title: Root cause analysis

text: Second, gathering data and evidence, and classifying them along a timeline of events to the final problem, can be nontrivial. In telecommunications, for instance, distributed monitoring systems typically manage between a million and a billion events per day. Finding a few relevant events in such a mass of irrelevant events is asking to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.


title: Root cause analysis

text: Third, there may be more than one root cause for a given problem, and this multiplicity can make the causal graph very difficult to establish.


title: Root cause analysis

text: Fourth, causal graphs often have many levels, and root-cause analysis terminates at a level that is "root" to the eyes of the investigator. Looking again at the example above in industrial process control, a deeper investigation could reveal that the maintenance procedures at the plant included periodic inspection of the lubrication subsystem every two years, while the current lubrication subsystem vendor's product specified a 6-month period. Switching vendors may have been due to management's desire to save money, and a failure to consult with engineering staff on the implication of the change on maintenance procedures. Thus, while the "root cause" shown above may have prevented the quoted recurrence, it would not have prevented other perhaps more severe failures affecting other machines.


title: Bart Johnson

text: Barton Robert Johnson (born December 13, 1970), is an American actor, best known for his role as Coach Jack Bolton in the "High School Musical" film series. He was exposed to the TV and film industry at a young age and began his career in the mid-1990s. His film debut was "My Family" in 1995. He has also appeared in recurring roles on TV shows "Hyperion Bay", Lifetime's "The Client List", and "Hawaii Five-0". He is married to actress Robyn Lively, with whom he has appeared in "Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street". He also appeared in the 2018 adaptation of "Little Women".


title: Bart Johnson

text: Johnson was born in Hollywood, California, one of seven children. Their mother Charlene Johnson is a television hairstylist, and so Bart spent much of his early childhood on television sets such as "The Brady Bunch", "Mork and Mindy", and "Charlie's Angels". At the age of 15, he moved from California to Utah, where he graduated from Wasatch High School. His family converted a flour mill near Park City, Utah into the Johnson Mill Bed & Breakfast, which Johnson later purchased from his parents. His first acting experience was a production of "West Side Story". Johnson attended college at the University of Utah as a pre-med student before deciding to transfer to Yale University's drama program.


title: Bart Johnson

text: Johnson's first appeared in film with "My Family" in 1995. He then had guest roles on the following TV shows: "" (1995), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (1997), "Sunset Beach" (1997), "Jag" (1997, 2004), and "Babylon 5" (1998). From 1998 to 1999, he appeared on The WB's television show "Hyperion Bay" as local bully Nelson Tucker.


title: Bart Johnson

text: He is well-known for his role as the "High School Musical" series' Coach Jack Bolton, father of star player Troy Bolton (Zac Efron). He was invited to audition by director Kenny Ortega, who became a family friend after Johnson's mother's work as a hair stylist on the set of "Newsies". Ortega persuaded executives to accept Johnson for the role after he auditioned with little background knowledge on his role.


title: Bart Johnson

text: Johnson had a recurring role on the TV series "The Client List" for Lifetime as Beau Berkhalter as well as on "Gortimer Gibbon's Life On Normal Street" for Amazon, alongside his wife Robyn Lively and their three children. He starred in a Hallmark movie, "The Christmas Spirit", alongside Nicollette Sheridan. Johnson also appeared in the 2013 vampire comedy "Vamp U". He portrayed Senator Gordon H. Smith in "The Saratov Approach", a film based on the 1998 kidnapping of LDS missionaries in Saratov, Russia. He has worked on multiple projects with his brothers, including a short film about the brothers' adventures in Mexico entitled "The Run," as well as "Waffle Street," an independent movie filmed in Lehi, Utah. He appeared alongside wife Robyn Lively and actress Katee Sackhoff in the independent film "Lockdown" (later renamed "A Deadly Obsession") in 2011. In 2018, he played Papa March in a modern-day adaptation of "Little Women". In 2020, he appeared as Siena Agudong's character's father on Hawaii Five-0.


title: Bart Johnson

text: Johnson is the owner of the Johnson Mill Bed & Breakfast in Midway, Utah, near Park City, Utah. According to a 2008 website article WorkHomeYou.com, "Redbook" determined it to be one of the four most romantic in the country. In 2012, it was awarded the AAA Four Diamond Award. Johnson converted the bed and breakfast into a treatment center for those recovering from drug addictions.


title: Bart Johnson

text: Johnson's brothers, Adam and Brad, also work in film. He is married to actress Robyn Lively, sister of actresses Blake Lively and Lori Lively and actors Eric Lively and Jason Lively. Bart and Robyn have three children: daughter Kate and sons Baylen and Wyatt Blake. In 2019, he accompanied his son Baylen on a humanitarian trip to Samoa, where they joined a group of youth to build a classrooms for two weeks. He and wife Robyn Lively are practicing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Julia Anne Sweeney (born October 10, 1959) is an American actress, comedian, and author, who gained fame as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" from 1990 to 1994. She played Mrs. Keeper in the film "Stuart Little" and voiced Brittany in "Father of the Pride". She recently appeared in the Hulu series "Shrill", the Showtime series "Work in Progress", and the Starz series "American Gods".


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Sweeney was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, the daughter of Robert Mark Sweeney and Jeraldine "Jeri" Sweeney ( Ivers). Her father was an attorney and federal prosecutor, while her mother was a homemaker. She has an Irish Catholic background. Sweeney is the oldest of five children; she had two brothers, William Robert "Bill" Sweeney, and Michael Ivers Sweeney, who both died, and has a brother, Jim Sweeney, and a sister, Meg Sweeney.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: As a child, she was drawn to imitating voices and inventing characters. She attended Marycliff High School and Gonzaga Preparatory School, where she appeared in a number of plays. She graduated with a double major in economics and European history from the University of Washington, where she was student body vice president and became a member of Delta Gamma sorority. After graduation, Sweeney moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as an accountant for Columbia Pictures and United Artists.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: In 1988, while still working as an accountant, Sweeney enrolled in classes with the improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings, eventually being selected to be part of the troupe's Sunday Company. It was at The Groundlings that she began to develop characters, which she would later bring to the stage, film, and television. They include Mea Culpa, the title character of "Mea's Big Apology" (co-written by then-husband Stephen Hibbert), which won the Best Written Play Award from "L.A. Weekly" in 1988, and has been developed by Sweeney (in collaboration with Jim Emerson) into a screenplay; and the androgynous Pat.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: At a Groundlings performance in 1989, "Saturday Night Live" ("SNL") producer Lorne Michaels discovered Sweeney and offered her a spot as one of "Saturday Night Live"'s featured players. She joined the regular "Saturday Night Live" cast the following year and remained with the show through four seasons, from 1990 to 1994. One of her most popular characters was Pat, whose impossible-to-determine gender was the basis for Sweeney's popular "It's Pat!" skits on "Saturday Night Live", and a later feature film of the same name, which was a critical and commercial failure.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: After leaving the cast of "Saturday Night Live", Sweeney returned to Los Angeles where, shortly afterwards, her career was put on hold by a series of personal traumas. Her brother Michael was diagnosed with lymphoma, and shortly thereafter Sweeney discovered that she too had cancer. Her brother did not survive the cancer. Throughout the ordeal, Sweeney told stories of her experiences in serio-comic performances at L.A.'s alternative comedy club, the Un-Cabaret, eventually developing the stories into a one-woman stage show called "God Said Ha!", which debuted at San Francisco's Magic Theater in 1995.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: "God Said Ha!" moved to Broadway, winning the 1996 New York Comedy Festival's Audience Award, and a CD recording of the show earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album that same year. Miramax released a film version of the show in 1998, directed by Sweeney and produced by Quentin Tarantino. The film earned the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle Film Festival, and was released on DVD in 2003. Portions of the monologues from Un-Cabaret were featured on episode 9 of "This American Life" (then known as "Your Radio Playhouse") in January 1996. Since her initial monologue, she has appeared on three more "This American Life" episodes.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Sweeney's second monologue chronicled the adoption of her daughter from China. "In the Family Way" started on stage in New York City in early 2003 at the Ars Nova Theatre. The show was directed by Broadway stage director Mark Brokaw, before migrating to the Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles. Sweeney has also released a CD recording of "In the Family Way" and, in 2006, performed a 25-minute excerpt of the show at the Hollywood Bowl with a new orchestration written especially for her piece by composer Anthony Marinelli and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Sweeney's third autobiographical monologue is titled "Letting Go of God". In it, she discusses her Catholic upbringing, early religious ideology, and the life events and internal search that led her to believe that the universe can function on its own without a deity to preside over it; as well as her becoming an atheist. Sweeney shares the account of when her mother told her that her birthday was really October 10 instead of September 10, and how traumatic it was to discover she was not a winsome Virgo but really a Libra.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: An audio recording of "Letting Go of God" was released on CD in 2006, and it was filmed live on stage in May 2007. The film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 13, 2008, and the DVD of the show was released in November 2008.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: After taking some years out of the limelight to be a suburban Chicago housewife and mother, Sweeney returned with a fourth monologue in which she riffs on contemporary politics and religion, among other topics. The performance was so popular that it sold out its original six-day run at the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, as well as a one-week extension.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Sweeney appeared at the 2019 CSICon put on by the Center for Inquiry (CFI), where she presented about half of the monologue for the conference attendees.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: In a segment for "This American Life" in 1999, Sweeney describes one of her first jobs as a bartender's assistant, and how she began embezzling funds from her employer, and the consequences thereof.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: In 1992, Sweeney worked with the rock band Ugly Kid Joe, performing in the music video for their hit "Neighbor" and contributing introductory audio for two tracks, "Goddamn Devil" and "Everything About You". The latter was on the soundtrack to the Lorne Michaels movie "Wayne's World".


title: Julia Sweeney

text: In 1994, she had a small role as "Raquel" in the movie "Pulp Fiction"; other film roles include "", "Coneheads", "Vegas Vacation", "Clockstoppers", "Whatever It Takes", and "Stuart Little".


title: Julia Sweeney

text: In 2000, she provided the voice of Wanda MacPherson in the short-lived The WB/Adult Swim animated sitcom "Baby Blues". She was also the voice of Margo on the ABC animated series "The Goode Family", Dr. Glove on "Back at the Barnyard", Miss Tronica on "Lloyd in Space", and Sheri Squibbles in Pixar's 2013 animated film "Monsters University".


title: Julia Sweeney

text: A veteran of live television, Sweeney made her mark on primetime television as a series regular on "George and Leo" and "Maybe It's Me", and guest starred on "3rd Rock from the Sun", "Hope & Gloria", "Mad About You", and "According to Jim". In 2004, she co-starred in two episodes of "Frasier", as Frasier's blind date turned litigious unwanted houseguest, Ann Hodges. She had a guest role on "Sex and the City", and served as a consultant for its last three seasons, as well as consulting on season two of "Desperate Housewives". In 2019, she played a terrorist grandmother in season 6 of the American cop comedy series "Brooklyn 99".


