Captain Jack Sparrow is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Pirates of the Caribbean film series and franchise. An early iteration of Sparrow was created by screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, but the final version of the character was created by actor Johnny Depp, who also portrayed him.

The characterization of Sparrow is based on a combination of The Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards and Looney Tunes cartoons, specifically the characters Bugs Bunny and Pepé Le Pew. He first appears in the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He later appears in the sequels Dead Man's Chest (2006), At World's End (2007), On Stranger Tides (2011), and Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017).

In the films, Sparrow is one of the nine pirate lords in the Brethren Court, the Pirate Lords of the Seven Seas. He can be treacherous and survives mostly by using wit and negotiation rather than by force, opting to flee most dangerous situations and to fight only when necessary.

Sparrow is introduced seeking to regain his ship, the Black Pearl, from his mutinous first mate Hector Barbossa. After succeeding, he attempts to escape his blood debt to the legendary Davy Jones while fighting the East India Trading Company. Later, when searching for the Fountain of Youth, he is abducted and taken upon Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge and is forced to lead him to the Fountain while the Black Pearl is trapped in a bottle. In a later adventure, when the ghost spanish Captain Armando Salazar comes after him, he searches for the Trident of Poseidon while also seeking to restore the Pearl to its original form.

The Pirates of the Caribbean series was inspired by the Disney theme park ride of the same name, and when the ride was revamped in 2006, the character of Captain Jack Sparrow was added to it. He headlined the Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios, and is the subject of spin-off novels, including a children's book series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow, which chronicles his childhood years.

Concept and creation

Character
When writing the screenplay for The Curse of the Black Pearl, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio envisioned Captain Jack Sparrow as a supporting character in the vein of Bugs Bunny and Groucho Marx. The producers saw him as a young Burt Lancaster. Director Gore Verbinski admitted, "The first film was a movie, and then Jack was put into it almost. He doesn't have the obligations of the plot in the same ways that the other characters have. He meanders his way through, and he kind of affects everybody else." Sparrow represents an ethical pirate, with Captain Barbossa as his corrupt foil, though both characters viewed as both light and dark tricksters. His true motives usually remain masked, and whether he is honorable or evil depends on the audience's perspective. This acts as part of Will Turner's arc, in which Sparrow tells him a pirate can be a good man, like his father.

Following the success of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the challenge to creating a sequel was, according to Verbinski, "You don't want just the Jack Sparrow movie. It's like having a garlic milkshake. He's the spice and you need a lot of straight men ... Let's not give them too much Jack. It's like too much dessert or too much of a good thing." Although Dead Man's Chest was written to propel the trilogy's plot, Sparrow's state-of-mind as he is pursued by Davy Jones becomes increasingly edgy, and the writers concocted the cannibal sequence to show that he was in danger whether on land or at sea. Sparrow is perplexed over his attraction to Elizabeth Swann, and attempts to justify it throughout the film.

At World's End was meant to return it tonally to a character piece. Sparrow, in particular, is tinged with madness after extended solitary confinement in Davy Jones's Locker, and now desires immortality. Sparrow struggles with what it takes to be a moral person, after his honest streak caused his doom in the second film. This is mainly shown by his increasingly erratic behaviour and Jack's hallucinations, which appeared to be simply his deranged mind in the beginning where dozens of "Jack Sparrows" appeared to crew the ship in his solitary exile, but later the hallucinations grew more important and there were mainly two "Jacks" constantly arguing about which path to follow: the immortality or the mortality. The last hallucination took place while Jack was imprisoned on the Dutchman, where his honest streak won. By the end of At World's End, Sparrow is sailing to the Fountain of Youth, an early concept for the second film. Rossio said in 2007 that a fourth film was possible, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer expressed interest in a spin-off. Gore Verbinski concurred that "all of the stories set in motion by the first film have been resolved. If there ever were another Pirates of the Caribbean film, I would start fresh and focus on the further adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow."

On Stranger Tides was first announced on September 28, 2008, during a Disney event at the Kodak Theatre. Verbinski did not return to direct the fourth installment and was replaced by Rob Marshall. The movie uses elements from Tim Powers' novel of the same name, particularly Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, but the film is not a straight adaptation of the novel.

The fifth film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, was co-directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg.

Johnny Depp

Looking to do a family film, Johnny Depp visited the Walt Disney Studios in 2001 when he heard of plans to adapt the Pirates of the Caribbean ride into a film. Depp was excited by the possibility of reviving an old Hollywood genre, and found the script met his quirky sensibilities: the crew of the Black Pearl were not in search of treasure but trying to return it to lift a curse on them, and the traditional mutiny had already occurred. Depp was cast on June 10, 2002. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer felt Depp would give the film an edge that could draw teenage and adult audiences despite Disney's reputation for soft children's fare.

According to various reports and interviews, Johnny Depp prepared for the role while rehearsing in the steam room of a sauna. At times, he claimed to turn the heat up to its max temperature of 1,000 degrees. The actor was quoted as saying, "Captain Jack was actually born in a sauna—my sauna. I figured this is a guy who has been on the high seas for probably all of his life, the majority of his life at least, and therefore probably dealt with a lot of inescapable heat to the brain." Depp also said, due to his daughter Lily-Rose Depp being three years old at the time, he watched various cartoons, using Tex Avery and Wile E. Coyote as examples.

At the first read-through, Depp surprised the cast and crew by portraying the character in an off-kilter manner. He researched 18th-century pirates and, seeing parallels with modern rock stars, modeled his performance on Keith Richards. Richards later appeared in two cameos as Jack's father, Captain Teague, in At World's End and On Stranger Tides. Verbinski and Bruckheimer had confidence in Depp, partly because Orlando Bloom would play the traditional Errol Flynn-type character. Depp improvised the film's final line, "Now, bring me that horizon", which the writer called his favorite line. Disney executives were initially confused by Depp's performance, questioning whether the character was drunk or gay. While watching the rushes, Disney CEO Michael Eisner proclaimed Depp was ruining the film. Depp's response to Disney executives was they could trust him with his choices or let him go. Many industry insiders questioned Depp's casting, as he was an unconventional actor not known for working within the traditional studio system.

Depp's performance won acclaim from film critics. Alan Morrison found it "Gloriously over-the-top ... In terms of physical precision and verbal delivery, it's a master-class in comedy acting." Roger Ebert praised Depp for drawing away from the character as written and found Depp's performance "original in its every atom. There has never been a pirate, or for that matter a human being, like this in any other movie ... his behavior shows a lifetime of rehearsal". Depp won a Screen Actor's Guild award for his performance, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actor, the first in his career. Film School Rejects argued the film made Depp as much a movie star as he was a character actor.

Depp's return in Dead Man's Chest was the first time he had ever made a sequel. Drew McWeeny wrote, "Remember how cool Han Solo was in Star Wars the first time you saw it? And then remember how much cooler he seemed when Empire came out? This is that big a jump."  Depp received an MTV Movie Award and a Teen Choice Award for Dead Man's Chest, and was nominated for an Empire Award and another Golden Globe. For his performance in At World's End, Depp won an MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance, as well as a People's Choice Award, a Kids' Choice Award, and another Teen Choice Award. He has signed on to reprise the role for future sequels.

Make-up and costumes

Depp wears a dreadlock wig in a rock-and-roll approach to a pirate aesthetic. He wears a red bandanna and numerous objects in his hair, influenced by Keith Richards' habit of collecting souvenirs from his travels; Sparrow's decorations include his "piece of eight". Sparrow wears kohl around his eyes, which was inspired by Depp's study of nomads, whom he compared to pirates, and he wore contacts that acted as sunglasses. Sparrow has several gold teeth, two of which belong to Depp, although they were applied during filming. Depp initially forgot to have them removed after shooting The Curse of the Black Pearl, and wore them throughout the shooting of the sequels. Like all aspects of Depp's performance, Disney initially expressed great concern over Depp's teeth. Sparrow wears his goatee in two braids. Initially wire was used in them, but the wires were abandoned because they made the braids stick up when Depp lay down. Sparrow has numerous tattoos, and has been branded a pirate on his right arm by Cutler Beckett, underneath a tattoo of a sparrow.

