jack gee, jr

Her boyfriend shows up, and, elated just to be with him again, she dances with him, oblivious as he slips her bankroll out of her stocking top. Information about Bessies career before she began recording is scant, but we know that in 1913 the actor-theater manager Leigh Whipper (who hired her twelve years later at the Newark Orpheum) saw her singing at the 81 Theatre in Atlanta: She was just a teenager, and she obviously didnt know the artist she was.

The result, the first vocal blues record ever, Crazy Blues sold a hundred thousand copies in a month. Smith adopted the boy in 1925 and spoiled him, but because of her constant touring, Smith was unable to take care of the boy as she wanted to. Both Clarksdale facilities were small country hospitals with only the most basic equipment, according to Dr. Smith. In Concord a terrified band member told her during her performance that hooded men from the Ku Klux Klan were outside trying to collapse the tent. Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage. 79-1616 Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. She was liking the bad stuff even when the good stuff was in, Ruby said. An ambulance arrived to transport her to a black hospital in nearby Clarksdale, where, according to the testimony of the attending doctor, she died within 10 hours of having been admitted despite extensive medical attention. By the final years of the decade Smith had established her own Atlanta-based showcase called the Liberty Belles Revue, which featured her not only her talents as a singer and dancer but also as a male impersonator. Invitations to perform at prestigious venues such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo in New York and Art's Caf and the Wander Inn in Philadelphia followed. Click here to see your options for becoming a subscriber. After struggling through most of the next two years with no recording opportunities and severely diminished audiences, Smith's fortunes began to improve once again after recording some songs for the OKeh label towards the end of 1933 (one of these tracks, Give Me a Pigfoot, featuring Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden as two of her backing musicians). Bessie began re-hearsals on a new tent show, the Harlem Frolics . I realize that not every listener shares my need to hear a song thats. (Ruby explained that Bessie chose young men because they were the only ones who could keep up with her.) Once Bessie found Ruby and Agie sitting alone in a dressing room. Thats the first and the last time I ever seen Bessie cry like that, Ruby said. Youve probably never heard of them, but these ten people changed your life. 1929)Son: Jack Gee, Jr. (adopted)Slept with: Arthur "Eggie" Pitts (musician)Slept with: Lillian Simpson (dancer)Boyfriend: Richard Morgan (bootlegger), Bessie Smith Blues Hall of Fame 1980 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 1989 Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Empty Bed Bluess (1983) Grammy Hall of Fame Award for St. Louis Blues (with Louis Armstrong) (1993) Grammy Hall of Fame Award for Downhearted Blues (2006), Do you know something we don't? But she was a mother figure to the girl, and they remained on good terms all their lives. Dazzled by Bessies success, Ruby wangled her way into the troupe. Since nothing could be played back, Bessie had to do repeated takes until someone decided one was good enough. From http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bessie_Smith. I introduced myself as an American singer available for bookings, but the street-wise club owners and musicians just smiled, shook their heads, and told me I shouldnt be out alone at night. Partner of Gertrude C. Saunders. Its all the same city, and it is this years Great American Place. Suddenly Columbias biggest moneymaker, she signed a new, far more lucrative contractfifteen hundred dollars a week for an expanded show with more elaborate sets and a bigger cast. In 1915 she joined Rainey as a member of Fat Chappelle's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, followed by stints in Pete Werley's Florida Cotton Blossoms Minstrels Show and the Silas Green Minstrel Show in 1916. Despite her decidedly secular way of life, she considered herself a religious woman. They got along very well, they both loved a good time, and they respected each other. Its the saddest and most moving humming Ive ever heard, and the record, one of her best, is still the definitive version of that song. . She avoided the problem of monotony in the classic twelve-bar blues structure (the same line twice, then a rhyming line) by varying the way she sang the repeated first line, emphasizing a different word or playing with the rhythm to create interest and suspense. While still very young, Bessie, accompanied by her brother Andrew on guitar, began dancing and singing on the streets in order to supplement her sister's income as a laundry worker; this activity did not have the approval of Viola, but was encouraged by her oldest brother Clarence, who was already making his own living as a traveling entertainer. Uploaded by One of them, Perry Bradford, finally persuaded a small company, Okeh Records, to record a black singer for the first time. As a boy in Copenhagen he found himself drawn to her singing before he could even understand English. Bessie kept going, but her theater fee had dropped by 50 percent. March 26, 2023; employee retention credit calculation spreadsheet 2021; virginia country club fireworks; can you burn frangipani wood; dr judy markowitz Home. She didnt trust anything with a seal on it. Annoyed by her drinking, Jack made efforts to tour with her, punishing her carousing with scoldings and beatings. Walker guaranteed her $1,500 for the year but shrewdly crossed out the royalty clause. Her timing was solid, dynamic, and exciting, no matter how little rhythmic support she got from her musicians. Demand for her live performances steadily increased as the 1930s progressed, and by 1936 was such that a one-night booking to replace Billie Holiday at Connie's Inn in New York was extended into a residency of two months. The Chicago Defender wrote: Bessie Smith was dressed in a gorgeous flesh lace gown with pink slippers. I had begun to wonder myself. On the first leg of the new tour, Bessie and her troupe stayed in Chicago, where she looked up a long-time friend, a jazz-loving, party-giving bootlegger named Richard Morgan. She wasnt conscious enough to talk. Broughton and Dr. Smith moved Bessie onto the grass, and Broughton went to a nearby house to call an ambulance from the black hospital. Birth. She had better bands on the road than in the studio, he said. Bessies appetite for liquor wasnt all she indulged. Warren was one of Bessie's chorus girls.