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Sweeney met singer/songwriter Jill Sobule at a Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference, and performed together in 2008. They took the show, called "Jill and Julia", on the road in 2009 and 2010, performing in New York, Denver and other locations. It was an autobiographical mix of music, stories, and commentary.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: From 2009 to 2010, Sweeney was also part of the regular rotation of panelists for the NPR news quiz radio show "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!", in downtown Chicago. In 2021 Sweeney was cast in the third season of "American Gods" on Starz.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Sweeney has long pushed for acceptance of people who are not religious, and in 2019 she was appointed to be on the board of directors of the Center for Inquiry.


title: Julia Sweeney

text: Sweeney is married to scientist Michael Blum. They live in Chicago with their daughter, whom they adopted from China.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The Raconteurs (, also known as The Saboteurs in Australia) is an American rock band from Detroit, Michigan, formed in 2005. The band consists of Jack White (vocals, guitar), Brendan Benson (vocals, guitar), Jack Lawrence (bass guitar), and Patrick Keeler (drums). Lawrence and Keeler were originally members of the Greenhornes, while White and Lawrence went on to become members of the Dead Weather.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The band is based in Nashville, Tennessee. According to the band's official website, "The seed was sown in an attic in the middle of a hot summer when friends Jack White and Brendan Benson got together and wrote a song that truly inspired them. This song was 'Steady, As She Goes' and the inspiration led to the creation of a full band with the addition of Lawrence and Keeler." The band came together in Detroit during 2005 and recorded when time allowed for the remainder of the year. Due to the various members' success in other bands, they were quickly dubbed a supergroup. The band, however, asserted they were not, saying that the term implies something pre-planned or temporary, whereas they are actually "a new band made up of old friends."


title: The Raconteurs

text: The band are known as "The Saboteurs" in the Australian market, due to a Queensland band already using the name "Raconteurs". The Queensland band refused to give up their name for the amount of money they were offered, and instead asked for a higher price from The Raconteurs' record company, who refused to pay the greater amount. A member of the Queensland band said that they had not been informed of who was trying to buy their name and asked for the larger sum of money to see what would happen.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The band has played a number of music festivals in Europe, Asia, and North America (including Oxegen in Ireland; Reading Festival, Leeds Festival, Glastonbury Festival, and T in the Park in the United Kingdom; Heineken Open'er Festival in Poland; Vegoose in Las Vegas; Lollapalooza in Chicago; Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee; Austin City Limits Music Festival in Austin, Texas; Coachella in Indio, California; and Orlando Calling in Orlando, Florida), headlining many.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The Raconteurs' full-length debut, "Broken Boy Soldiers", was recorded at Brendan Benson's in-home studio located in Detroit. The first single was "Steady, As She Goes/Store Bought Bones" and was released as a limited-edition 7-inch, 45 rpm vinyl record in Europe on January 30, 2006, and in North America on March 7, 2006. A CD version of "Steady, As She Goes" was released on April 24, 2006, with the B-side "Bane Rendition".


title: The Raconteurs

text: The Raconteurs first performed live at the Academy in Liverpool, UK, on March 20, 2006, launching a short British tour. Their first American date was the following month, on April 20, at New York City's Irving Plaza. Nearly nonstop touring followed, bringing the band to audiences around North America and Europe. The high profile of Jack White meant that even though the band was new, they were able to sell out mid-size venues—a rarity for a band's first tour.


title: The Raconteurs

text: "Broken Boy Soldiers" was released on May 15, 2006, in the UK on Third Man Recordings/XL Recordings and May 16 in the U.S. on Third Man Recordings/V2 Records. It entered the UK charts at No. 2 and the U.S. charts at No. 7.


title: The Raconteurs

text: In November 2006, the Raconteurs played eight dates as the opening act for Bob Dylan on the north-eastern leg of his U.S. tour. On November 3, 2006, the Raconteurs performed the song "Store Bought Bones" and the title track, "Broken Boy Soldier" on "Later with Jools Holland". According to "Planet Sound" (who had reporters in attendance), during "Store Bought Bones", White's guitar malfunctioned and they had to re-play the song. This eventually happened four times, with the band breaking up in laughter by the fourth take. The TV airing used edited pieces from all four performances and cut out any laughter. The band's cover of "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones appeared on a 40-year anniversary of the BBC live compilation. They played it live on a John Peel tribute.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The band has performed a number of covers during live shows. For instance, the set list usually includes renditions of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" (a song written by Sonny Bono and popularized by both Cher and Nancy Sinatra) and "Headin' for the Texas Border" by The Flamin' Groovies. Other songs the band has covered include Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?", Ron Davies' "It Ain't Easy", Love's "A House Is Not a Motel", and Charley Jordan's "Keep It Clean". The band has also covered the song "Floating" by the Irish band Jape, and "Send Me a Postcard", by Dutch band Shocking Blue. They have also performed an old Blues song written by Big Joe Williams in 1935 (popularized by Van Morrison's "Them" in 1964), "Baby, Please Don't Go."


title: The Raconteurs

text: In December 2006, the band's debut album, "Broken Boy Soldiers", was awarded the title Album of the Year by Britain's "Mojo" magazine. In 2007, the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. The Raconteurs were nominated for two awards at the 49th Annual Grammys: one for Best Rock Album for "Broken Boy Soldiers", and another for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "Steady, As She Goes" although they did not win in either category.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The intro and ending of "Steady, As She Goes" is often used to play out Saturday Live, a long running radio programme on BBC Radio4.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The Raconteurs released their second album, "Consolers of the Lonely", on March 25, 2008. The first single, "Salute Your Solution", was released the same day.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The band also played tour dates including: Coachella on April 25, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 4, Bonnaroo on June 13, T in the Park in Scotland on July 12, Oxegen festival in Ireland on July 13 and The Open'er Festival in Poland on July 4. They played at "The Pyramid Stage" at the Glastonbury Festival 2008 on June 28, the Montreux Jazz festival on July 7, at Lollapalooza on August 1, and on the main stage of Reading and Leeds Festival 2008 on August 23 and 24, as well as at the Austin City Limits Music Festival on September 26–28, 2008. They played "The Eden Sessions" at the Eden Project in Cornwall on June 29. The band also toured the U.S. during summer 2008. In 2009, "Consolers of the Lonely" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album but lost to Coldplay's album Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends but the band did win the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.


title: The Raconteurs

text: In an interview in February 2010, Brendan Benson stated that the future of The Raconteurs was ambiguous, stating "I think we're all just really focused on other things." He went on to add that "it will come around and we'll get together again and hang out and maybe make a record or maybe not." On April 17, 2010, Benson and Keeler performed Raconteurs songs as The Racontwoers at Jack White's Third Man Records venue to coincide with a repressing of "Broken Boy Soldiers" on copper-colored vinyl. The pair was accompanied by Mark Watrous and Andrew Higley.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The band played at the MI Fest on September 17, 2011, as well as September 15 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. On November 12, 2011, the band played the inaugural Orlando Calling festival in Orlando, Fl. The Raconteurs announced an additional American show to play at The Tabernacle in Atlanta, Georgia on November 13, 2011. In April 2012, Third Man Records released two songs that were supposed to appear on Consolers of the Lonely: "Open Your Eyes" and "You Make a Fool Out of Me". The songs were re-recorded for Brendan Benson's next solo album 'My Old, Familiar Friend'. In February 2013, Jack White announced that the band was back in the studio recording new music. In March 2014, in an interview in The Guardian newspaper, Brendan Benson announced that a new album was "kind of off the table", suggesting that a new album was not currently in the works, and that the band's hiatus was more like a split.


title: The Raconteurs

text: Benson and Lawrence joined White onstage during the encore of his January 28, 2015 concert at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, TN. They played "Salute Your Solution" and "Steady, As She Goes". Keeler was unable to join since he was on tour with The Afghan Whigs at the time.


title: The Raconteurs

text: On October 8, 2018, Third Man Records announced a deluxe reissue of "Consolers of the Lonely" through the label's Vault quarterly subscription service would feature two newly-recorded songs, "Sunday Driver" and "Now That You're Gone", on an accompanied 7-inch vinyl. Both songs were made available digitally on December 19 and subsequently were included on the 2019 album "Help Us Stranger". The album was released on June 21, 2019.


title: The Raconteurs

text: "Help Us Stranger" was recorded at Third Man Studio in Nashville. White and Benson wrote all songs except for a cover of "Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness)", by Donovan. The album was produced by The Raconteurs and engineered by Joshua V. Smith. Musical collaborators included Dean Fertita of The Dead Weather and Queens of the Stone Age and Lillie Mae and Scarlett Rische of Jypsi. The album was mixed by Vance Powell and The Raconteurs at Blackbird Studios in Nashville.