Depp collaborated with costume designer Penny Rose on his character's appearance, handpicking a tricorne as Sparrow's signature leather hat; to make Sparrow's unique, the other characters did not wear leather hats. A rubber version was used for the scene in Dead Man's Chest when the hat floats on water. Depp liked to stick to one costume, wearing one lightweight silk tweed frock coat throughout the series, and he had to be coaxed out of wearing his boots for a version without a sole or heel in beach scenes. The official line is that none of the costumes from The Curse of the Black Pearl survived, which allowed the opportunity to create tougher linen shirts for stunts. However, one remains which has been displayed in an exhibition of screen costumes in Worcester, England. It was a nightmare for Rose to track down the same makers of Sparrow's sash in Turkey. Rose did not want to silkscreen it, as the homewoven piece had the correct worn feel. Sparrow wears an additional belt in the sequels, because Depp liked a new buckle which did not fit with the original piece.

Sparrow's weapons are genuine 18th-century pieces: his sword dates to the 1740s and his pistol is from the 1760s. Both were made in London. Depp used two pistols on set, one of rubber. Both survived production of the first film. Sparrow's magic compass also survived into the sequels, though director Gore Verbinski had a red arrow added to the dial as it became a more prominent prop. As it does not act like a normal compass, a magnet was used to make it spin. Sparrow wears four rings, two of which belong to Depp. Depp bought the green ring in 1989 and the gold ring is a replica of a 2400-year-old ring Depp gave to the crew, though the original was later stolen. The other two are props to which Depp gave backstories: the gold-and-black ring is stolen from a Spanish widow Sparrow seduced and the green dragon ring recalls his adventures in the Far East. Among Depp's additional ideas was the necklace made of human toes that Sparrow wears as the Pelegosto prepare to eat him, and the sceptre was based on one a friend of Depp's owned.

During the course of the films, Sparrow undergoes physical transformations. In The Curse of the Black Pearl, Sparrow curses himself to battle the undead Barbossa. Like all the actors playing the Black Pearl crew, Depp had to shoot scenes in costume as a reference for the animators, and his shots as a skeleton were shot again without him. Depp reprised the scene again on a motion capture stage. In At World's End, Sparrow hallucinates a version of himself as a member of Davy Jones's crew, adhered to a wall and encrusted with barnacles. Verbinski oversaw that the design retained Sparrow's distinctive look, and rejected initial designs which portrayed him as over 100 years old. In Dead Men Tell No Tales, a young Jack Sparrow appears during a flashback sequence.

Fictional character biography

Before the films
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide gives a backstory to Jack Sparrow in which he was born on a pirate ship during a typhoon in the Indian Ocean and was trained to fence by an Italian.

Books following Jack Sparrow's adventures before the events of the film include a twelve-book series focusing on his teenage years entitled Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow, and a five-books Pirates of the Caribbean: Legends of the Brethren Court series.

In 2011, Ann C. Crispin wrote a novel titled Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom, which focuses more on the films' continuity rather than the other prequel books, and follows Jack's adventures as a merchant captain for the East India Trading Company, which was hinted in At World's End, due to Crispin reading the screenplay, though the scenes were deleted from the final cut of the film.

(As detailed in the 2011 Disney Publishing novel, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom, written by A.C. Crispin)

The Wicked Wench was a pirate ship under the command of a pirate captain named Morgan, who was killed during a battle with Spanish Royal Navy Captain Armando Salazar. The helmsman, Jack Sparrow, was granted captaincy of the Wicked Wench after out-maneuvering Salazar and saving the crew during battle. Jack Sparrow later captained the Wicked Wench for Cutler Beckett for about a year, hauling various cargoes, but he refused to haul slaves. Hoping to recruit Sparrow as one of his many "operatives", Beckett indulged what he regarded as an odd peccadillo of Sparrow's until he and the captain came to part ways. Beckett had dispatched Sparrow on a mission to find the lost island of Kerma, and the treasure at the heart of its underground labyrinth, but Sparrow double-crossed the EITC official and claimed he couldn't locate the island.  Suspicious that Sparrow had indeed found the island and the treasure, but had not given him its accurate location, Beckett determined to browbeat the captain into obedience and demanded that the young captain transport a cargo of slaves to the New World. Initially, Sparrow agreed, but when he realized that he was betraying the Wicked Wench, as well as himself, he rebelled and freed the slaves by taking them to Kerma for safe asylum.

Furious that Sparrow had flouted his orders and stolen the "cargo" of "black gold", Beckett had Sparrow thrown into jail.  After allowing him to languish for a couple of months, Beckett had Sparrow transported to the Wicked Wench's anchorage, about a mile from the coast of West Africa, near Calabar on the Bight of Benin. After personally branding Sparrow with the "P" brand (so he'd be forever identifiable as a pirate), Cutler Beckett gave the order to fire incendiary carcass charges at the Wicked Wench, to demoralize her captain.  Sparrow fought his way free from his guards, dove overboard, and attempted to rescue his burning, foundering ship, but he was too late. The Wicked Wench turned into an inferno, then sank, taking Jack with her. But, while dying, Sparrow called upon Davy Jones, and struck a bargain with him: his soul and one hundred years of service aboard the Flying Dutchman, in return for continued human existence of thirteen years as captain, plus saving the Wicked Wench and transforming her into the fastest, most dangerous pirate ship on the seven seas. Jones agreed and raised the ship from the sea floor, now a charred vessel with an angel figurehead. In keeping with her scorched appearance, Jack painted his ship black and added black sails, rechristening her "the Black Pearl".

Films

The Curse of the Black Pearl

Captain Jack Sparrow first appears in The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).

In his debut scene, Sparrow arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica on a sinking boat, seeking to commandeer a new ship. Despite rescuing Elizabeth Swann,  the daughter of Governor Weatherby Swann, from drowning, he is jailed for piracy. That night, a cursed pirate ship called the Black Pearl attacks Port Royal and Elizabeth is kidnapped. The Black Pearls captain, Hector Barbossa, desperately seeks one last gold coin to break an ancient Aztec curse that he and his crew are under. A blacksmith named Will Turner frees Sparrow to aid him in rescuing Elizabeth. They commandeer HMS Interceptor and recruit a motley crew in Tortuga, Haiti before heading to Isla de Muerta, where Elizabeth is held. Along the way, Will learns that Sparrow was the Black Pearls original captain until Barbossa led a mutiny ten years earlier and took over the ship, marooning Sparrow on an island to die. Sparrow tells Turner that his father was a pirate known as "Bootstrap" Bill Turner.

The rescue attempt goes awry and Barbossa maroons Jack and Elizabeth on the same island upon which he had stranded Sparrow before. Elizabeth creates a signal fire from rum barrels and they are rescued by the Royal Navy. Sparrow cuts a deal with Commodore James Norrington to lead Norrington to the Black Pearl. Norrington refuses until Elizabeth, desperate to save Will, spontaneously accepts Norrington's earlier marriage proposal. Right before the film's climactic battle with the pirates at Isla de Muerta, Sparrow swipes a cursed coin from the treasure chest, making himself immortal and capable of dueling Barbossa. He shoots his nemesis with the pistol he has carried for ten years just as Will breaks the curse, killing Barbossa. Despite having assisted the Navy, Sparrow is sentenced to hang.

