World of faces

Famous people all over the world

Billy Preston – American keyboardist

Billy Preston - American keyboardist

Billy Preston – American keyboardist


Billy Preston (September 2, 1946, Houston – June 6, 2006, Scottsdale) was an American keyboardist. During his musical career, he worked with such performers as Mahalia Jackson, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Sam Cook, Little Richard, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin and Elton John. His career embraced soul, R & B, gospel and rock ‘n’ roll.
William Everett Preston was a child prodigy. Since early childhood he had been playing the piano on his mother’s knee. At the age of ten he performed for gospel giants Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland.
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Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya

Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya

Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya

An outstanding poet, the Nobel Prize laureate Boris Pasternak, was largely owed to a woman who entered his life so suddenly to stay there until the last days.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow on January 29 (February 10) in 1890 into the family of an artist and pianist. Famous people gathered in their house: artists, musicians, writers, and from childhood Boris was familiar with the most famous people of art in Russia. At the age of eighteen, Pasternak entered the Faculty of Law of the Moscow Imperial University, and a year later was transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology. The young man wished to become a philosopher. A few years later, on the money collected by a careful mother, the young man went to Germany to listen to lectures of the famous German philosopher. But there he was disappointed in this science and went to Italy. Boris returned to Moscow with an insistent desire to devote himself to literature and poetry.
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Jani Lane – American musician

Jani Lane - American musician

Jani Lane – American musician


Jani Lane was an accomplished pianist, guitarist and drummer. He was a songwriter, frontman and leader of the American glam metal group Warrant. The band was popular in the late 80s and until the mid-90.
John Kennedy Oswald (his real name) was born on February 1, 1964 in Akron, Ohio. He was one of a huge family of talented musicians. By the age of 11 he was playing the clubs. After graduating from Field High School, Lane joined the Cyren group as a drummer. In 1983 he moved to Florida and founded the group Dorian Gray. In Dorian Gray, he played drums until the formation of the Plain Jane group with a future Warrant colleague Steven Sweet. It was at this time that Lane took the stage name Jani Lane.
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Alex Harvey – Scottish rock musician

Alex Harvey - Scottish rock musician

Alex Harvey – Scottish rock musician


Alex Harvey was a Scottish rock musician, songwriter and vocalist, best known as the frontman of Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
Alex Harvey was born in Glasgow on 5 February 1935. At the age of fifteen, he left school and then (as he later claimed) tried his hand at 36 different professions (including a lion tamer). In 1954, Harvey made his debut on the professional stage, playing a trumpet at a wedding in Glasgow.
Harvey’s musical roots were in Dixieland jazz and skiffle, and he fronted a soul band during the early sixties. In 1957 Alex was a winner of a Scottish newspaper talent contest and received title Tommy Steel of Scotland.
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Mia Zapata – American rock singer

Mia Zapata - American rock singer

Mia Zapata – American rock singer


Mia Zapata was an American rock singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist, soloist of the group The Gits (1986-1993).
Mia Katherine Zapata was born on August 25, 1965 in Louisville, Kentucky.
At the age of 9, the girl learned to play the guitar and piano. She was influenced by such artists as Bessie Smith, Billy Holiday, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Hank Williams and Sam Cook. In 1984, Mia entered the college located in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1986 at college she and her three friends (Joe Spleen, Matt Dresdner and Steve Moriarty) formed the band The Gits.
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Harry Chapin – American musician

Harry Chapin – American musician

Harry Chapin – American musician


Harry Chapin was a famous American musician, poet and composer. He became the author of several songs, which later turned out to be world hits.
Harry Chapin was born on December 7, 1942 in Greenwich Village, New York. He was the son of Jim Chapin, a noted jazz drummer who headed his own sextet. Jim also had been a regular player alongside Woody Herman and Tommy Dorsey during the forties. When his family moved to Brooklyn Heights Harry sang with a local boys’ choir. Harry with two more musical brothers in the family put together an onoff group. In 1966 they recorded an album, Chapin Music.
After graduating from the Brooklyn Technical School, Chapin was drafted into the army. For some time he was a cadet at the US Air Force Academy.
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Charles Lindbergh – Lucky Lindy

Charles Lindbergh - Lucky Lindy

Charles Lindbergh – Lucky Lindy


Charles Lindbergh was an American aviator. He was the first person to fly an airplane alone across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born on February 4, 1902, in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a congressman from Minnesota.
He studied flying in Lincoln, Nebraska (1920-1922). He made his first solo flight in 1923 and thereafter made exhibition flights and short hops in the Midwest.
In 1926 he began flying mail between Saint Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois.
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