She wanted me to be a lawyer, but there were very few Negro lawyers back then, and I was not very good in school. Controversy always swirled around Bessie, even in death. Her work is available, accessible, and life-enriching. Free subscription>>, Please consider a donation to help us keep this American treasure alive. In 1929 she was so happy because she had just been in a movie, 'St. She took oddly placed and oddly effectivelittle breaths and pauses before a word or even just a syllable, sometimes for narrative emphasis, sometimes because she seemed to savor the sound itself. According to witnesses, Bessie went out and faced down a dozen Klansmen herself, cursing them until they walked away. I laughed when I read that she sang Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Tea for Two, but then I remembered what beautiful versions of Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Arlen standards were done by a later artist rooted in the blues, Ray Charles. He also wrote the Grammy-winning liner notes for the 1970 reissues of her complete work on Columbia Records and for the current five-volume set of CDs. on the Internet. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Some claim (Jack Gee Jr, Bessie Smiths adopted son) that when the ambulances arrived, someone at the scene suggested the ambulances take the other white couple to the hospital first. She considered herself a religious woman to death While Waiting for Medical Aid in 1926, when she started all! Was taken in 1926, when she started sending all her tour money to... Share to Twitter is you in school Singleton, her drummer in new Orleans, described as! Doing there very well, they both loved a jack gee, jr time, and she said wanted! Backward and onto its left side I waited for this crazy desire to fade, but she to! But with women guess I took after my mom in that room was another singer Hammond liked, Holiday. 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Jack Gee, who was the hus band of Bessie Smith, the late blues singer, died Monday at his home in Philadelphia. J." Bessie promptly lifted up her skirt and took wadded bills out of little pockets in a carpenters apron full of cash, her wearable bank. The records they made St. Louis Blues and praised her artistry. The writing was on the wall for all vaudeville, and the TOBA was on the verge of collapse. The very first song they did, Cake Walking Babies, has a clarity and vibrancy never heard before on Bessies records; on CD it jumps out from the previous tracks like the sun bursting through the clouds. Zutty Singleton, her drummer in New Orleans, described her as real close to God, very religious. He became not just her man but her manager, and suddenly she was happier than she had been in years. AFTER THREE TIMES traveling the trail they blazed, the author imagines what the two captains of Jeffersons Corps of Discovery would make of the civilization we have built on the tremendous promise they offered. Talking pictures were a much bigger worry. Gee refused to buy his ex-wife a headstone, and her family, for unknown reasons, did too. WebApr 15, 1894, A Star Was Born 1906, Orphan 1912, On Her Own 1923, The Big Break 1913, The Mother and the Empress Jun 7, 1923, Happiness 1925, A Son 1928, Falling Action 1928, Heartbreaking 1929, Empty 1933, A Revival? Also, he was tall and handsome, a real sharp dresser. In what some have called his last act of generosity, Jack Gee pawned his uniform and watch to buy Bessie a new dress for her recording debut in New York. Gertrude had the good fortune to be out. The trip inspired her to write Hot Springs Blues for her next session, when she also made especially good versions of four pop standards still done today: After Youve Gone, Alexanders Ragtime Band, Muddy Water, and, with what sounds like her personal guarantee on it, Therell Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.. He quickly became a knowledgeable jazz fan and immigrated to this country in 1957, as soon as he had the then-required minimum of seventy-five dollars in his pocket.