At Sparrow's execution in Port Royal, Will saves Sparrow, but they are quickly captured. Elizabeth intervenes, declaring her love for Will who is pardoned, while Sparrow escapes by tumbling off a sea wall. The Black Pearl and her new crew arrive in time to retrieve him, and he becomes captain once more. Impressed by the wily pirate, Norrington allows him one day's head start before giving chase.

Dead Man's Chest

A year following the events of the first film, Sparrow searches for the Dead Man's Chest, which contains the heart of Davy Jones. Sparrow made a bargain with Jones to raise the sunken Black Pearl and make Sparrow captain for thirteen years. Now the debt is due, and Bootstrap Bill Turner warns that Sparrow must either serve one hundred years aboard the Flying Dutchman, or be dragged to Davy Jones's Locker by the Kraken. Jack believes if he can find the Dead Man's Chest, he can free his soul as well as control Jones and the seas.

Adding to Sparrow's woes, Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company has a personal score to settle and wants the chest himself. Beckett arrests Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, forcing Turner to search for Sparrow and his magic compass. Turner locates Sparrow's crew on Pelegosto, held captive by cannibals who intend to eat Sparrow. They escape, and voyage to Tia Dalma (a magical woman later revealed to be the Goddess, Calypso, bound in human form as Dalma, and former lover of Jones). Dalma immediately sees destiny in Will, and provides Sparrow with a jar of dirt – Jones can only set foot on land once every 10 years, and since land is where Sparrow is safe, Dalma suggests with the dirt that he takes land with him.

Sparrow strikes a new deal with Jones to deliver one hundred souls in exchange for his own. Jones agrees but keeps Turner as a "good faith payment". Sparrow is recruiting sailors in Tortuga when he encounters Elizabeth Swann and James Norrington, the latter having succumbed to alcohol. Sparrow convinces Elizabeth that Turner can be freed by using the magic compass to find the chest. The duo head for Isla Cruces and find Will, who escaped Jones's ship and has stolen the key to the Chest. Turner wants to stab Jones's heart and free his father from Jones's servitude, while Norrington plots to restore his career by delivering the heart to Beckett. Sparrow wants it to convince Jones to call off the Kraken.

Norrington escapes with the heart amid a battle with Jones's crew, and Jones summons the Kraken. Realizing Sparrow is the target, Elizabeth traps him aboard the Black Pearl as the crew abandons the ship, and kisses him while she handcuffs him to the mast. Then, the monster devours Sparrow and drags the ship and his soul to Davy Jones's Locker. The surviving crew seeks refuge with Tia Dalma who produces a captain she says can rescue Sparrow: a resurrected Hector Barbossa.

At World's End

Two months following the events of the second film, with Davy Jones's heart in his possession and the Flying Dutchman under his command, Cutler Beckett begins exterminating all pirates. To combat Beckett, the nine pirate lords of the Brethren Court convene at Shipwreck Cove. Only Jack Sparrow is missing, killed and sent to Davy Jones's Locker at the end of the previous film. Sparrow, as Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, must attend, as he did not bequeath to a designated heir his "piece of eight", a pirate lord's marker. The collective "nine pieces of eight" are needed to free sea goddess Calypso to defeat Beckett. With Elizabeth and Will, Barbossa leads Sparrow's crew to Davy Jones's Locker using stolen navigational charts from the pirate lord Sao Feng. After the crew locate him, Sparrow deciphers a clue on the charts allowing them to escape the Locker.

At the Brethren Court, Elizabeth has succeeded Captain Sao Feng as a Pirate Lord and is elected "Pirate King" after Sparrow breaks a stalemate vote. Sparrow is briefly reunited with his father, Captain Teague. During a parley with Beckett and Jones, Sparrow is traded for Turner, whom Jones and Beckett had captured. The Black Pearl battles the Flying Dutchman during a maelstrom created by Calypso, during which Sparrow fights Jones for the chest so that he may acquire Jones' heart to become immortal. When Jones mortally wounds Turner, Sparrow instead chooses to save Turner by helping him stab the heart, which kills Jones and makes Turner the Dutchmans captain. Together, the Pearl and the Dutchman destroy Beckett's ship. At the end, Barbossa again commandeers the Pearl and Sao Feng's charts, stranding Sparrow and Gibbs in Tortuga.  However, Sparrow had managed to cut out the navigational section of the charts and with them begins to search for the legendary Fountain of Youth.

On Stranger Tides

Prior to the events of the film, Jack Sparrow gained some renown as the pirate who knew and memorized the Fountain of Youth's location. In the film, Joshamee Gibbs was put on trial in London until Sparrow himself arrived to rescue him as a disguised judge at the Old Bailey courthouse. However, they are captured at St James's Palace. Jack is dragged into a forced audience with King George II, who wants Sparrow to guide an expedition to the Fountain. Hector Barbossa, now a privateer in the service to the British with a peg leg, reveals to Jack that he lost his leg and the Black Pearl, which he believes to be sunk. Jack Sparrow escapes and crosses paths with a "Jack Sparrow" impostor, Angelica, a woman from Sparrow's past and ruthless con artist. Angelica shanghais Jack aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge, the ship captained by Blackbeard.

Angelica tells Jack she is conning about being Blackbeard's daughter, though later revealed she was telling the truth, and that Blackbeard wanting to find the Fountain to avoid a prophesied death. Although Jack incites a mutiny, saving the missionary named Philip Swift and fighting zombie officers, Blackbeard himself subdues the mutineers with a sword that controls ships. Blackbeard also practices voodoo magic and fashions a voodoo doll to bend Jack Sparrow to his will. Jack learns from Angelica that the ritual for the Fountain requires a mermaid's tear and two silver chalices located on Ponce de León's ship, the Santiago, and the person who drinks the water with the tear gets all the years of life from the other. Angelica also shows Jack Blackbeard's collection of ships in bottles, including the Black Pearl. After capturing the mermaid Syrena at Whitecap Bay, Blackbeard sends Jack to get the chalices, taking his compass and threatening his own daughter at gunpoint. Aboard the Santiago, Jack meets Barbossa, but both find that the chalices have been taken by the Spanish. Before retrieving the chalices, Barbossa reveals his true agenda: revenge against Blackbeard for the attack on the Black Pearl, which Barbossa truly believes to be sunk, which led to cutting off his leg via self-amputation. Jack returns to give Blackbeard the chalices in exchange for Angelica's safety and Jack's compass, which Jack sends Gibbs off with.

After locating the Fountain of Youth, a battle ensues until Angelica cuts her hand trying to remove Barbossa's poisoned sword from Blackbeard's chest. Jack receives the chalices from Syrena, who tells him to not waste her tear. Filling the chalices with the remaining drops of water from the Fountain, Jack tricks Blackbeard into drinking the chalice lacking the mermaid's tear. Despite Blackbeard choosing to murder her so he can live, Angelica is mad at Jack about her father's death. Acknowledging their feelings for one another, Jack maroons Angelica with on a small island named Sola Fide Beach, unsure if he can trust her. Angered, Angelica then uses the one shot from her pistol to kill Jack as he rows away, but misses. Jack reunites with Gibbs, who used Sparrow's compass to locate and retrieved the shrunken Black Pearl. Though he has forfeited his opportunity for immortality, Sparrow tells Gibbs he's settling for being famous as the one who found the Fountain of Youth and determined to continue living the pirate's life. Following the film's end credits, the Jack Sparrow voodoo doll drifted to the island that Angelica is marooned on.

Dead Men Tell No Tales

Prior to the events of the film, Jack Sparrow's rival Hector Barbossa has become the richest and most powerful pirate of the seven seas, commanding a fleet of ten ships. Meanwhile, Jack has the Black Pearl still trapped in a bottle. Sparrow's new ship the Dying Gull has never left berth, and his latest plans have met with failure.