title: The Raconteurs

text: The band announced plans for a live album entitled "Live in Tulsa," which was recorded live at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma from October 13, 2019 through October 16, 2019.


title: The Raconteurs

text: In May 2020, the band released their "Live at Electric Lady" EP and documentary via Spotify. The documentary features a studio cover of the Richard Hell & the Voidoids classic “Blank Generation” as well as the full concert in studio A.


title: Neil Jordan

text: Neil Patrick Jordan (born 25 February 1950) is an Irish film director, screenwriter, novelist and short-story writer. His first book, "Night in Tunisia", won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979. He won an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay) for "The Crying Game" (1992). He has also won three Irish Film and Television Awards, as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for "Michael Collins" (1996) and the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival for "The Butcher Boy" (1997).


title: Neil Jordan

text: Jordan also created "The Borgias" (2011 TV series) for Showtime and Riviera (2017 TV series) for Sky Atlantic.


title: Neil Jordan

text: Jordan was born in Sligo, the son of Angela (née O'Brien), a painter, and Michael Jordan, a professor. He was educated at St. Paul's College, Raheny. Later, Jordan attended University College Dublin, where he studied Irish history and English literature. He graduated in 1972 with a BA in History. He became involved in student theatre there, where he met Jim Sheridan, who also was later to become an important Irish film director. Of his religious background, Jordan said in a 1999 "Salon" interview: "I was brought up a Catholic and was quite religious at one stage in my life, when I was young. But it left me with no scars whatever; it just sort of vanished." He said about his current beliefs that "God is the greatest imaginary being of all time. Along with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, the invention of God is probably the greatest creation of human thought."


title: Neil Jordan

text: Neil Jordan's career began in the late 1970s working for the Irish television channel, RTÉ. Included in his work was writing storylines for the children's fantasy series, "Wanderly Wagon".


title: Neil Jordan

text: In 1981, when John Boorman was filming "Excalibur" in Ireland, he recruited Jordan as a "creative associate". A year later Boorman was executive producer on Jordan's first feature "Angel", a tale of a musician caught up in the Troubles played by Stephen Rea who has subsequently appeared in almost all of Jordan's films to date. During the 1980s, he directed films that won him acclaim, including "The Company of Wolves" and "Mona Lisa", both made in England. "The Company of Wolves", a dark and sexually-themed reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale based on short stories by Angela Carter, became a cult favourite.


title: Neil Jordan

text: As a writer/director, Jordan has a highly idiosyncratic body of work, ranging from mainstream hits like "Interview with the Vampire" to commercial failures like "We're No Angels" to a variety of more personal, low-budget arthouse pictures. He was also the driving force behind the cable TV series "The Borgias".


title: Neil Jordan

text: Unconventional sexual relationships are a recurring theme in Jordan's work, and he often finds a sympathetic side to characters that audiences would traditionally consider deviant or downright horrifying. His film "The Miracle", for instance, followed two characters who struggled to resist a strong, incestuous attraction. "Interview with the Vampire", like the Anne Rice book it was based on, focused on the intense, intimate interpersonal relationship of two undead men who murder humans nightly (although the pair never have sex, they are clearly lovers of a sort), accompanied by an equally complex vampire woman who is eternally trapped in the body of a little girl. While Lestat (Tom Cruise) is depicted in an attractive but villainous manner, his partner Louis (Brad Pitt) and the child vampire Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) are meant to capture the audience's sympathy despite their predatory nature. In the remake of "The End of the Affair", two people (Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore) engage in a love affair that will end as suddenly as it started, with both not wanting its end.


title: Neil Jordan

text: In addition to the unusual sexuality of Jordan's films, he frequently returns to the Troubles of Northern Ireland. "The Crying Game" and "Breakfast on Pluto" both concern a transgender character (played by Jaye Davidson and Cillian Murphy, respectively), both concern The Troubles, and both feature frequent Jordan leading man Stephen Rea. The two films, however, are very different, with "Crying Game" being a realistic thriller/romance and "Breakfast on Pluto" a much more episodic, stylised, darkly comic biography. Jordan also frequently tells stories about children or young people, such as "The Miracle" and "The Butcher Boy". While his pictures are most often grounded in reality, he occasionally directs more fantastic or dreamlike films, such as "The Company of Wolves", "High Spirits", "Interview with the Vampire" and "In Dreams".


title: Neil Jordan

text: The critical success of Jordan's early pictures led him to Hollywood, where he directed "High Spirits" and "We're No Angels"; both were critical and financial disasters. He later returned home to make the more personal "The Crying Game", which was nominated for six Academy Awards. Jordan won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film. Its unexpected success led him back to American studio filmmaking, where he directed "Interview with the Vampire". He also directed the crime drama "The Brave One" starring Jodie Foster.


title: Neil Jordan

text: Neil Gaiman announced during his "Today" show appearance on 27 January 2009, that Neil Jordan would be directing the film of his Newbery Medal-winning book "The Graveyard Book". Jordan also wrote and directed the 2009 Irish-made film "Ondine", starring Colin Farrell and Alicja Bachleda-Curuś. He also directed "Byzantium", an adaptation of the vampire play of the same name starring Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton and Jonny Lee Miller.


title: Neil Jordan

text: In 2011, Jordan's next feature was announced as the later aborted sci-fi romance "Broken Dream", which was to have featured Ben Kingsley and John Hurt.


title: Neil Jordan

text: After working on the scripts for "Riviera" Neil Jordan has disowned "Riviera", due to his scripts being reworked by others. He said he has no idea who rewrote these episodes. "They were changed, to my huge surprise and considerable upset. There were various sexual scenes introduced into the story and a lot of very expository dialogue. I objected in the strongest terms possible."


title: Neil Jordan

text: Jordan has five children: Anna and Sarah from his marriage to solicitor Vivienne Shields; Dashiel and Daniel from his current marriage to Brenda Rawn, and Ben, from a relationship with architect Mary Donohoe.


title: Neil Jordan

text: He has received many honorary doctorates, most notably from Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and Queen's University Belfast.


title: Neil Jordan

text: In 2009, he signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, calling for his release after he was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.


title: Neil Jordan

text: In 2018, he has donated his archives to the National Library of Ireland. Jordan's donation included TV and film scripts, production files, notebooks, storyboards and personal correspondence with artists and political figures.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla's current products include the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client (now through a subsidiary), Bugzilla bug tracking system, Gecko layout engine, Pocket "read-it-later-online" service, and others.


title: Mozilla

text: On January 23, 1998, Netscape made two announcements. First, that Netscape Communicator would be free; second, that the source code would also be free. One day later, Jamie Zawinski from Netscape registered . The project took its name "Mozilla", after the original code name of the Netscape Navigator browser—a portmanteau of "Mosaic and Godzilla", and used to coordinate the development of the Mozilla Application Suite, the free software version of Netscape's internet software, Netscape Communicator. Jamie Zawinski says he came up with the name "Mozilla" at a Netscape staff meeting. A small group of Netscape employees were tasked with coordination of the new community.


title: Mozilla

text: Originally, Mozilla aimed to be a technology provider for companies such as Netscape, who would commercialize their free software code. When AOL (Netscape's parent company) greatly reduced its involvement with Mozilla in July 2003, the Mozilla Foundation was designated the legal steward of the project. Soon after, Mozilla deprecated the Mozilla Suite in favor of creating independent applications for each function, primarily the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client, and moved to supply them directly to the public.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla's activities have since expanded to include Firefox on mobile platforms (primarily Android), a mobile OS called Firefox OS (since cancelled), a web-based identity system called Mozilla Persona and a marketplace for HTML5 applications.


title: Mozilla

text: In a report released in November 2012, Mozilla reported that their total revenue for 2011 was $163 million, which was up 33% from $123 million in 2010. Mozilla noted that roughly 85% of their revenue comes from their contract with Google.


title: Mozilla

text: At the end of 2013, Mozilla announced a deal with Cisco Systems, whereby Firefox would download and use a Cisco-provided binary build of an open-source codec to play the proprietary H.264 video format. As part of the deal, Cisco would pay any patent licensing fees associated with the binaries that it distributes. Mozilla's CTO, Brendan Eich, acknowledged that this is "not a complete solution" and isn't "perfect". An employee in Mozilla's video formats team, writing in an unofficial capacity, justified it by the need to maintain their large user base, which would be necessary for future battles for truly free video formats.


title: Mozilla

text: In December 2013, Mozilla announced funding for the development of paid games through its Game Creator Challenge. However, even those games that may be released under a non-free software or free software license must be made with open web technologies and Javascript as per the work criteria outlined in the announcement.


title: Mozilla

text: In January 2017 the company rebranded away from its dinosaur symbol in favor of a logo that includes a "://" character sequence from a URL, with the revamped logo: "moz://a".


title: Mozilla

text: In 2020 Mozilla announced it would be cutting off 25% of its worldwide staff of nearly 1,000 to reduce costs; at United States Federal minimum wage full-time, this would reduce costs by $3.8m, while at an average pay of $50k/year this would represent a $12.5M cost reduction. Firefox has fallen from 30% market share to 4% in 10 years. Despite this, executive pay increased 400%, with Mitchell Baker, Mozilla’s top executive, being paid $2.4m in 2018. In December 2020, Mozilla closed its Mountain View office.


title: Mozilla

text: The Mozilla Manifesto outlines Mozilla's goals and principles. It asserts Mozilla's commitment to the internet, saying: "The open, global internet is the most powerful communication and collaboration resource we have ever seen. It embodies some of our deepest hopes for human progress." It then outlines what Mozilla sees as its place in the development of the internet, stating "The Mozilla project uses a community-based approach to create world-class open source software and to develop new types of collaborative activities". And finally, it lays out their ten principles:


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox is a family of software products developed by Mozilla, with the Firefox browser as the flagship product.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox browser, or simply Firefox, is a web browser and Mozilla's flagship software product. It is available in both desktop and mobile versions. Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. , Firefox had approximately 10-11% of worldwide usage share of web browsers, making it the 4th most-used web browser.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla codebase by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox was originally named "Phoenix" but the name was changed so as to avoid trademark conflicts with Phoenix Technologies. The initially-announced replacement, "Firebird", provoked objections from the Firebird project community. The current name, Firefox, was chosen on February 9, 2004.


title: Mozilla

text: It was previously announced that Mozilla is going to launch a premium version of the Firefox browser by October 2019. The company's CEO, Chris Beard, has been quoted by "The Next Web" to say that "there is no plan to charge money for things that are now free. So we will roll out a subscription service and offer a premium level." In September, Mozilla revealed their new offering, Firefox Premium Support, priced at $10 per installation. However, shortly after news broke of the service, Mozilla removed information about the service from the website. Computerworld reported that in an email statement, Mozilla claimed "the page outlining that these paid support services for enterprise clients will be available was posted incorrectly."