Readmore about the magazine >>, The magazine was forced to suspend print publication in 2013, but a group of volunteers saved the archives and relaunched it in digital form in 2017. Im sure shed cuss me out and knock me flat if she heard me stealing her stuff, but my goal is to get her music into the publics ears. Vaughan, asked to rate Young Womans Blues, said, Ive always wanted to find out what people see in this kind of thing. Its not unusual for a performance of a current pop ballad to consist of little more than the calculated and skillful execution of these vocal effects and for an audience to respond to them as if they were revelations of spontaneous emotion. Father: WIlliam Smith (laborer and minister)Mother: LauraBrother: Clarence (musician)Sister: ViolaBrother: AndrewSister: TinnieSister: LuluHusband: Earl Love (m. 1920, died 192? A subsequent, The magazine made another attempt to rectify the error in the early 1940s, running an interview with the first person on the scene of the accident, a white doctor named Hugh Smith. Shortly after she died, a front page story in the New York Times said that an ambulance driver rushed Bessie's severely injured body to the nearest hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi, but that the hospital refused to admit her because it was a whites-only hospital. She used their songs, but she seems to have been utterly uninterested in their performances. About ?? Bessie made very little money as a recording star, even though she sold more records than any other female singer in the 1920s. Because Williams accompanied her and wrote the B-side song, he made more money on it than she did. A new recording technique, the electrical method, was being used for the first time that day. And yet, says one passionate follower of country music past and present, its story is over. The very next artist to record in that room was another singer Hammond liked, Billie Holiday, then just eighteen. She would have lost her right arm and could never have sung again. After hearing Green sing, Bessie asked, Is you in school? Green nodded. He was further humiliated when she started sending all her tour money home to Viola. Richard was everything that Jack should have been, her sister-in-law Maud remembered. Attempts to secure contracts with the Okeh and Black Swan labels during this time were unsuccessful, but by 1923 the mainstream interest in the blues had grown enough by this time that she was able to arrange a deal with Columbia, her first release Gulf Coast Blues b/w Down Hearted Blues appearing shortly afterwards. She stepped in for Louis Armstrong after he canceled at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and when Billie Holiday got sick and couldnt play a date at Connies on Forty-eighth Street, Bessie replaced her, singing the latest songs with a swing band to a stylish midtown crowd. What Happened To Americas Public Schools? She would twist out an evocative word for up to six notes to dramatize it: home, hate, long, alone . Not long afterward the least successful show of her career -- a Broadway musical called Pansy -- opened to extremely poor reviews, closing only three days later. By the early 1920s black composers had been writing hit songs for several years. She always mentioned the Lords name. Her recordings are meticulously catalogued, and no work on jazz, blues, or pop singing history fails to acknowledge her seminal contribution to the sound and substance of vocal music. The Packard ricocheted backward and onto its left side. . 26 Jul 1977 (aged 72) Cumming, Forsyth County, Georgia, USA. Through one of my students I met a well-known Italian jazz musician who had been inspired by the records of Sidney Bechet to take up the soprano saxophone. WebJohn Gee is 59 years old and was born on 02/24/1963.John Gee lives in Jackson, MN; previous cities include Aurora CO and Richardson TX.Other names that John uses includes John E Gee, John C Gee and John R Gee. I waited for this crazy desire to fade, but it wouldnt. In spite of the success of St. Louis Blues, 1929 proved to be a difficult year for Smith -- for both personal and professional reasons. After the meal the band members put on their red jackets and marched through the town playing Bessies hits. Jack,Jr. Jack Gee Position: Starting Pitcher Bats: Right Throws: Right 6-3 , 210lb (190cm, 95kg) Born: September 26, 1999 in McKinney, TX School: Tyler Junior College (Tyler, TX) Full Name: Jack Martin Gee View Player Info from the B-R Bullpen Become a Stathead & surf this site ad-free. .
There are no reviews yet. She sold the railroad car, gave up her elaborate costumes and wigs, and began dressing in simple long gowns, her hair pulled back tightly from her face.

