the 1960s, John Jr. stepped forward and rendered a final salute as his father's flag-draped casket was carried out from St. Matthew's Cathedral. The family continued with their plans for a birthday party to demonstrate that the Kennedys would go on despite the death of the President. Kennedy attended private schools in Manhattan, starting at Saint David's School and moving to Collegiate School, which he attended from third through tenth grade. He completed high school at Phillips Academy Andover, Massachusetts. After graduating, he went to Brown University where he majored in American studies. There, he co-founded a student discussion group that focused on contemporary issues such as apartheid in South Africa, gun control, and civil rights. Visiting South Africa during a summer break, he was appalled by apartheid, and arranged for U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young to speak about the topic at Brown. By his junior year at Brown, he had moved off campus to live with several other students in a shared house, and spent time at Xenon, a club owned by Howard Stein. Kennedy was initiated into Phi Psi, a local social fraternity that had been the Rhode Island Alpha Chapter of national Phi Kappa Psi fraternity until 1978. He graduated in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in American studies, and then took a break from work, traveling to India and spending some time at the University of Delhi, where he met Mother Teresa. He also worked with some of the Kennedy special interest projects, including the East Harlem School at Exodus House and Reaching Up.
QUESTION: What else is important to know about his early life?
IN: Marvin Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He has written more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He has received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer. Simon grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood.

Simon's characters are typically portrayed as "imperfect, unheroic figures who are at heart decent human beings", according to Koprince, and she traces Simon's style of comedy to that of Menander, a playwright of ancient Greece. Menander, like Simon, also used average people in domestic life settings, the stories also blending humor and tragedy into his themes. Many of Simon's most memorable plays are built around two-character scenes, as in segments of California Suite and Plaza Suite. Before writing, Simon tries to create an image of his characters. He says that the play, Star Spangled Girl which was a box-office failure, was "the only play I ever wrote where I did not have a clear visual image of the characters in my mind as I sat down at the typewriter." Simon considers "character building" as an obligation, stating that the "trick is to do it skillfully". While other writers have created vivid characters, they have not created nearly as many as Simon: "Simon has no peers among contemporary comedy playwrights," states biographer Robert Johnson. Simon's characters often amuse the audience with sparkling "zingers," believable due to Simon's skill with writing dialogue. He reproduces speech so "adroitly" that his characters are usually plausible and easy for audiences to identify with and laugh at. His characters may also express "serious and continuing concerns of mankind ... rather than purely topical material". McGovern notes that his characters are always impatient "with phoniness, with shallowness, with amorality", adding that they sometimes express "implicit and explicit criticism of modern urban life with its stress, its vacuity, and its materialism." However, Simon's characters will never be seen thumbing his or her nose at society."
QUESTION:
Are there any other qualities the audience enjoys?