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox for mobile (codenamed "Fennec") is the build of the Mozilla Firefox web browser for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Initially available on multiple platforms, it is now available in two versions: Firefox for Android and Firefox for iOS. Firefox for Android runs on the Android mobile operating system and uses the same Gecko layout engine as Mozilla Firefox; for example, version 1.0 used the same engine as Firefox 3.6, and the following release, 4.0, shared core code with Firefox 4.0. Firefox for iOS, which runs on the iOS mobile operating system, does not use the Gecko Layout Engine because of Apple's policy that all iOS apps that browse the web must use the built-in iOS WebKit rendering engine. Both version include features like HTML5 support, Firefox Sync, private browsing, web tracking protection, and tabbed browsing, and Firefox for Android also includes support for add-ons.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox Focus is a free and open-source privacy-focused mobile browser for Android and iOS. Initially released in 2015 as only a tracker-blocking application for iOS, it has since been developed into a full mobile browser for both iOS and Android.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox Lockwise was a password manager offered by Mozilla. On desktop, it was a built-in feature of the Firefox browser. On mobile, it was offered as a standalone app that can be set as the device's default password manager.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox Monitor is an online service that informs users if their email address and passwords have been leaked in data breaches.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox Send was an online encrypted file-transfer service offered by Mozilla. In September 2020, Mozilla announced that Firefox Send will be decommissioned and will no longer be part of the product lineup.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla VPN, formerly Firefox Private Network, is a subscription-based VPN and a free privacy extension.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox Private Relay provides users with disposable email addresses that can be used to combat spam (by hiding the user's real email address) and manage email subscriptions by categorizing them based on the party a particular address was given to.


title: Mozilla

text: In September 2018, Mozilla announced that its VR version was ready for consumers to download. Called Firefox Reality, the browser was built entirely for virtual reality. It is currently available on the Oculus.


title: Mozilla

text: In January 2019, HTC also announced its partnership with Mozilla. Under the partnership, the Firefox Reality web browser has been made available on the Vive headsets.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox OS (project name: "Boot to Gecko" also known as "B2G") is a free software operating system that was developed by Mozilla to support HTML5 apps written using "open Web" technologies rather than platform-specific native APIs. The concept behind Firefox OS is that all user-accessible software will be HTML5 applications, that use Open Web APIs to access the phone's hardware directly via JavaScript.


title: Mozilla

text: Some devices using this OS include Alcatel One Touch Fire, ZTE Open, and LG Fireweb. Mozilla announced the end of Firefox OS development in December 2015.


title: Mozilla

text: Pocket is a mobile application and web service for managing a reading list of articles from the Internet. It was announced that it would be acquired by the Mozilla Corporation, the commercial arm of Mozilla's non-profit development group, on February 27, 2017. Originally designed only for desktop browsers, it is now available for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Kobo eReaders, and web browsers.


title: Mozilla

text: Thunderbird is a free software, cross-platform email and news client developed by the volunteers of the Mozilla Community.


title: Mozilla

text: On July 16, 2012, Mitchell Baker announced that Mozilla's leadership had come to the conclusion that ongoing stability was the most important thing for Thunderbird and that innovation in Thunderbird was no longer a priority for Mozilla. In that update, Baker also suggested that Mozilla had provided a pathway for its community to innovate around Thunderbird if the community chooses.


title: Mozilla

text: SeaMonkey (formerly the Mozilla Application Suite) is a free and open-source cross-platform suite of Internet software components including a web browser component, a client for sending and receiving email and Usenet newsgroup messages, an HTML editor (Mozilla Composer) and the ChatZilla IRC client.


title: Mozilla

text: On March 10, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation announced that it would not release any official versions of Mozilla Application Suite beyond 1.7.x, since it had now focused on the stand-alone applications Firefox and Thunderbird. SeaMonkey is now maintained by the SeaMonkey Council, which has trademarked the SeaMonkey name with help from the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Foundation provides project hosting for the SeaMonkey developers.


title: Mozilla

text: Bugzilla is a web-based general-purpose bug tracking system, which was released as free software by Netscape Communications in 1998 along with the rest of the Mozilla codebase, and is currently stewarded by Mozilla. It has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source software and proprietary projects and products, including the Mozilla Foundation, the Linux kernel, KDE, Red Hat, Eclipse and LibreOffice.


title: Mozilla

text: WebThings is a framework that allowed management of IoT devices through a single framework, gateway and UI. It was based on W3C Web of Things standard. As of 2020, it is no longer affiliated with Mozilla. It was spinner of as independent project during 2020 layoff of 250 employees. It was known as "Project Things" and allowed users to use a raspberry pi as a gateway for IoT management with decentralized software.


title: Mozilla

text: Network Security Services (NSS) comprises a set of libraries designed to support cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications. NSS provides a complete free software implementation of crypto libraries supporting SSL and S/MIME. NSS is licensed under the GPL-compatible Mozilla Public License 2.0.


title: Mozilla

text: AOL, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems/Oracle Corporation, Google and other companies and individual contributors have co-developed NSS and it is used in a wide range of non-Mozilla products including Evolution, Pidgin, and LibreOffice.


title: Mozilla

text: SpiderMonkey is the original JavaScript engine developed by Brendan Eich when he invented JavaScript in 1995 as a developer at Netscape. It became part of the Mozilla product family when Mozilla inherited Netscape's code-base in 1998. In 2011, Eich transferred the nominal ownership of the SpiderMonkey code and project to Dave Mandelin.


title: Mozilla

text: SpiderMonkey is a cross-platform engine written in C++ which implements ECMAScript, a standard developed from JavaScript. It comprises an interpreter, several just-in-time compilers, a decompiler and a garbage collector. Products which embed SpiderMonkey include Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and many non-Mozilla applications.


title: Mozilla

text: Rhino is a free software JavaScript engine managed by the Mozilla Foundation. It is developed entirely in Java. Rhino converts JavaScript scripts into Java classes. Rhino works in both compiled and interpreted mode.


title: Mozilla

text: Gecko is a layout engine that supports web pages written using HTML, SVG, and MathML. Gecko is written in C++ and uses NSPR for platform independence. Its source code is licensed under the Mozilla Public License.


title: Mozilla

text: Firefox uses Gecko both for rendering web pages and for rendering its user interface. Gecko is also used by Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and many non-Mozilla applications.


title: Mozilla

text: Rust is a compiled programming language being developed by Mozilla Research. It is designed for safety, concurrency, and performance. Rust is intended for creating large and complex software which needs to be both safe against exploits and fast.


title: Mozilla

text: Rust is being used in an experimental layout engine, Servo, which was developed by Mozilla and Samsung. Servo is not used in any consumer-oriented browsers yet. However, the Servo project developers plan for parts of the Servo source code to be merged into Gecko, and Firefox, incrementally.


title: Mozilla

text: XULRunner is a software platform and technology experiment by Mozilla, that allows applications built with the same technologies used by Firefox extensions (XPCOM, Javascript, HTML, CSS, XUL) to be run natively as desktop applications, without requiring Firefox to be installed on the user's machine. XULRunner binaries are available for the Windows, Linux and OS X operating systems, allowing such applications to be effectively cross-platform.


title: Mozilla

text: Pdf.js is a library developed by Mozilla that allows in-browser rendering of pdf documents using HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript. It is included by default in Firefox, allowing the browser to render pdf documents without requiring an external plugin; and it is available separately as an extension named "PDF Viewer" for Firefox for Android, SeaMonkey, and the Firefox versions which don't include it built-in. It can also be included as part of a website's scripts, to allow pdf rendering for any browser that implements the required HTML5 features and can run JavaScript.


title: Mozilla

text: Shumway is a free software replacement for the Adobe Flash Player, developed by Mozilla since 2012, using open web technologies as a replacement for Flash technologies. It uses Javascript and HTML5 Canvas elements to render Flash and execute Actionscript. It is included by default in Firefox Nightly and can be installed as an extension for any recent version of Firefox. The current implementation is limited in its capabilities to render Flash content outside simple projects.


title: Mozilla

text: Servo is a browser engine being developed for application and embedded use. In August 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lack of funds and organization restructuring, Mozilla laid off most of the Servo development team. After the team was disbanded, Servo became part of the Linux Foundation, where development currently continues.


title: Mozilla

text: sops is an editor of encrypted files that supports YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and BINARY formats and encrypts with AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, age, and PGP.


title: Mozilla

text: WebXR Viewer is an AR viewer that lets a developer create and run AR experiences built with web technologies and ARKit.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla VR is a team focused on bringing virtual reality (VR) tools, specifications, and standards to the open Web. Mozilla VR maintains A-Frame (VR), a web framework for building VR experiences, and works on advancing WebVR support within web browsers.


title: Mozilla

text: On April 26, 2018, the first experiment from their Social Mixed Reality efforts was released; Hubs, a multi-user virtual space in WebVR.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla Persona was a secure, cross-browser website authentication mechanism which allowed a user to use a single username and password (or other authentication method) to log into multiple sites. Mozilla Persona shut down on November 30, 2016.


title: Mozilla

text: This free software crowdsourced geolocation service was started by Mozilla in 2013 and offers a free API.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla Webmaker is Mozilla's educational initiative, and Webmaker's goal is to "help millions of people move from using the web to making the web." As part of Mozilla's non-profit mission, Webmaker aims "to help the world increase their understanding of the web, take greater control of their online lives, and create a more web literate planet."