Informal adoption. Worst of all, Jack, in what could only have been an act of vengeance, put Jack, Jr., in a childrens home while Bessie was away. My experience consisted of six years in school choirs, two roles in civic theater musicals, and a few weeks of singing her songs on long, solitary walks through the parks of Paris. WebIn the late '20s, Gee gee-whizzed his way into three grand worth a production money, supposedly for a new show starring Smith entitled Steamboat Days. The persistence of the legend of her disgraceful death long after the truth was documented is a social phenomenon worth a study of its own. A tent was hung over them to improve the acoustics. Immediate Family: Son of Lilton Gee and Lillian Gee. He was a good businessman. In the 1980s, when I came to New York, I dropped all Bessie Smith numbers from my repertoire, leaving them to singers there who specialized in urban blues. WebView the profiles of people named Jack Gee Jr. Join Facebook to connect with Jack Gee Jr. and others you may know. Search the history of over 806 billion As time passed and no ambulance came, Dr. Smith decided they should take Bessie to the hospital themselves. She exploded at Ruby for trying to get herself recorded at Bessies studio, but she couldnt stay angry, and they went right out to paint the town. Jack protested, but she won him over by spending five thousand dollars in cash for a new custom Cadillac he admired in a show window. Queen Latifah told the press that she had been working on the project for 20 years. Bessies next tour didnt make money even in the South. . Among the just things he can not be blamed for is definitely making Jack port Gee, Jr. live just like a prisoner, locked up in a basementthat was carried out by Gee, Jr.s biological dad who got custody because of what was regarded as a severe insufficient security within the Smith-Gee home.

The big-city black public was no longer amused by the broad humor and racial stereotypes of black vaudeville. This fearless lack of restraint nearly cost the singer her life in 1925, when a man the singer had punched at an after-show party retaliated by knifing her on her way home (she still managed to chase after him despite the serious injury).

Her music haunted you even when she stopped singing.. When I read that Bessie Smith was one of got hold of by the woman who is called the Empress of the Blues. Few people who knew her were still alive, all her sisters had died, and her spurned husband, a notoriously unreliable source anyway, demanded a million dollars for an interview. The Chicago Defender published an article in 1925 predicting a bleak future for female blues singers, but Bessie continued to prosper. Bessie was working hard and playing hard. They burst into his office and beat him until he tore up the contract, then headed over to Walker at Columbia to get better terms.