Sparrow and his crew attempt to rob the new bank of St. Martin. The robbery is a success, but all the gold in it had fallen while they were dragging the locker, and Sparrow's crew abandons him. Despondent, Jack trades his magical compass for a drink. However, this betrayal of the compass releases an old enemy, who holds a serious grudge against Sparrow; the ruthless ghostly pirate hunter Captain Armando Salazar. Years previously, Jack had defeated Salazar by tricking him into sailing his ship into the Devil's Triangle, where Salazar and his crew were cursed to live as the undead. Salazar states that Jack perched in the ship's rigging like a "little bird", earning him the name "Jack the Sparrow".

While in prison, Jack is contacted by Henry Turner, the son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, who asks for aid in finding the Trident of Poseidon, as both are in need of its power to break curses related to the sea. The Trident could help save Sparrow from Salazar's revenge and free Will from the Flying Dutchman. Remembering Will and Elizabeth, expressing some hesitation, Jack agrees. The next day, Sparrow is sentenced to be executed by guillotine (by Jack's accidental choosing), but is rescued by his crew. Aided by aspiring astronomer Carina, Jack and Henry attempt to locate the Trident of Poseidon. Barbossa releases the Pearl from its bottle, giving them a chance to outrun Salazar. Jack and Barbossa discuss the fact that Carina is Hector's long-lost daughter, whom he had left at an orphanage in order to give her a chance for a better life. Jack attempts to use the secret to blackmail Barbossa, but fails.

They are able to track the Trident to its resting place. Though Salazar nearly kills Jack, they are able to destroy the Trident. With the destruction of the Trident, Salazar and his crew become mortal again. Jack, Henry and Carina escape as Barbossa sacrifices himself to kill Salazar. Despite their differences, Jack mourns Barbossa's death. Later, Jack watches Will and Elizabeth's reunion before he departs, sailing with the Black Pearl and his compass once again in his possession.

Characterization
According to screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, Sparrow is a trickster who uses wit and deceit to attain his goals, preferring to end disputes verbally instead of by force. He walks with a slightly drunken swagger and has slurred speech and flailing hand gestures. Sparrow is shrewd, calculating, and eccentric. He fools Norrington and his crew to set sail on the royal ship Interceptor, which compels the admiration of Lieutenant Groves as he concedes: "That's got to be the best pirate I have ever seen". Norrington himself acquiesces to this praise: "So it would seem", in sharp contrast to what he had previously proclaimed: "You are without doubt the worst pirate I have ever heard of". In the third film, while he leaves Beckett's ship stranded and makes off, Lieutenant Groves asks him: "Do you think he plans it all out, or just makes it up as he goes along?" Jack also tricks Blackbeard into saving his daughter by switching places to the two chalices required to use the fountain of youth.

Though a skilled swordsman, Sparrow prefers to use his superior intelligence during combat, exploiting his environment to turn the tables on his foes, reasoning "Why fight when you can negotiate?" He uses strategies of non-violent negotiation and turning his enemies against each other. He invokes parleys and tempts his enemies away from their murderous intentions, encouraging them to see the bigger picture, as he does when he persuades Barbossa to delay returning to mortal form so he can battle the Royal Navy. He often uses complex wordplay and vocabulary to confound his enemies, and it is suggested that his pacifism may be one reason Barbossa and the crew of the Black Pearl mutinied.

The character is portrayed as having created, or at least contributed to, his own reputation. When Gibbs tells Will that Sparrow escaped from a desert island by strapping two sea turtles together, Sparrow embellishes the story by claiming the rope was made from hair from his own back, while in reality, Sparrow escaped the island by bartering with rum traders. The video game Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow bases itself on these tall tales, including the sacking of Nassau port without firing a shot. Depp has likened pirates to rock stars in that their fame preceded them. Sparrow insists on being addressed as "Captain" and often gives the farewell, "This is the day you will always remember as the day that you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow!" which is sometimes humorously cut off. When Norrington accuses him of being the worst pirate he has ever heard of, Sparrow replies, "But you have heard of me." In a deleted scene from The Curse of the Black Pearl Sparrow ponders being "the immortal Captain Jack Sparrow", and during At World's End he again is interested in immortality, although his father, Captain Teague, warns it can be a terrible curse. Sparrow ponders being "Captain Jack Sparrow, the last pirate," as the East India Trading Company purges piracy. The topic of immortality is brought up again during On Stranger Tides, when Jack says "But better to not know which moment may be your last, every mortal of your entire being alive to the infinite mystery of it all".

Despite his many heroics, Sparrow is a pirate and a morally ambiguous character. When agreeing to trade 100 souls, including Will, to Davy Jones in exchange for his freedom, Jones asks Sparrow whether he can, "condemn an innocent man—a friend—to a lifetime of servitude in your name while you roam free?" After a hesitation Sparrow merrily replies, "Yep! I'm good with it!" He carelessly runs up debts with Anamaria, Davy Jones, and the other pirate lords. Sao Feng, pirate lord of Singapore, is particularly hateful towards him. In a cowardly moment, Sparrow abandons his crew during the Kraken's attack, but underlying loyalty and morality compel him to return and save them. Sparrow claims to be a man of his word, and expresses surprise that people doubt his truthfulness; there is no murder on his criminal record. He is shown to genuinely care about his allies and even people he doesn't know. He genuinely cared for Angelica, and even admits to her at the end of the film that he does love her, and even saves Phillip Swift, a missionary trapped on Blackbeard's ship who he had never met before.

Depp partly based the character on Pepé Le Pew, a womanizing skunk from Looney Tunes. Sparrow claims to have a "tremendous intuitive sense of the female creature," although his conquests are often left with a sour memory of him. Former flames, Scarlett and Giselle, usually slap him or anyone looking for him. Likewise, Angelica claims that Jack "seduced her and used her". His witty charm easily attracts women, and even has Elizabeth questioning her feelings. Verbinski noted phallic connotations in Sparrow's relationship with his vessel, as he grips the ship's wheel. The Black Pearl is described as "the only ship which can outrun the Flying Dutchman". The Freudian overtones continue in the third film when Sparrow and Barbossa battle for captaincy of the Black Pearl, showing off the length of their telescopes, and in a deleted scene, they fight over the steering wheel. Sparrow claims his "first and only love is the sea," and describes his ship as representing freedom. Davy Jones's Locker is represented as a desert, symbolizing his personal hell.

According to writer Giles Milton, Jack Sparrow was inspired by the seventeenth-century English pirate Jack Ward.

Reception and impact on pop culture

When Dead Man's Chest grossed over  worldwide, Ian Nathan attributed this to Sparrow's popularity: "Pirates, the franchise, only had to turn up. There was a powerful holdover from the cheeky delights of its debut, something we hadn't felt since the Clone Wars called it a day." Empire in 2006 declared Depp's performance the seventy-fourth "thing that rocked our world" and later named him the eighth greatest movie character of all time. In 2015, a new poll of the 100 greatest film characters of all time placed him as the fourteenth greatest. A survey of more than 3,000 people showed Jack Sparrow was the most popular Halloween costume of 2006, and a 2007 poll held by the Internet Movie Database showed Sparrow to be the second most popular live action hero after Indiana Jones. In a 2007 Pearl & Dean poll, Jack Sparrow was listed as Depp's most popular performance.

Todd Gilchrist feels Sparrow is the only element of the films that will remain timeless. According to Sharon Eberson, the character's popularity can be attributed to his being a "scoundrel whose occasional bouts of conscience allow viewers to go with the flaws because, as played to the larger-than-life hilt by Depp, he owns every scene he is in". Film history professor Jonathan Kuntz attributed Sparrow's popularity to the increased questioning of masculinity in the 21st century, and Sparrow's personality contrasts with action-adventure heroes in cinema. Leonard Maltin concurs that Sparrow has a carefree attitude and does not take himself seriously. Mark Fox noted Sparrow is an escapist fantasy figure for women, free from much of the responsibility of most heroes. Sparrow is listed by IGN as one of their ten favorite film outlaws, as he "lives for himself and the freedom to do whatever it is that he damn well pleases. Precious few film characters have epitomized what makes the outlaw such a romantic figure for audiences as Captain Jack Sparrow has." Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Part Keith Richards rift, part sozzled lounge lizard, Johnny Depp's swizzleshtick pirate was definitely one of the most dazzling characters of the decade." In June 2010, Sparrow was named one of Entertainment Weekly 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years. In the May 2012 Greek elections, a voter gained media coverage when he "voted" for Jack Sparrow by writing his name on the Pirate Party of Greece ballot.