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla maintains a comprehensive developer documentation website called the MDN Web Docs which contains information about web technologies including HTML, CSS, SVG, JavaScript, as well as Mozilla-specific information. In addition, Mozilla publishes a large number of videos about web technologies and the development of Mozilla projects on the Air Mozilla website. This was renamed to MDN Plus.


title: Mozilla

text: In July 2017, Mozilla launched the project Common Voice to help make voice recognition open to everyone. Visitors to the website can donate their voice to help build a free software voice recognition engine that anyone can use to make apps for devices and the web that make use of voice recognition. The website allows visitors to read a sentence to help the machine system learn how real people speak, as well as validate the read sentences of other people.


title: Mozilla

text: On June 26, 2017, Mozilla launched "IRL – Online Life Is Real Life" to explore popular stories from the web that deal with issues of the internet that affect society as a whole.


title: Mozilla

text: In 2008, Brendan Eich donated US$1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8, a California ballot proposition and state constitutional amendment in opposition to same-sex marriage. Eich's donation eventually became public knowledge in 2012, while he was Mozilla's chief technical officer, leading to angry responses on Twitter—including the use of the hashtag "#wontworkwithbigots".


title: Mozilla

text: Controversy later re-emerged in 2014, following the announcement of Eich's appointment as CEO of Mozilla. U.S. companies OkCupid and CREDO Mobile notably objected to his appointment, with the former asking its users to boycott the browser, while Credo amassed 50,000 signatures for a petition that called for Eich's resignation.


title: Mozilla

text: Due to the controversy, Eich voluntarily stepped down on April 3, 2014, and Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of Mozilla Corporation, posted a statement on the Mozilla blog: "We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality."


title: Mozilla

text: In July 2020 Mozilla forced push notifications, an advertisement for its own blog post about Facebook and Mozilla's "#StopHateForProfit" campaign. These notifications were sent without user consent and faced a backlash by Firefox users.


title: Mozilla

text: In February 2022, Mozilla and Meta partnered to propose a privacy-preserving advertising technology. This faced a backlash on the internet because Mozilla partnered with the same company they were running a campaign against 2 years ago and given Meta's reputation, Mozilla was criticized for collaborating with them.


title: Mozilla

text: The Mozilla Community consists of over 40,000 active contributors from across the globe. It includes both paid employees and volunteers who work towards the goals set forth in the Mozilla Manifesto. Many of the sub-communities in Mozilla have formed around localization efforts for Mozilla Firefox, and the Mozilla web properties.


title: Mozilla

text: There are a number of sub-communities that exist based on their geographical locations, where contributors near each other work together on particular activities, such as localization, marketing, PR, and user support.


title: Mozilla

text: In 2017, Mozilla created a Wireless Innovation for Network Security (WINS) challenge that awarded a total of $2 million in prize money to innovators who used its decentralized design to create wireless solutions for post-natural disaster internet access. This challenge also envisioned connecting communities that lacked internet access.


title: Mozilla

text: The Mozilla Reps program is a volunteer-based program, which allows volunteers to become official representatives of Mozilla. Volunteers are required to be 18 years or older in order to participate in the program. Activities under the program include recruitment for contributors, workshops, and attending Mozilla summits.


title: Mozilla

text: The Mozilla Festival (MozFest) is a unique hybrid: part art, tech, and society convening, part maker festival, and the premiere gathering for activists in diverse global movements fighting for a more humane digital world. Journalists, coders, filmmakers, designers, educators, gamers, makers, youth, and anyone else, from all over the world, are encouraged to attend, with nearly 10,000 participating virtually in 2021 from more than 87 countries, working together at the intersection of human rights, climate justice, and technology, specifically trustworthy artificial intelligence.


title: Mozilla

text: The event revolves around key issues based on the chosen theme for that year's festival. MozFest unfolds over the span of two weeks, with more than 500 interactive sessions, films, talks, round-tables, hack-a-thons, exhibits, and socials. Topics range from privacy best practices, developing solutions to online misinformation and harassment, building free software tools, supporting Trustworthy AI innovations, and more. The titles of the festival revolve around the main theme, freedom, and the Web.


title: Mozilla

text: MozCamps are multi-day gatherings aimed at growing the contributor network by providing lectures, workshops, and breakout sessions led by Mozilla staff and volunteers. While these camps have been held in multiple locations globally in the past, none have occurred since 2014.


title: Mozilla

text: Mozilla Summit was a global event with active contributors and Mozilla employees who collaborated to develop a shared understanding of Mozilla's mission together. Over 2,000 people representing 90 countries and 114 languages gathered in Santa Clara, Toronto, and Brussels in 2013. Mozilla had its last Summit in 2013 and replaced them with smaller all-hands where both employees and volunteers come together to collaborate.


title: Connie Smith

text: Connie Smith (born Constance June Meador; August 14, 1941) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Her contralto vocals have been described by music writers as significant and influential to the women of country music. A similarity has been noted between her vocal style and the stylings of country vocalist Patsy Cline. Other performers have cited Smith as influence on their own singing styles, which has been reflected in quotes and interviews over the years.


title: Connie Smith

text: Discovered in 1963, Smith signed with RCA Victor Records the following year and remained with the label until 1973. Her debut single "Once a Day" was nominated at the Grammy Awards for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and reached number one on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart in November 1964 and remained at the top position for eight weeks, the first time a female artist had achieved this feat, with Smith holding the record for over 50 years until it was broken by Trisha Yearwood. The song became Smith's biggest hit. Smith's success continued through 1960s and mid 1970s with 19 more top-ten hits (including "Then and Only Then"; "Ain't Had No Lovin'"; "Cincinnati, Ohio"; "I Never Once Stopped Loving You"; and "Ain't Love a Good Thing") on the country songs chart.


title: Connie Smith

text: In the early 1970s, Smith began recording Gospel music more frequently as she became more serious in her Christianity. As she focused more heavily on religion, Smith became known for her outspoken religious demeanor at concerts and music venues. At the same time, Smith spent more time raising her five children than focusing on music. She eventually went into semi-retirement in 1979. Smith would return to recording briefly in the mid 1980s with Epic Records. However, it was not until her collaboration with Marty Stuart in the 1990s that she returned permanently. Their musical friendship would turn romantic, leading to their marriage in 1997. The pairing led to Smith's first studio album in 20 years, "Connie Smith". Critically acclaimed, Smith began performing again and has since recorded two more studio albums.


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith has been nominated for 11 Grammy Awards, including eight nominations for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. She has also been nominated for 1 Academy of Country Music award and 3 Country Music Association awards. "Rolling Stone" included her on their list of the 100 greatest country music artists and "CMT" ranked her among the top ten in their list of the 40 greatest women of country music. She has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry cast since 1965. In 2012, Smith was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.


title: Connie Smith

text: Connie Smith was born Constance June Meador to parents Wilma and Hobart Meador in Elkhart, Indiana. Her parents were originally from West Virginia, and when Smith was five months old, the family returned there. They would later move to Dungannon, Ohio. Her biological father was an alcoholic and he was abusive to Smith's family. "There were some tough times that I went through as a young child," she told an interviewer.


title: Connie Smith

text: Her mother divorced her biological father when she was a child and re-married to Tom Clark. Smith's stepfather brought eight children to the marriage, while Meador brought five (including Smith). The couple later had two more children together, totaling to fifteen children. Smith was influenced by music in her childhood. Her stepfather played mandolin, while her brother played fiddle, and her other brother played guitar. On Saturday nights, the family would tune into the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. She took up the guitar following a lawnmower accident, which nearly cut her leg off. While in the hospital recovering, she was given a guitar and learned how to play different chords. Smith did not perform publicly until high school when a friend invited her to sing Connie Francis's pop hit "My Happiness".


title: Connie Smith

text: With only one-tenth of a point behind the valedictorian, Smith graduated from Salem-Liberty High School in 1959 as the class salutatorian. Following graduation, she worked as telephone operator in Lowell, Ohio. She also worked as a drugstore clerk, a dental assistant and in a grocery store. At age 19, she married her first husband, Jerry Smith. Smith's husband encouraged her singing and she began performing with more frequency. Her professional performance was at the 1962 Washington County Fair. She then briefly joined the cast of the Saturday Night Jamboree, a local country music television program. Smith was then fired following her first performance, later theorizing it was because she was pregnant. She then successfully auditioned for and landed a spot on a similar program for WSAZ-TV.


title: Connie Smith

text: Despite performance opportunities, Smith intended to remain a housewife and mother. In August 1963, Smith entered a talent contest at the Frontier Ranch country music park near Columbus, Ohio. Performing Jean Shepard's "I Thought of You", Smith won the talent contest and five silver dollars. Judging the content was country singer-songwriter Bill Anderson, who was instantly impressed by her voice. "At first I thought they were playing a record and she was lip sync'ing it," he later explained.


title: Connie Smith

text: In January 1964, Smith ran into Anderson again at a country music package concert in Canton, Ohio. He invited her to perform with him on Ernest Tubb's "Midnite Jamboree" program in Nashville, Tennessee. When Smith performed on the program in March 1964 she found out that she would not be performing with Anderson, but instead with Ernest Tubb. Impressed by her performance, Loretta Lynn introduced herself after the show and gave her career advice. After performing on the program, Smith returned to Nashville that May to record demos by Anderson that he planned on pitching to other country artists. Anderson's manager Hubert Long brought the demo recording to the RCA Victor label where producer Chet Atkins heard it. Also impressed by her vocals, Atkins offered Smith a recording contract, and she eventually signed on June 24, 1964.


title: Connie Smith

text: After signing Smith to RCA, Chet Atkins found himself too busy with other artists. Instead he enlisted Bob Ferguson to act as Smith's producer. The pair developed a close professional relationship and Ferguson remained her producer until she departed from RCA. "I couldn't have asked for a better person to work with. He is one of the finest men I've ever know," Smith later said. Smith's first session took place on July 16, 1964, where she recorded four songs. Three of these tracks were written by Bill Anderson, who agreed to write material for Smith. Two days later, Smith made her debut on the "Grand Ole Opry". One of the four songs recorded on July 16 was "Once a Day", which was chosen to be Smith's debut single. "Once a Day" was released in August 1964 and reached number one on the "Billboard Magazine" Hot Country Singles chart on November 28. It remained at the number one position for eight weeks between late 1964 and early 1965. "Once a Day" became the first debut single by a female country artist to reach number one. For nearly 50 years the single held the record for the most weeks spent at number one on the "Billboard" country chart by a female artist.


