Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist. Basquiat first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti group who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk and street art movements had coalesced. By the 1980s he was exhibiting his Neo-expressionist and Primtivist paintings in galleries and museums internationally, but he died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27 in 1988. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and occasional singer.

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz vocalist with a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6). Often referred to as the "First Lady of Song" and the "Queen of Jazz," she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane, also known as "Trane" (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967), was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and was later at the forefront of freee jazz. He organized at least fifty recording sessions as a leader during his career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk.

Jacques Prévert

Jacques Prévert (4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best regarded films formed part of the poetic realist movement, and include Les Enfans du Paradis (1945).

Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel ( 8 April 1929 – 9 October 1978) was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in Belgium and France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson. Although he recorded most of his songs in French, he became a major influence on English-speaking songwriters and performers such as David Bowie, Alex Harvey, Leonard Cohen, Marc Almond and Rod McKuen. English translations of his songs were recorded by many top performers in the United States, including Ray Charles, Judy Collins, John Denver, the Kingston Trio, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, Scott Walker and Andy Williams. In French-speaking countries, Brel was also a successful actor, appearing in ten films. He also directed two films, one of which, Le Far West, was nominated for the Palme d`Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973. Jacques Brel has sold over 25 million records worldwide, and is the third best-selling Belgian recoding artist of all time.

Kennedy family

The Kennedy family is a prominent family in American politics  and government, descending from Irish farmers John Kennedy (1738–1803) and Bridget Shallow (1744–1774). Their son James Kennedy (1770–1835) inherited his father's farm. James and his wife Maria (1779–1835) had three sons, the youngest of which was farmer Patrick Kennedy (1823–1858). Patrick met his future wife, Bridget Murphy (c. 1824–1888), while they were sailing from Ireland to America in 1849. Patrick and Bridget's younger son was businessman/politician Patrick Joseph "P.J." Kennedy (1858–1929). The elder son of P.J. and his wife Mary Augusta Hickey (1857–1923) was U.S. England Ambassador Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. (1888–1969). The four sons of Joe Sr. and his wife philanthropist/socialite Rose Elisabeth Fitzgerald (1890–1995) were Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy Jr. (1915–1944), John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (1917–1963), Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (1925–1968), and Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (1932–2009). Jack served as President from January 1961 to his death in November 1963 while Bobby and Ted both became prominent Senators. The Kennedys' political involvement has revolved around the Democratic Party. Harvard University educations have been common among them, and they have contributed heavily to that university's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The wealth, glamor, and photogenic quality of the family members, as well as their extensive and continuing involvement in public service, has elevated them to iconic status over the past half-century, with the Kennedys sometimes referred to as "America's Royal Family".

Abbey Road

Abbey Road is the 11th studio album released by the English rock band the Beatles. It is their last recorded album, although Let It Be was the last album released before the band's dissolution in 1970. Work on Abbey Road began in April 1969, and the album was released on 26 September 1969 in the United Kingdom, and 1 October 1969 in the United States.

Cole Porter

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre.  After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Boadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs.

E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect ... ". His 1908 novel, A Room with a View,  is his most optimistic work, while A Passage to India (1924) brought him his greatest success.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.