An internet hoax about a reality program on the now-defunct Quibi platform called Jack Sparrow House gained traction in the early 2020s. The program supposedly featured fourteen Jack Sparrow impersonators living in a house together, with them being eliminated if they broke character. The hoax included a detailed Wikipedia article, which was eventually deleted. Snopes said that comedian Rory Strahan-Mauk was behind it, and that a photo claiming to be of the contestants were actually fans attending the Tokyo premiere of Dead Men Tell No Tales.

In other media

Jack Sparrow appears in video games and books spun off the Pirates of the Caribbean media franchise. Some notable Pirates video games in which Jack Sparrow appears as a playable character in include Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow, voiced by Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, voiced by Jared Butler, and Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The video game, with grunts by Johnny Depp. Jack was one of the first playable characters in the Disney Infinity series, where he is reprised by Jared Butler. He also appears in the Kingdom Hearts series, first in 2005's Kingdom Hearts II, where he is voiced by James Arnold Taylor, and again in 2019's Kingdom Hearts III, reprised again by Butler. In the A Pirate's Life expansion for the video game Sea of Thieves he is voiced again by Butler. Jack Sparrow also appears as playable character in Disney Magic Kingdoms, where he also has his captain coat as a costume. He is also an unlockable racer in Disney Speedstorm.

In 2011, comedy group the Lonely Island, in collaboration with ballad singer Michael Bolton, released a song named for Jack.

In July 2022, Depp portrayed a parody of Sparrow, Phillip Artoosh, in Adventurer's Game, a promotional short film for the mobile game Sea of Dawn.

Notes

References

External links

 Jack Sparrow on IMDb

Adventure film characters
Disney characters originating in film
Fictional castaways
Film characters introduced in 2003
Fictional English people
Fictional characters who have made pacts with devils
Fictional helmsmen
Fictional outlaws
Fictional sea pirate captains
Fictional swordfighters in films
Fictional tricksters
Fictional undead
Internet memes introduced in the 2010s
Johnny Depp
Male characters in film
Pirates of the Caribbean characters
Fictional gentleman thieves

Jack Sparrow


The Capitulation of Alexandria was an important event in the struggle between France and Great Britain for influence in the Middle East around 1800.

The French campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was part of Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in the East. His plan was to protect French trade, undermine Britain's access to India and establish scientific entreprise in the region. His Mediterranean campaign of 1798, a series of naval engagements that included the capture of Malta, prepared the way for the attack on Egypt. In July, he defeated British and Mamluk forces at the Battle of the Pyramids and took control of Egypt.

The British responded at the Battle of the Nile, in 1798, when the Royal Navy, under Horatio Nelson, defeated the French fleet, which was almost completely destroyed, off the coast of Egypt. That changed the balance of power between the two nations at war in the Mediterranean.

On land in Egypt, the French were opposed by a joint force of British and Ottoman troops. The defeated French retreated to Alexandria, the second city of Egypt, where the British-led force surrounded them. On 30 August 1801, French General Jacques-François Menou offered to surrender and proposed terms. The terms were adjusted and then agreed. The event and the treaty is known as the Capitulation of Alexandria.

The articles of the treaty included this:
"the Arabian manuscripts, the statues, and the other collections which have been made for the French Republic, shall be considered as public property, and subject to the disposal of the generals of the combined army".

That made Britain get hold of the Rosetta Stone and other Egyptian antiquities, which had bee collected by the French Commission des Sciences et des Arts and the scholars of the Institut d'Égypte.

References

Treaties of France
Wars involving England
Wars involving France
History of Alexandria

Capitulation of Alexandria


The Harmonica Incident took place on a New York Yankees team bus on August 20, 1964, en route to O'Hare International Airport. Infielder Phil Linz, slightly resentful at not being played during a four-game sweep by the Chicago White Sox that was believed at the time to have seriously set back the Yankees' chances at that year's American League pennant, began playing a harmonica in the back of the bus. Manager Yogi Berra, feeling that Linz's behavior was inappropriate given the team's recent poor performance, angrily called on him to stop, whereupon Linz threw the harmonica and loudly complained about being singled out despite not having been at fault for the losses.

Journalists on the bus following the team reported the incident in the next day's newspapers, and it became national news. Although Linz was fined for the incident, he received an endorsement contract from harmonica manufacturer Hohner after the company saw an increase in sales.  The contract more than made up for Linz's lost money from the fine. Radio stations in Boston urged fans of the Red Sox, whom the Yankees played immediately afterward, to greet Linz at the plate in Fenway Park with a harmonica and kazoo serenade. At an exhibition game against the crosstown New York Mets, Mets players tossed harmonicas onto the field.

The incident had divergent effects on the team. For the players, it ended well: Berra's authority as their manager was decisively established and they went 30–11 through the end of the season, clinching the pennant that had seemed out of reach. For the team's management, which had been dogged all season by reports that Berra could not control his former teammates, it confirmed that impression, and efforts to find a replacement for Berra (that had reportedly already been underway) succeeded shortly afterwards, with Johnny Keane, who was considered likely to be fired from his position as St. Louis Cardinals' manager after the season concluded, secretly agreeing to become the Yankees' manager. Keane's team had also came back from deep in the standings to win the National League pennant, and then defeated the Yankees in that year's World Series. The day afterwards, Berra was fired and Keane shocked his superiors by resigning instead of accepting a contract extension. Keane took over from Berra a few days later.

Despite its role in catalyzing the team that season, the incident has been seen as the beginning of the end of the Yankees' 15-year postwar dynasty, since it also coincided with the announcement that the CBS television network was buying the team. Keane was never able to fully earn the respect of either the aging, injury-plagued stars or the few promising younger players, The 1965 Yankees not only failed to win the pennant, they recorded the team's first losing season in 40 years. When the subsequent season started with even worse results, Keane was fired, although that did not prevent the Yankees from finishing in last place. They did not return to the World Series until 1976, nearly four years after CBS had sold the team to George Steinbrenner.

Background

Yogi Berra and the Yankees
In the years after World War II, the Yankees had come to dominate Major League Baseball in a way that no team had done before or since. Between 1947 and 1963, the team appeared in the World Series 14 times, winning ten. Rooting for the Yankees, as Peter Golenbock, the author of several books about the Yankees, some in collaboration with players, wrote, "became like rooting for U.S. Steel". Stars of the earlier era like Joe DiMaggio had been almost seamlessly replaced by younger players like Mickey Mantle. One of those, former catcher Lawrence "Yogi" Berra, had been a constant on the team.

Berra had accumulated considerable baseball knowledge during his career. Casey Stengel, the Yankees' manager throughout the 1950s, had considered him the most important player on the team, sometimes describing Berra as his assistant manager. When he published his own memoirs in 1961, a blurb on the back cover by well-regarded Baltimore Orioles manager Paul Richards suggested that Berra would be an excellent manager himself. Since Berra was nearing the end of his playing career, the Orioles and other teams made indications that they would be interested in hiring him for that position.