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith started performing more regularly with "Once a Day"'s success. Bill Anderson briefly served as her manager, but was replaced by Charlie Lamb. Smith made her first network television appearance in October 1964 on ABC's "The Jimmy Dean Show". In March 1965, RCA Victor released her self-titled debut album It also reached the number one spot, spending a total of seven weeks at the top of the "Billboard" Top Country Albums chart. Dan Cooper of "Allmusic" gave the disc a positive reception and described Smith as "a down-home Streisand fronting The Lennon Sisters."


title: Connie Smith

text: Bill Anderson fulfilled his promise to RCA Victor and continued writing Smith's next single releases. Producer Bob Ferguson and steel guitar player Weldon Myrick created a "high" and "punchy" production that Ferguson thought would sound pleasing on car radios. "I thought it was an awfully thin sound, but it wound up being very popular," Myrick recalled. In 1965, RCA issued Smith's follow-up single penned by Anderson titled "Then and Only Then", which reached number four on the "Billboard" country songs chart. It was followed by another Anderson-penned top ten single called "I Can't Remember". In October 1965, the latter song appeared on Smith's second studio album, "Cute 'n' Country". Although she disliked the name of the LP, it became her second disc to top the "Billboard" country albums chart. She had further top five "Billboard" country singles through early 1966 with Anderson's "Nobody But a Fool (Would Love You)" and Priscilla Mitchell's "If I Talk to Him". In 1965, Smith also became a member of the "Grand Ole Opry" radio show.


title: Connie Smith

text: In 1966, Ferguson felt pressured from RCA headquarters to market Smith's sound toward "middle-of-the-road" country pop material. Smith was against the pop production but nevertheless agreed to try it. The pair did several sessions featuring a string instrumentation. The new style appeared on her next studio releases "Born to Sing" (1966) and "Downtown Country" (1967). Both albums featured full orchestras in the background and cover versions of singles by pop artists of the time. Featured on the LP's were the singles "Ain't Had No Lovin'" and "The Hurtin's All Over", which both reached the "Billboard" country top five. During this time, Smith also appeared in several country music vehicle films, where she performed many of her current hit recordings. In 1966, she appeared in the films "Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar" and "The Las Vegas Hillbillys", the latter of which starred Jayne Mansfield. In 1967, she appeared in "The Road to Nashville" and "Hell on Wheels". Smith's touring schedule also increased. In 1966, she formed her own touring band called the Sundowners and later married the band's guitar player, Jack Watkins.


title: Connie Smith

text: In February 1967, Smith the budget RCA Camden subsidiary label released Smith's next studio LP titled "Connie in the Country". The LP included covers of popular country recordings of the era and a new single by Smith that reached the top 20 called "Cry, Cry, Cry". In May 1967, RCA released an album of songs written solely by Bill Anderson called "Connie Smith Sings Bill Anderson". Smith later commented that, "it was an honor, not a favor" to record an album of all Anderson tunes. It included covers of Anderson's own hits such as "City Lights" and "That's What It's Like to Be Lonesome". Included on the album was "Cincinnati, Ohio", which Smith released as a single and brought the song to the "Billboard" country top five. Its success would later inspire the city of Cincinnati, Ohio to declare their own "Connie Smith Day" in June 1967. Smith remained at her commercial zenith through 1967 with a continued series of top ten recordings. Her further hits included the "I'll Come Runnin'", "Burning a Hole in My Mind", "Baby's Back Again" and "Run Away Little Tears". Three of these recordings were included on Smith's 1967 album, "I Love Charley Brown", which reached the country LP's top 20.


title: Connie Smith

text: By 1968, Smith had reached the height of her career. She was making multiple appearances on film and television while also attempting to balance touring with a family life. The pressures of various responsibilities stressed Smith to a point where she nearly left her career. In 1968, she discovered Christianity which brought solace to her personal and professional life. Ultimately, she chose to continue with her career and recorded for RCA every few months. However, she cut back her touring schedule. She devoted the remainder of her time to family life and made efforts to appear on more Christian music programs. She worked alongside ministers Billy Graham and Rex Humbard. She also appeared on several Christian television shows.


title: Connie Smith

text: With Smith's commitment to RCA, the label continued releasing new albums and singles with regularity. With her new religious convictions, Smith also made it a priority to include gospel recordings on her secular albums. This would remain a theme throughout her career. In 1968 and 1969, RCA Victor released the studio LP's, "Sunshine and Rain", "Back in Baby's Arms" and "Connie's Country". These recordings yielded a cover of Marty Robbins's "Ribbon of Darkness". Smith's version reached the top 20 of the "Billboard" country singles chart. In Canada, "Ribbon of Darkness" became her first song to top their "RPM" Country chart. Entering the 1970s, Smith made the top ten of the North American country charts with less frequency, but continued having commercial success. The singles "You and Your Sweet Love" and "I Never Once Stopped Loving You" (both penned by Bill Anderson) made the "Billboard" country top ten in 1970. Her fifteenth studio LP of the same name was also released in 1970 and made the top 20 of the "Billboard" country albums chart.


title: Connie Smith

text: During this period, Smith also teamed up with country singer-songwriter Nat Stuckey to record two duet studio albums. The idea was crafted by Smith's producer (Bob Ferguson) and Stuckey's producer (Felton Jarvis). Both men thought the artists' voices would "blend well". The duo's first duet sessions produced a cover of Sonny James's "Young Love", which reached the top 20 of the "Billboard" country songs chart. Their first album of the same name featured covers of country and pop songs of the era. In an effort for Smith record more gospel music, the duo cut a spiritual-themed LP in 1970 titled "Sunday Morning with Nat Stuckey and Connie Smith". Christian radio programs often opened their shows with the duo's gospel music, which influenced RCA to release "If God Is Dead (Who's That Living in My Soul)" as a single in 1970. The song peaked in the lower reaches of the "Billboard" country chart.


title: Connie Smith

text: Journalists and writers took notice of Smith's RCA work following 1968. Biographer and writer Barry Mazor found that Smith's recordings had "a new delicacy of phrasing that shows itself". Mazor also found her albums to have more distinctive qualities, calling 1970s "I Never Once Stopped Loving You" to be "one of her most consistent and strongest albums". AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised Smith's recordings between 1968 and 1972, highlighting the strength of her vocals: "She may have been given some of the best songs, but the thing is, she deserved them: few others could give them grace and soul, as this always entertaining box amply proves." Authors Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann commented that her later RCA singles, "stand the test of time as among the most powerful country female vocal performances of the 1970s."


title: Connie Smith

text: In the early 1970s, Smith started recording more songs penned by Dallas Frazier. The pair had become close friends, which prompted Frazier to write songs for Smith that reflected situations in her personal life. Both Smith and Frazier described her 1970 single "Where Is My Castle" as being autobiographical of her recent marital troubles. "Anybody knows that its cathartic to sing how you feel about things," Smith later said. "Where Is My Castle" reached the top 20 of both the "Billboard" and "RPM" country singles charts. In 1971, RCA released Smith's cover of Don Gibson's "Just One Time". Backed by a large rhythm section, the recording reached number two on the "Billboard" and "RPM" country charts, becoming her most commercially-successful single of the 1970s. Her eighteenth studio LP of the same name reached number 14 on the "Billboard" country albums chart and featured liner notes written by Loretta Lynn.


title: Connie Smith

text: With Smith being among RCA's top-selling recording artists, she had enough leverage to coax executives to let her record another gospel album. The result was 1971's "Come Along and Walk with Me". The studio album featured gospel tracks penned by spiritual writers such as Dottie Rambo. In 1972, Smith had three back-to-back top singles on the "Billboard" country chart: "Just for What I Am", "If It Ain't Love (Let's Leave It Alone)" and "Love Is the Look You're Looking For". RCA released the singles on three separate LP's: "Ain't We Havin' Us a Good Time" (1972), "If It Ain't Love and Other Great Dallas Frazier Songs" (1972) and "Love Is the Look You're Looking For" (1973). Her most commercially-successful album was "If It Ain't Love And Other Great Dallas Frazier Songs", which reached number 14 on the "Billboard" country albums chart. The studio project was recorded as a tribute to Dallas Frazier and featured ten songs penned by him. Frazier also sang several duets with Smith on the project. Before leaving her contract with RCA, the label released more LP's, including the compilation, "Dream Painter" (1973). Its title track would chart in the "Billboard" top 40.


title: Connie Smith

text: In 1973, RCA promised to give Smith a better royalty and more creative control if she renewed her contract. In an updated contract, these terms were not met. Upon hiring a lawyer, she left RCA and was offered a contract by Columbia Records. In 1973, Smith signed a new recording contract with Columbia Records. The label gave her more creative control including the opportunity record one gospel album per year. At Columbia, she met with Clive Davis, who agreed to produce her. However, the label dismissed Davis before they could work together. Instead, producer Billy Sherrill chose to work with Smith. However, a disagreement about religion ended the pairing before it began. She started recording alongside producer George Richey, who recently had success writing material for George Jones and Tammy Wynette.


title: Connie Smith

text: At Columbia, Smith was pressured into recording with more pop production than before. "From Day One at the new label, even more than before, it was a constant tussle, because I just am who I am," recalled Smith. However, she remained active in song selection and the recording process. Smith's first Columbia LP titled "A Lady Named Smith" (1973) included pop production such as string instrumentation and overdubbed background vocals. The LP reached number 31 on the "Billboard" country albums chart. Richey agreed to release "Ain't Love a Good Thing" as her first Columbia single. Instead, the Richey-Smith co-write, "You've Got Me (Right Where You Want Me)", proved to be the first label single. The decision disappointed Smith enough that she chose to end their professional relationship. The last Richey-produced project was Smith's first Columbia gospel LP called "God Is Abundant". The album of new religious material climbed to number 20 on the "Billboard" country albums chart.