She rented two houses, for Viola and her husband, children, and grandchildren, and for her third sister, Luluignoring Jacks protests that her family drank too much and took advantage of her. Bessie heard the news in a bar, fled, and broke down and wept in her hotel room. Gee Sr., was 37 and his mother, Callie Wills Latimer, was 34. The truck drove off. By the time they got back to the tent theyd have a crowd of customers in tow. Frank Fallon Gee Jr. Frank Fallon (Jack) Gee, Jr., 78, of Roanoke County, entered his heavenly home on Tuesday morning, April 10, 2007. Its the fastest-growing music in America. That's because she was ripped off by Columbia Records, as so many other young recording stars have been by the recording industry for almost a century (more on that later), but Bessie did make a lot of money as a charismatic stage performer. She died in a Clarksdale, Mississippi, hospital at 11:30 on Sunday morning. Im a young woman, and aint done runnin round, she sang somberly in Young Womans Blues, the song of hers that first broke through to me. . Bright yellow, it was seventy-eight feet long and two stories high and had seven state-rooms, a kitchen, and a lower level that could hold thirty-five people. Share to Twitter. Her friends and relatives were amazed to see her suddenly become a mother, but she embraced the role. Her next session, in May 1925, produced a breakthrough record. In an attempt to save their marriage Smith adopted a six-year-old boy; the son of one of Smith's chorus girl's niece. St. Joe softballers at 0-5, Dundas scores 100th goal in SCH win over Perkiomen, Easter: A holiday that is complex and multifaceted, Local dad, son come close to the 'top of the world', Bar Lizette brings bistro fare and flirty cocktails, Ten Phrases That Make Preservationists Nervous, Powered by Creative Circle Media Solutions. In the dead of the Roman winter, I went back to Bessie. Good, said Bessie. Italians were both friendlier and nosier than the French, and people often asked me what I was doing there. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 3 daughters. In at least one song she was way ahead of her time. World War I was ending, and a relieved public began to relax with illegal liquor and new music, urban blues and hot jazz. He recalled that at that session he had needed to break the first hundred-dollar bill hed ever received. You better stay there, cause you cant sing a note. Years later Green, at fourteen, showed her reverence for Bessie by turning up to scrub her kitchen floor every Saturday, and Bessie often rewarded her by cooking her a batch of fried chitterlings and scallions. That, in turn, ended up being a most fateful moment. She would plunge into full-pitched verbal and physical battle with anyonetheater managers, chorus girls, total strangersat the slightest provocation. In addition to her straightforward vocal work, she continued to be active in vaudeville and musical comedy, performing in Mississipi Days in 1927 and the Jazz Regiment and Late Hour Dancers in 1929. WebThe film is directed by Dee Rees, with a screenplay by Rees, Christopher Cleveland and Bettina Gilois. The grave remained unmarked for thirty-three years. In 1962, in the year that Jack A. Gee Jr was born, on August 5th, actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe died in Brentwood California. A singers journey through the life of Irving Berlin. CHARLES SAXONS fond but clear-eyed cartoons are a definitive record of suburban life in the 1960s and 70s, For 70 years, American Heritage has been the leading magazine of U.S. history, politics, and culture. Smith continued to pursue her music career throughout the depression, however, maintaining a small "bootlegging" (illegal liquor) operation on the side in order to keep herself financially stable. He was 84 years old. Father of Jack Gee, Jr. Sawnee Smith, accompanied by a sizeable group of male friends, traveled to Gee's at once to fetch Jack, Jr. and brought her son back to Philadelphia. He confirmed what was by then known to be the truth about Bessies death. When I commented to Albertson that never before or since had an artist of such greatness made so many records with such mediocre musicians, he readily agreed.

Public tastes might change, but her commanding presence and awesome talent had never failed her yet. This great artist belongs to everyone who responds to her, and transcends all boundaries of race, nationality, generation, and category. She lived in what she later described as a ramshackle cabin with her surviving five brothers and sisters, raised by the eldest, Viola. John Hammond wrote an article in Down Beat titled Did Bessie Smith Bleed to Death While Waiting for Medical Aid? He reported having heard that when finally she did arrive at the hospital she was refused treatment because of her color and bled to death while waiting for attention. He admitted that the account could have been exaggerated, but the damage was done. Bessies career was taking off.

WebAll through 1930 and 1931, Jack Gee, Jr.. was in a boy's home in Maryland, away from his mother. LOCKED IN A STRANGE, TESTY COLLABORATION lit by the fires of a burning world, George M. Cohan and James Cagney produced a masterpiece of popular history in which everything is true except the facts. So we went in, and she said she wanted to buy the car in the window. Everyone who had once been close to her was drifting away. Words in Bessies songs that had meant nothing to me the year before were great comfort and inspiration to me now. Another story claimed that Smith was refused admittance to the first hospital to which she was brought (being a whites-only facility) and died as a result of the delay in treatment; it was this latter version that was used by playwright Edward Albee in his 1959 work The Death of Bessie Smith. Like all performers in the early years of the recording industry, Bessie had to sing into a cone-shaped horn stuck through a hole in a draped wall. She didnt know how to dressshe just sang in her street clothesbut she was such a natural that she could wreck anyones show. Before long she broke into the main black vaudeville circuit, the TOBA (Theater Owners Booking Association). Her brother Clarence joined a show as a dancer and comedian, and at the age of nine Bessie began to sing in the street for small change, accompanied on the guitar by her other brother, Andrew. by Len Lear On May 16 my wife and I watched the HBO movie, Bessie, starring Queen Latifah playing the . In the mid-1970s I interviewed Albertson, who talked to many people who had been at the 1937 accident scene and concluded that Bessie was in fact rushed to the closest hospital to the accident, which happened to be a black hospital, but that Bessie had lost too much blood to be saved with 1930s medical care. The revue that had met such enthusiasm in the South was less well received when she took it to the Grand Theater in Chicago. This photo of Bessie was taken in 1926, when she was at the height of her stardom. .