Berra explained later that he had turned down the other clubs' offers because many of them were not regular contenders for the pennant and he did not believe it likely that a new manager would last more than two seasons. During 1962, the Yankees' management noticed that Stengel, whom they had fired due to his advancing age a few seasons earlier, was becoming a big draw for the expansion New York Mets of the National League as the manager during their inaugural season. Despite the Mets' poor performance, the team regularly filled the aging Polo Grounds, and the Yankees only barely outdrew them even though they wound up winning the World Series. The executives worried that Berra, popular with the fans and the media, might be lured over to the Mets after his playing days were done, and with that team expected to move to the newer, larger Shea Stadium within two seasons, the possibility existed that the Mets' attendance figures could exceed those of the Yankees.

So, before the start of the 1963 season, manager Ralph Houk took Berra on a yachting trip with several of the team's executives. Out on the ocean, general manager Roy Hamey told Berra that, at the end of the season, he would be leaving that position to become a scout. He in turn would be replaced by Houk, leaving the field manager's position open. Hamey asked Berra if he was interested in that job. The catcher was incredulous at first, but then accepted the offer.

Not all the executives on board were enthusiastic about the prospect of Berra taking over as the Yankees' manager. Team president Dan Topping Jr., son of co-owner Dan Topping, who saw the chief benefit of hiring Berra as manager to be counteracting Stengel's force as a draw for the Mets, was not sure about the wisdom of the decision otherwise. Co-owner Del Webb had more serious doubts: Berra, unlike most other major league managers of the era, had no experience managing in the minor leagues; he also thought it inadvisable to go from being a teammate one season to a manager the next. Berra visited him in California to reassure him on both points, and Webb said he would support him as manager.

Berra was made a player-coach that season, although he fulfilled the latter role primarily by fungo hitting to his teammates during pregame warmups. The promotion to manager was not made public until after the Yankees had ended the season with a four-game loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Reporters greeted the news with some of the skepticism that Webb had expressed privately. Berra reassured them that he had learned much from Stengel and Houk in his years with the team. "You can observe a lot by watching", he said, adding to the stock of "Yogi-isms", the pithy, sometimes apparently self-contradictory remarks that had endeared him to the press over the years. "If you ask me a question I don't know", he continued, "I'm not going to answer".

As the next season drew near, Berra himself seemed to express some doubts about his own capabilities as manager. "If we win, they'll say Mickey Mouse could have managed this team to the pennant. If we lose, they'll say it's my fault", he observed at one point. "Maybe I'll quit even if we win".

The 1964 season

Berra faced challenges almost from the start of the season. The team, which had not played well during spring training, lost its first three games in extra innings. Pitcher Jim Bouton, seen as the Yankees' next ace after winning 21 games in his rookie season the previous year, had sat out part of the preseason due to a contract dispute and got off to an uneven start when he returned. Within weeks of Opening Day, all three of the team's starting outfielders—Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Tom Tresh—were out with injuries, forcing Berra to play Johnny Blanchard, the team's backup catcher, in that position for some games.

Fortunately for Berra, the team's pitchers made up for the injuries. Ace Whitey Ford performed consistently well, and Bouton had improved to his previous season's form by the end of April, to the point where he finished the season with more wins than Ford. Al Downing, another younger player and the first African American Yankee on the mound, also pitched well in the early months, striking out an average of one batter per inning. But then Bouton and Downing were sidelined with strained muscles. The relief pitchers also had their share of injuries, keeping Steve Hamilton and Hal Reniff from replicating their combined 23 saves in 82 appearances of the previous season.

Berra was also having issues with the healthy players. Concerns about his capability to manage former teammates were, in the eyes of some media observers, proving justified. Reports began to circulate about late-night carousing by certain players, Mantle in particular. "He ran wild on Yogi", said sportswriter Maury Allen, "staying out late and carrying on".

This was in large part a matter of perception. Mantle and other players had done the same thing under Houk, who had never felt it necessary to impose a curfew on them. "After racking up yet another win under the lights", writes baseball historian Philip Bashe, "[Houk']s clubs were known to wind up under tables". Phil Pepe, who covered the team for the World-Telegram and Sun, noted that under Berra, the Yankees "weren't doing anything differently than before—except not winning".

Berra's exercise of managerial authority did create some friction between him and his former teammates. He benched third baseman Clete Boyer when his late night antics began affecting his play. "Our relationship at that time wasn't too good", Boyer said later, adding that he only appreciated the move when he himself became a coach after his playing career. Berra's relationship with the pitching staff was rocky as well. He often criticized them in front of their teammates, something Houk had never done.

The relievers in particular began complaining to Houk about Berra having had them warm up in the bullpen only to leave his current pitcher in. This was consistent with a general pattern of indecisiveness some other players also noted. Hamilton recalled that Berra often wondered aloud about strategic decisions, asking, "Should I bunt? Should I steal?"

Despite these difficulties, the Yankees were still contenders. Mantle came back from his early injury and, while still suffering from it (in addition to continuing pain from older injuries), continued to play well, leading the team in home runs and runs batted in with 35 and 111, respectively. Those numbers were impressive in an off year for hitters following recent pitcher-friendly rule changes; it was Mantle's last good season. Elston Howard, the team's first African American player, also avoided injury and put up the team's best batting average, .313. Despite their complaints of overwork, the relievers combined for a record of 20–7, with 15 saves during the summer months. By early August, the Yankees, despite winning fewer games and winning less overwhelmingly than they had in recent years, were in a tight battle for the pennant with the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox.

Efforts to replace Berra

By that time, the team's management had heard the players' complaints and the stories about the lack of discipline. The American League had queried the other nine teams about whether they would approve the sale of the Yankees to the CBS television network, the first word outside the two parties about a transaction that had been in the works since around the time Berra had been offered the manager's position; Topping and Webb did not want any negative publicity to disrupt the deal. According to sportswriter Joe Trimble, around August 12 Houk discreetly contacted Alvin Dark, then manager of the San Francisco Giants, about taking over from Berra after the season.

Dark was respected as a manager, and popular in New York from his days as a player when the Giants had been in that city, but he had also been involved in a recent controversy over a remark one accuser claimed he had made suggesting that the team's African-American and Latino players were not as "mentally alert" as their white counterparts. Dark insisted he had been misquoted, and many of his players defended him, but the publicity reportedly prevented the Yankees from offering him the job. Since any such negotiations before the end of the season would have violated baseball's strict anti-tampering rules, no records exist and thus it is also uncertain if, at that time, the team had definitely decided to replace Berra.

With Dark out of the picture, the team reportedly made another effort to line up a replacement. Houk supposedly took advantage of a road trip to Kansas City late in the month to travel across Missouri and secretly meet with St. Louis Cardinals manager Johnny Keane, who was also reportedly having difficulty with some of his team's stars and seemed to be likely to be replaced himself after Gussie Busch, CEO of team owner Anheuser–Busch and team president, had fired general manager Bing Devine earlier in the month; word that Busch had already talked to onetime New York Giants manager Leo Durocher about taking over had leaked, alienating Keane. The Cardinals were floundering, and seemed unlikely at that time to win the National League pennant. It is not known what the outcome of this meeting was or even if it actually took place.

The Yankees were also playing poorly by this point. On August 17, they arrived in Comiskey Park for a four-game series with the White Sox which had the potential to give either team the upper hand in the pennant race, at least in regard to one another. The Yankees had lost 6 of the 11 preceding games. Chicago won all four games in this series, including the final game on August 20, holding the Yankees scoreless as they got five runs off Ford in three innings.

Incident

After the last game, the Yankees dressed and got on the team bus to travel to O'Hare International Airport, from where they flew to Boston for another four-game series against their archrivals, the Red Sox. The mood on board was generally subdued, almost somber. The sweep had dropped the Yankees to 4 games behind the White Sox, down into third place behind Baltimore. It did not seem likely that the Yankees could make up for the lost ground in the remaining weeks of the season no matter how well they played. "It looked like we were out of it", Clete Boyer recalled. "We figured Chicago and Baltimore couldn't both go into slumps".