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith chose Ray Baker to serve as her next producer. Baker had operated a publishing company and produced several song demos that prompted Smith to choose him. The pair had a more agreeable relationship and recorded together throughout the decade. Baker produced Smith's next Columbia album titled "That's the Way Love Goes" (1974). The LP featured several original recordings and cover tunes. The album included "Ain't Love a Good Thing", which was finally released as a single and became her eighteenth top ten song on the "Billboard" country chart. Although she recorded two gospel projects in 1974, the label waited until 1975 to release both LP's. Instead, Columbia released a secular project titled "I Never Knew (What That Song Meant Before)" (1974). Its title track became a top 20 "Billboard" country single, peaking at number 13. It was followed in 1975 by the traditional country LP, "I Got a Lot of Hurtin' Done Today/I've Got My Baby On My Mind". Both "I've Got My Baby on My Mind" and Smith's cover of Hank Williams's "Why Don't You Love Me" reached the country top 20.


title: Connie Smith

text: Music critics noticed a change in Smith's vocals following her Columbia switch. When reviewing the compilation, "Connie Smith Sings Her Hits", Thom Jurek of "Allmusic" commented that she lost the "grain" in her voice. Jurek went on to write, "It could be said, that regardless of the material, she never made a bad record; the tunes were carefully chosen it's true, but she never tried to hide the hardcore twang in her vocal style." Smith's biographer, Barry Mazor, found her voice to "lower in range by this point" and saw evidence of Columbia attempting to "push her recorded vocal into the upper end of her range". Other critics noticed stylistic changes but observed no change in her singing. "NPR"'s Ken Tucker found this era her recordings to feature more pop instrumentation but did not "obscure the passion and pain she communicated so fearlessly".


title: Connie Smith

text: In 1975, Columbia released both of her 1974 gospel projects. The first was "Connie Smith Sings Hank Williams Gospel". For the album, Smith and Baker went through the Hank Williams catalog where they came across a series of never-before-released gospel songs. The result was the first album of Hank Williams gospel material recorded by another artist. In 1976, the project was nominated by the Grammy Awards for Best Gospel Performance. The second 1975 religious LP was the gospel influenced Christmas album called "Joy to the World". In 1976, Columbia issued two more country albums of Smith's material: "The Song We Fell in Love To" and "I Don't Wanna Talk It Over Anymore". Both LP's peaked in the "Billboard" country albums top 40. The albums included the number 13 country single "I Don't Wanna Talk It Over Anymore" and her twentieth top ten, a remake of The Everly Brothers's "(Till) I Kissed You". The latter was Smith's second single to top Canada's "RPM" country chart.


title: Connie Smith

text: In 1977 Smith moved to Fred Foster's Nashville label, Monument Records. She was pressured into recording more country pop material than before and was given singing lessons by a songwriter. "He [Fred Foster] wanted to mold me into something That I wasn't comfortable with," Smith commented. "That's why that never worked." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine found her Monument music to have "state-of-the-art production that dates instantly, walks the line between crossover pop and country-pop rather clumsly, and lacks good material." Monument released two LP's of Smith's material between 1977 and 1978. Her only commercially-successful Monument single was a cover of Andy Gibb's "I Just Want to Be Your Everything". The single climbed to number 14 on the "Billboard" country chart. Yet, her further Monument releases reached progressively-lower positions on the country chart between 1978 and 1979. Furthermore, Smith had five children by this point and felt pressured to be at home with her family. Ultimately, Smith decided to leave her country music career entirely to focus on raising her children and tending to her religious needs.


title: Connie Smith

text: For three years, Smith remained in semi-retirement, committing only to occasional performances at the "Grand Ole Opry", where she remained a member. At the Opry, she only performed gospel songs. However, she decided to return to her career in 1983. She re-signed with Monument Records, but left after label filed for bankruptcy. Instead, singer and songwriter Ricky Skaggs helped her secure a new recording contract to Epic Records. The first single, "A Far Cry from You" (1985), was written by Alternative country artist Steve Earle. It reached number 71 on the Hot Country Songs chart.


title: Connie Smith

text: One day in the mid-1990s, Smith was at her home talking to one of her daughters on the phone. After telling her mother what she was going to do that night, her daughter asked Smith what her plans for that night were. Because she did not have anything fun planned, Smith lied so her daughter wouldn't have to worry about her. After the conversation ended, Smith realized that she didn't need her own children worrying about her at the start of their adult lives and decided that it was time to return to her career. With country artist Marty Stuart (whom she later married in 1997), acting as the album's main producer, Smith signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1996. Although the label preferred her to record an album of duets, Smith decided to go by her own terms and record a solo studio album. In October 1998 she released her second self-titled studio album. It consisted of ten tracks, nine of them co-written by both Smith and Stuart.


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith's 1998 project attracted limited commercial attention, but was given critical praise for its traditional and contemporary style. Kurt Wolff of the book "Country Music: The Rough Guide" commented that the album sounded "far gutsier than anything in the Reba and Garth mainstream". Thom Jurek of "Allmusic" gave the release four out of five stars, calling it "a solid effort", also commenting, "...it stands head and shoulders over most of the stuff that's come out of Nash Vegas in over a decade. Even if it doesn't sell a copy, it's a triumphant return for Smith. She hasn't lost a whit of her gift as a singer or as a writer." Also in 1998, Smith made a second cameo appearance in a film, portraying a "Singer at the Rodeo Dance" in "The Hi-Lo Country" starring Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup.


title: Connie Smith

text: In August 2003, she released a gospel album with country artists Barbara Fairchild and Sharon White called "Love Never Fails" on Daywind Records. In an interview with "Country Stars Central", Smith said that she was ill with the stomach flu while recording the album, but still enjoyed making the record. Produced by country and bluegrass performer Ricky Skaggs (White's husband), the album received a nomination from the Dove Awards. The website Slipcue.com reviewed the release and commented that "Love Never Fails", "is probably too rowdy for most Southern gospel fans (who really like tinkly pianos and less-twangy vocals), and while it probably won't wow many country listeners, for folks who are fans any of these three singers, this is kind of a treat.


title: Connie Smith

text: In November 2008, Smith joined the cast of Marty Stuart's television series "The Marty Stuart Show", which aired on the RFD-TV network every Saturday night. The thirty-minute program featured traditional country music performed by both Stuart and Smith, as well as radio personality Eddie Stubbs. The show stopped airing on RFD-TV in 2014. In August 2011 Smith released her first new solo recording in thirteen years, entitled "Long Line of Heartaches" via Sugar Hill Records. The record was produced by Marty Stuart and included five songs written by the pair. Harlan Howard, Kostas, Johnny Russell, and Dallas Frazier also wrote tracks that were included on the disc. The album was reviewed positively by AllMusic's Steve Leggett, who gave it four stars. "It wouldn't be quite right to call this a throwback album, but it does sound like vintage traditional country given just a bit of a polished edge," he concluded. Andrew Mueller of "BBC" also gave it a positive response, calling it "classic and classicist country songs".


title: Connie Smith

text: In August 2021, Smith's next studio album was released on the Fat Possum label titled "The Cry of the Heart". It was the third project produced by Stuart and her first album of new material in ten years. "The New York Times" described "The Cry of the Heart" to evoke the traditional styles that "recall Smith’s ’60s era recordings". It was Smith's first album since 1976 to reach a charting position on "Billboard", peaking on the Current Album Sales chart following its release. "PopMatters" gave the album an 8/10 rating and concluded, "If you wanted to understand what traditional country is, you could go to the same place today as you could have 50 years ago: a Connie Smith record."


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith has been married four times. In 1961, she married Jerry Smith, a ferro-analyst at the Inter-Lake Iron Corporation in Beverly, Ohio. They had one child together, born on March 9, 1963, named Darren Justin. (In the late 1970s, Darren went to Europe to become a missionary; he is currently a psychologist.) In the mid-1960s, the couple divorced and Smith married the guitarist in her touring band, Jack Watkins. They had a son before separating nearly a year after marrying. Shortly afterward, Smith married telephone repairman Marshall Haynes. In the early 1970s, Haynes frequently toured with Connie on her road show. The couple had three daughters.


title: Connie Smith

text: After divorcing Haynes in the early 1990s, Smith stated that she would never marry again. However, on July 8, 1997, she did get married for the fourth time, this time to her producer, country artist Marty Stuart. Stuart began producing her after writing songs for Smith's 1998 comeback album. Stuart described encountering Smith 26 years earlier, after attending her concert: "I met Connie when I was 12 years old. She came to the Indian reservation in my hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi, to work at a fair. She hasn't changed a bit. She looked great then and she looks great now." Stuart said he told his mother then that he was going to marry Connie Smith. Smith explains how they have sustained their marriage : "Make the Lord the center ... and commit."