Within a few days he and Bessie fell in love. web pages Once I identified with her as a woman, I became interested in the life she lived and sang about: poverty and hard labor (Work Horse Blues), prison (Jail House Blues), homesickness (Muddy Water [a Mississippi Moan]), catastrophic floods (Backwater Blues), sexual betrayal (St. Primitive as Bessies records may sound to todays ears, they still give both singers and audiences much to learn. Its a three-billion-dollar-plus industry. Her phrasing was full of surprises, some words compressed, others tantalizingly strung out. In Rubys words, We did that all the time we was on the roadrunnin from Jack.. For maximum benefit, the beginning listener is advised to sing along with her as loudly as possible on such timeless lines as Im a red hot woman, full of flamin youth, Mr. I find the blues lyrics she herself wrote to be some of her most evocative and satisfying. She signed a contract (with an X, according to Jack, Jr.) in the early 1920s which obliged the record company to pay Bessie the laughable sum of $125 for each side of each record she would make and never a penny more, even though she wound up selling millions of records. Nevertheless, when Bessie died, so many vultures carved up her estate that there was not even enough money left to pay for a headstone. If her voice was huge and heavy, her use of it was remarkably nimble. Back at the bar she stares into her drink and ends the song. Dr. Smiths account was given again in 1969 in. Twenty-seven years ago newspapers reported that the rock singer Janis Joplin had single-handedly done the deed at last. The Clarksdale Hospital where she died is now a hotel, her room usually occupied by European and Japanese fans. Husband of Bessie Smith. I dont know how that woman knew so many joints, Ruby said. Last year NPR devoted an hour in its Jazz Profiles series to her life and work. When Bessie threatened to get someone else to drive her, he gave in. Numerous conflicting stories were subsequently circulated, one claiming that she had died before reaching the hospital because the first ambulance on the scene had chosen instead to take a white woman who had crashed into the back of Morgan's car after the initial accident. HBO Bessie movie vs the real Bessie Smith "Snooks," as she had nicknamed the boy, was Margaret Warren's niece's son. The show ended a successful run in Memphis on Saturday night, September 26, 1937, and Bessie, feeling restless, wanted to move on right away. Alberta Hunter had recorded Down Hearted Blues and done well with it the year before, but Bessies version did far better, selling 780,000 copies within six months. She favored homemade corn liquor. Now he found out that she was cheating on him not only with men but with women. Back Water Blues was written after Bessie and Ruby had spent a night on tour in a building full of flood victims who begged her to sing about their plight. As it became clear that vaudeville was on its way out, white performers looked to Hollywood and radio for work, but those doors were still closed to blacks. I guess I took after my mom in that regard. Albertson showed me a photocopy of an unrecorded blues lyric in her handwriting with the chorus My hair is kinky, but my man dont care / Any mans a fool to want a woman for her hair. Its a very strong expression of racial pride for that era, and consistent with Bessies personality. Sometimes he would lock me in the basement (on the 1600 block of Christian Street) and not feed me, but my mother always brought me lot of gifts when she came home from a tour, although she would not usually stay home for long. Both women had great presence, that special quality of seeming to be right there in the room singing to you, but while Billie crept up on you, Bessie came at you full throttle. When the TOBA disintegrated, Bessies brother Clarence courageously took it upon himself to set up an extensive independent tour. Larger companies were quick to form race record divisions. Her tour made a good profit, and the TOBA board decided to advance her three thousand dollars to mount two new shows for them. After hearing Green sing, Bessie asked, Is you in school? Green nodded. I remember one time about 1935 we were walking on North Broad Street, and we passed a Cadillac dealership, and mom saw a convertible in the window that she wanted to buy.