The discomfort was further increased when the bus became stuck in traffic in hot weather. At the back, utility infielder Phil Linz was particularly upset, not only by the team's dire situation but because he had not played. Earlier in the season, he had played third when Berra had benched Boyer, shortstop while Tony Kubek had been injured, and briefly in the outfield when the starters were injured. He had hit very well against the White Sox pitchers, particularly their left-handers, and had taken a 10-game hitting streak into the series that had just concluded, yet he had remained on the bench during all four losses, with Berra declining to use him even as a pinch hitter.

"If there was any team you would play me against, it would be the White Sox", Linz said later. By his own account, into which he admits he has incorporated others' reminiscences over the years, he was "resentful", but he was also aware that despite his hitting success, his fielding had been deficient, and he believes the pitchers had complained to the manager. "Yogi started getting pressure to put Tony Kubek back in. Somebody—maybe Whitey Ford—said 'You've got to get Phil out of there.

Two hours after the game, the bus was making little progress, and Linz was still visibly upset, according to Jim Bouton, who often sat near him. To take his mind off his resentment, he pulled out a Hohner harmonica he had bought the day before when he ran into Tom Tresh and Kubek doing the same at Marshall Field's department store. Not knowing how to play the instrument, he also took out its by-the-numbers instruction booklet and began attempting to play the easiest song in it, "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

He played very slowly, following the directions in the booklet. He also tried to play it quietly, which Bouton suggested may have complicated matters given the team's mood. "If 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' can sound like a dirge, it did", he wrote later.

In the front of the otherwise quiet bus, Berra, seated with the team's other coaches, heard the harmonica playing, although he did not know who the player was. He did not think it was in any way appropriate behavior, especially after such a serious setback to the team's pennant chances. Accounts differ as to whether he knew at the time it was Linz, but it is agreed that Berra eventually said something in the general direction of the rear demanding that the harmonica playing stop.

Linz claims he did not hear exactly what his manager said, and asked Mickey Mantle, seated a few rows further forward, to repeat it. Mantle, who often played little jokes on his teammates, told Linz that Berra had asked him to play it louder, which Linz did. This in turn led Berra to get out of his seat and go to the back of the bus, supposedly yelling at Linz to "shove [it] up your ass! You'd think you just won four straight!"

As Berra confronted Linz, the harmonica for some reason—either Linz threw it to Berra or at him, or Berra knocked it out of his hand—became airborne. It struck first baseman Joe Pepitone in the knee strongly enough to cut him. When it did, Pepitone humorously began feigning a more serious injury and yelling "Corpsman! Corpsman!" among other things.

With Berra now standing over him and, Linz believed, about to strike him, Linz stood up and shouted at him. "What are you getting on me for?" he said. "I give one hundred percent! Why don't you talk to some of these guys who aren't hustling?" "I was really an asshole", he later admitted.

All the passengers on the bus were now laughing, except for Berra and Frank Crosetti, the third baseman on the 1930s Yankees teams who was now a coach himself. As Berra returned to his seat promising to deal with Linz later, Crosetti raised his high-pitched voice and told Linz he was acting like a child. Linz, who admitted to disliking Crosetti, first because he was "kind of an old-timer and a little cranky" and second because he often was hard on backup players like Linz while avoiding confrontations with stars, shouted, "Fuck you, Crow!" in response, further amusing the bus. Soon afterwards, Crosetti told the reporters who were traveling with the team that this insubordination was the worst thing he had ever seen in 33 years with the Yankees. "It was hard not to laugh", Bouton, who heard the remark, recalled to Rob Neyer 50 years later. "This was really the worst thing ever? In the history of the franchise?"

Mantle picked up the harmonica and turned to Whitey Ford, who was sitting across the aisle. "It looks like I'm going to be managing this club pretty soon", he said, continuing his playful mood. "You can be my third base coach". He demonstrated how they would use the harmonica to relay signals to batters and runners. "One toot, that's a bunt. Two toots, that's a hit and run".

Aftermath
The incident had very different effects on Berra's relationship with the players and team management.

Effect on players
Either on the plane or after the Yankees reached Boston, Linz went to Berra and apologized. "Forget about it", the manager said, but the two nevertheless shook hands and embraced. However, Berra knew from his experience of the 1957 incident at the Copacabana nightclub, where teammate Billy Martin's birthday party had led to a brawl with some other patrons over racial slurs some non-Yankees had directed at Sammy Davis Jr. and (ultimately) to Martin being traded, that any player who brought negative publicity to the team had to be fined, regardless of blame. "Phil", he said, "with all the writers there, I have to fine you. How much do you think it should be?" Linz replied that Berra was the manager and should set the amount. He suggested $250 ($ in modern dollars) and Linz agreed. "We were friends after that", the infielder recalled.

By the time the Yankees reached Boston, the reporters on the bus had gotten the story out, and it had received national attention. The Yankees' sale to CBS had been announced, and writers jokingly asked if Linz would get a record contract as well. A radio station sent each Yankees player a harmonica; Linz got ten mailed to him, plus checks totaling $65 to help cover the fine. Hohner, which reported a sharp increase in sales, signed Linz to a $5,000 ($ in modern dollars) endorsement deal, more than offsetting his fine. Joe Pepitone later joked that Linz should have brought a piano along on the bus so he would have made even more money.  In the earliest known preserved segment of color video from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, Carson devotes a significant portion his monologue to the incident, including a direct jab at CBS.

"That would be funny, wouldn't it?" Houk commented in the press on reports that one Boston radio station was urging fans to bring harmonicas and kazoos to the games at Fenway Park to taunt Linz. He added, however, that he did not think Linz should have played the harmonica when he did. When the Yankees played the Mets in the Mayor's Trophy Game, an annual exhibition contest between the two teams, some of the Mets threw harmonicas onto the field. Linz suspected the action had been organized by one Met in particular, Tracy Stallard, his roommate at the time.

On the field, at first the incident seemed to be a distraction as the Yankees continued as they had in Chicago, being shut out again in the first game and losing the next by a 5–3 margin, extending their losing streak to six. In the third game, rookie pitcher Mel Stottlemyre, who had snapped two other Yankee losing streaks in his August starts, held the Sox scoreless as Mantle, Maris, and Blanchard hit home runs en route to an 8–0 victory. Another Mantle home run helped Jim Bouton split the series for the Yankees the next day.

These two wins were the start of a 22–6 run over the next four weeks. The White Sox lost three of four to Baltimore following their sweep of the Yankees, evening up the pennant race, but the Orioles were unable to build momentum from this; during a game in Boston before that, their star first baseman, Boog Powell, had chipped a bone after running into a wall at Fenway, putting him on the disabled list for three weeks. The Orioles slumped to 10–9 without him.

The following weekend, the Yankees swept the Red Sox at home, while the White Sox and the Orioles split a series of their own. "That's when we knew we had a chance", Clete Boyer later recalled. At the end of August, the Orioles' lead was only three games.

By the end of the season, the Yankees were 30–11 since the end of the White Sox' sweep. The surge was enough to put them in first place, one game ahead of Chicago, thus becoming league champions once again. Players and writers credited the Harmonica Incident with sparking the team's turnaround. "It will be told over and over for years to come how the 'dead' Yankees were revived and the 1964 pennant won because the manager, Yogi Berra, got mad at Phil Linz's harmonica playing on a bus", Leonard Koppett predicted. Linz has speculated that his implicit criticism of his teammates' lack of effort when he responded to Berra on the bus "may have hit home with some of those guys".

It also helped establish Berra's role as the team manager with his players. "Out of that came the realization that Yogi was in charge", said second baseman Bobby Richardson. Years later, Mantle agreed: "In our eyes, that was the first time Yogi showed us all his leadership qualities ... From then on the players showed more respect for [him]. They had seen his temper and believed he had drawn a line". Whitey Ford agreed that "this incident showed us he could be tough when he had to". For his part, Berra repeatedly reassured the players when things seemed tough during September that "the world ain't come to an end yet", an early version of the more frequently quoted "It ain't over till it's over" that he told his Mets team during a similarly tight race in 1973.