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith revealed in a "New York Times" interview that she had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in February 2021. She was hospitalized, developing sepsis and pneumonia. She eventually made a full recovery. "They asked me if my heart stopped, did I want to be revived, and I said, ‘Of course, I don’t want to be a COVID statistic,’" she told the "Nashville Scene".


title: Connie Smith

text: Connie Smith's sound is defined by the Nashville Sound musical style, primarily during her breakthrough years in the 1960s. While most Nashville Sound recordings of the time mainly included full orchestras, Smith's sound remained more traditional with its use of steel guitar and her twangy vocals, while still featuring some pop-influenced instrumentation to provide urban pop appeal. Critics have largely praised Smith's use of the steel guitar, which have often been described as "sharp" and "prominent". Her steel guitar player Weldon Myrick is often credited with creating what Smith has called "The Connie Smith Sound". In an interview with Colin Escott in his book "Born to Sing", Myrick recalls how Smith's producer (Bob Ferguson) wanted the guitar to sound, "He came out and said he wanted a bright sound, and he adjusted my controls. I thought it was an awfully thin sound, but it wound up being very popular."


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith's vocal delivery has also been considered to be part of her musical style. Writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted in 2012 that Smith sings with a "cool, authoritative ease, a skill that brought her to the attention of some of Nashville's finest songwriters." Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann called her singing "a pillar-of-fire delivery sobbed with desolation." Thom Jurek of AllMusic stated that Smith's vocals offer "sophisticated emotional delivery" and that "her control and phrasing remain a high-water mark today."


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith is considered by many critics and historians to be one of country music's most celebrated and respected artists. In his review of Smith's 1996 compilation "The Essential Connie Smith", Jurek explained why Smith's vocals are usually compared to Cline's, "Connie Smith is perhaps the only female singer in the history of country music who can truly claim to be the heiress to Patsy Cline's throne. It's not that there aren't many amazing vocalists in the field, and plenty of legends among them. But in terms of the pure gift of interpretation of taking virtually any song and making it a country song of class and distinction, Smith is it."


title: Connie Smith

text: Writers and journalists have also cited Smith as an integral piece of country music history. Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann categorized her as one of country's "heroines of heartbreak", due to her emotional vocal delivery. Bufwack and Oermann further stated that along with Tammy Wynette, Smith was among the genre's "most towering country voices of the 1960s and 1970s" who "sang from the depths of despair" and "spoke for conservative Middle America in both music and life."


title: Connie Smith

text: Many artists in the country music industry have cited Smith as a significant musical influence or one of their favorite musical artists. George Jones cited Smith as his favorite female singer in his 1995 autobiography. Elvis Presley had many of Smith's albums in his record collection at his Graceland home and intended on recording Smith's version of "The Wonders You Perform", but never got around to doing so. In a discussion with country songwriter Fred Foster, Dolly Parton famously said, "You know, there's really only three female singers in the world: Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Connie Smith. The rest of us are only pretending."


title: Connie Smith

text: Smith has also been given honors and achievements as part of her legacy. In 2002, she was ranked in the top ten of "CMT"s televised special of the "40 Greatest Women of Country Music". In 2011, she was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. Alongside Garth Brooks, Smith was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012. "Just to be in the company of the great Kitty Wells is enough," she commented after hearing the news. In 2015, she celebrated 50 years as a member of the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. Her celebration was honored in a performance joined by Alison Krauss and Mel Tillis, among others. In 2017, she was ranked on "Rolling Stone"'s list of the "100 Greatest Country Artists of All-Time".


title: Connie Smith

text: In March 2021, Smith's legacy was further cemented by the Library of Congress, which added "Once a Day" to the National Recording Registry. In April 2021, Smith's husband, Marty Stuart, announced a documentary to be released about her life and career titled "Connie: The Cry of the Heart". "Studying the depth of what Marty and Connie have achieved in the industry and then discovering their ability to predict the business trends around their legacy makes me very excited to be part of what they are doing," said Nick Kontonicolas, who will help broadcast the documentary on his network.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, fought during 25–27 October 1942, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Santa Cruz or Third Battle of Solomon Sea, in Japan as the Battle of the South Pacific ( "Minamitaiheiyō kaisen"), was the fourth aircraft carrier battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II. It was also the fourth major naval engagement fought between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the lengthy and strategically important Guadalcanal campaign. As in the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Eastern Solomons, the ships of the two adversaries were rarely in sight or gun range of each other. Instead, almost all attacks by both sides were mounted by carrier- or land-based aircraft.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: In an attempt to drive Allied forces from Guadalcanal and nearby islands and end the stalemate that had existed since September 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army planned a major ground offensive on Guadalcanal for 20–25 October 1942. In support of this offensive, and with the hope of engaging Allied naval forces, Japanese carriers and other large warships moved into a position near the southern Solomon Islands. From this location, the Japanese naval forces hoped to engage and decisively defeat any Allied (primarily U.S.) naval forces, especially carrier forces, that responded to the ground offensive. Allied naval forces also hoped to meet the Japanese naval forces in battle, with the same objectives of breaking the stalemate and decisively defeating their adversary.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: The Japanese ground offensive on Guadalcanal was underway with the Battle for Henderson Field while the naval warships and aircraft from the two adversaries confronted each other on the morning of 26 October 1942, just north of the Santa Cruz Islands. After an exchange of carrier air attacks, Allied surface ships retreated from the battle area with the fleet carrier sunk, and another fleet carrier, , heavily damaged. The participating Japanese carrier forces also retired because of high aircraft and aircrew losses, plus significant damage to the fleet carrier and the light carrier .


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: Santa Cruz was a tactical victory and a short-term strategic victory for the Japanese in terms of ships sunk and damaged, and control of the seas around Guadalcanal. However, Japan's loss of many irreplaceable veteran aircrews proved to be a long-term strategic advantage for the Allies, whose aircrew losses in the battle were relatively low and quickly replaced. Japan hoped for and needed a bigger, more decisive victory. The fact that the naval battle was won just after the land battle was lost meant that the opportunity to exploit the strategical failure had already passed.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: On 8 August 1942, Allied forces, predominantly from the United States, landed on Japanese-occupied Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and the Florida Islands in the Solomon Islands. The landings on the islands were meant to deny their use by the Japanese as bases for threatening the supply routes between the U.S. and Australia, and to secure the islands as starting points for a campaign with the eventual goal of neutralizing the major Japanese base at Rabaul while also supporting the Allied New Guinea campaign. The landings initiated the six-month-long Guadalcanal campaign.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: After the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24–25 August, in which the fleet carrier was heavily damaged and forced to sail to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for a month of major repairs, three U.S. carrier task forces remained in the South Pacific area. The task forces were based around the fleet carriers , , and plus their respective air groups and supporting surface warships, including battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, and were primarily stationed between the Solomons and New Hebrides (Vanuatu) islands. In this area of operations, the carriers were charged with guarding the line of communication between the major Allied bases at New Caledonia and Espiritu Santo, supporting the Allied ground forces at Guadalcanal and Tulagi against any Japanese counteroffensives, covering the movement of supply ships to Guadalcanal, and engaging and destroying any Japanese warships, especially carriers, that came within range. The area of ocean in which the U.S. carrier task forces operated was known as "Torpedo Junction" by U.S. forces because of the high concentration of Japanese submarines in the area.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: On 15 September, "Wasp" was hit by three torpedoes fired by Japanese submarine while supporting a major reinforcement and resupply convoy to Guadalcanal and almost engaging the Japanese carriers and , which withdrew just before the two adversaries came into range of each other's aircraft. With power knocked out from torpedo damage, "Wasp"s damage-control teams were unable to contain the ensuing large fires, and she was abandoned and scuttled.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: Although the U.S. now had only one operational carrier, "Hornet", in the South Pacific, the Allies still maintained air superiority over the southern Solomon Islands because of their aircraft based at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. However, at night, when aircraft were not able to operate effectively, the Japanese were able to operate their ships around Guadalcanal almost at will. Thus, a stalemate in the battle for Guadalcanal developedthe Allies delivered supplies and reinforcements to Guadalcanal during the day, and the Japanese did the same by warship, referred to as the "Tokyo Express" by the Allies, at nightwith neither side able to deliver enough troops to the island to secure a decisive advantage. By mid-October, both sides had roughly an equal number of troops on the island. The stalemate was briefly interrupted by two large-ship naval actions. On the night of 11–12 October, a U.S. naval force intercepted and defeated a Japanese naval force en route to bombard Henderson Field in the Battle of Cape Esperance. But just two nights later, a Japanese force that included the battleships and successfully bombarded Henderson Field, destroying most of the U.S. aircraft there and inflicting severe damage on the field's facilities.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: The U.S. made two moves to try to break the stalemate in the battle for Guadalcanal. First, repairs to "Enterprise" were expedited so that she could return to the South Pacific as soon as possible. On 10 October, "Enterprise" received her new air group (Air Group 10) and on 16 October, she left Pearl Harbor; and on 23 October, she arrived back in the South Pacific and rendezvoused with "Hornet" and the rest of the Allied South Pacific naval forces on 24 October, northeast of Espiritu Santo.


title: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

text: Second, on 18 October, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Allied Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Forces, replaced Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley with Vice Admiral William Halsey, Jr. as Commander, South Pacific Area: this position commanded Allied forces involved in the Solomon Islands campaign. Nimitz felt that Ghormley had become too myopic and pessimistic to lead Allied forces effectively in the struggle for Guadalcanal. Halsey was reportedly respected throughout the U.S. naval fleet as a "fighter". Upon assuming command, Halsey immediately began making plans to draw the Japanese naval forces into a battle, writing to Nimitz, "I had to begin throwing punches almost immediately."