Effect on management

Although Houk did his part to assist the Yankees' surge by making a late trade with the Cleveland Indians early in September for Pedro Ramos, bringing some badly needed help to the bullpen, he and the other front-office executives did not share the players' newfound respect for Berra. The Harmonica Incident had dominated the sports pages just as news of the team's proposed sale to CBS had broken, a sale which was both controversial in and of itself, as not only was it the first time a major corporation had taken a majority stake in a Major League Baseball team, but there were also issues with the potential conflict of interest with a television network having a vote on the sport's lucrative television contract. White Sox owner Arthur Allyn Jr. had voted against the deal because he said he had been given only three hours in the middle of the night to consider it before voting; while his vote (along with that of the Kansas City A's Charlie Finley, who had a longtime grudge against the Yankees) was not enough to stop the deal, the negative publicity convinced the league to hold another vote later in the month, with the result remaining the same.

The Yankees did not need the additional negative publicity the incident brought, especially in light of the doubts it raised about Berra's ability to manage his former teammates effectively. Houk decided sometime in early September, before it was evident that the team had united behind their manager and was turning its season around, that Berra had to be replaced. Through an intermediary, he let Keane know he could manage the Yankees the next season. The Cardinals' manager, who had never forgiven Busch for talking to Durocher, accepted.

The planned management changeover became more awkward during September. Not only did the Yankees come back and win the pennant, but the Cardinals, 11 games out of first place in early August, also managed to do the same thing as the Philadelphia Phillies, who, in first place for much of the year, blew a 6-game lead with two weeks remaining, the final act in that team's infamous "Phold". On the last day of the season, the Cards clinched the National League pennant, averting a possible three-way playoff.

Replacement of Berra by Keane
The Cardinals won the 1964 World Series, defeating the Yankees in seven games. Afterwards, the two teams held end-of-season news conferences. In St. Louis, Busch, who had changed his mind about letting Keane go after the Series win and was prepared to offer him a raise and a two-year extension, instead had to announce to reporters that Keane had handed in a letter of resignation immediately beforehand. The letter was backdated to the end of the regular season, and Keane explained that he had been talking over this decision with his wife shortly before then. He said he had no immediate plans beyond going fishing.

Shortly afterwards, New York reporters, who assumed that the team would announce that Berra was being rehired for at least the next season, were taken by surprise when Houk instead announced that Berra had been fired. Asked who would replace him, Houk admitted that Dark was under consideration, and appeared surprised when he learned that Keane had abruptly resigned, saying that now that he was aware Keane was available, he too would be under consideration.

Houk denied that losing the Series had led to Berra's dismissal. He declined to elaborate on the reasons for the firing, saying only that "it was better for all concerned". Berra remained with the team as a "special field consultant", primarily doing scouting work on other teams and prospective trades during the regular season. He was free to leave if another team offered him a position. "I don't mind", Berra said, when reached at a New Jersey golf course and told of the events. "I'll be spending the year at home. Where can you get a job like this? I don't have to sign in or punch a clock. And the pay is good".

Reports immediately circulated that Keane would be hired, and that he had, in fact, already accepted the position before the season ended. Four days later, Keane was formally announced as the Yankees' new manager. According to Houk, he was signed to a one-year contract; his salary was not disclosed but reportedly was better than what the Cardinals had offered him. Some reporters found the circumstances suspicious and did not believe that Keane's sudden availability was a coincidence; Newsday columnist Stan Isaacs called Houk "the number-one charlatan, mountebank, quack, fop, fraud and ass of the sporting panorama". Fan reaction was overwhelmingly negative; some even wrote to Commissioner Ford Frick to complain.

It has been speculated in the subsequent years that Houk had more to do with Berra's firing than anyone above him, and that his reasons were more personal. "Houk didn't think Yogi was a good manager. Houk never backed Yogi up. Also, Yogi had not been Houk's choice", said Jim Bouton, who adds that Houk's biggest mistake was listening to the players who went to his office to complain, something that neither of his predecessors as manager nor general manager would have tolerated. "He never said, 'Mind your own business, and get the hell out of here.

Clete Boyer was even more critical. "The truth was that Houk was jealous of Yogi", he said. "Houk had been nothing but a scrub, a backup for years, and he resented the fact that Yogi was a much greater player and much more popular. And, in my opinion, just as good a manager".

As spring training began for the Yankees' next season, Houk spoke at some length about the turn of events at the end of the previous season. He called hiring Berra "his biggest mistake" as general manager. "The plain truth is that he was not ready to manage ... Nobody was more disappointed than I was". While he admitted that the decision to fire Berra had been made in late August, he denied the Harmonica Incident had anything to do with it. He would not discuss the actual reasons either, except to say that "they were very good ones".

Not everyone believed him then, or even now. Jim Bouton told Rob Neyer in 2014 that he believed the decision to fire Berra had been made "maybe right after Phil Linz decided to play his harmonica in Chicago". Linz has said that he felt "partially responsible" for some time afterwards, but by 2013 he no longer believed it had been his fault. "I'm pretty sure from what I've heard that the Yankees had made a decision before that had happened".

1965 season

There were no changes to the Yankees' roster in the offseason as significant as the management change, and many of the players believed they had a good chance at becoming league champions again and winning another Series. Looking over the team in spring training, Keane told a fellow coach that he had "never had so many good ballplayers" and should not have to change anything they did. Nonetheless, he installed rules which ended up antagonizing a number of players. A career minor leaguer who had never played in the majors before managing there, Keane tried to instill the same work ethic and practice habits that had kept him playing. Many of the Yankees, who felt they had already established themselves and had never been treated that way by Berra, Houk, or Stengel, resented him as an outsider.

The cultural clash between Keane and the Yankees was even deeper when it came to off-field activities. "Johnny Keane was the wrong guy for so many reasons", Bouton recalled in his 2014 interview. "[We] were a party team. We out-drank, out-ate everybody, would be out carousing". Keane, on the other hand, was devoutly religious and imposed curfews and other strict rules on the team. Said Bouton, "I don't remember if I said this first or someone else did, but hiring Johnny Keane was like putting Billy Graham in charge of the Hells Angels". At one point he attempted to make an example of a hungover Mickey Mantle by making him shag fly balls endlessly until Mantle retaliated by throwing the ball toward Keane's head. "When we did talk, there were no arguments", Mantle recalled. "More often than not, we had staring contests".

Injuries plagued the team as they had the year before, but Keane, who Bouton said "thought the players were babying themselves too much", made some play anyway. In conjunction with upper management, he concealed from Roger Maris the information that he had broken his hand until late in the season, an injury that left him unable to grip a bat as tightly as he had before. Elston Howard had to keep playing despite an arm injury, and the stress on Tony Kubek's bad back forced him into retirement at the end of the season. Bouton also pitched most of the season with a sore arm, which he later realized had led to permanent damage.

The effect of the injuries on the team made some of Berra's moves the year before more understandable. He had played Mantle at first, and rested him regularly to keep him at his healthiest when he did play; Keane's decision to play Mantle in the outfield without a break clearly had a deleterious effect on the star. Kubek and Boyer's injuries were also aggravated by their lack of rest.

The Yankees ultimately finished the season in sixth place at 77–85, the first time in 40 years they had a losing record. After the team started the next season with only 4 wins in its first 20 games, Keane was fired. Houk returned to the dugout to manage but was unable to turn the season around, and the Yankees finished 70–89, in last place for the first time since 1912.

The Yankees did not win the pennant again until 1976, three years after CBS sold the team to George Steinbrenner at a loss. Berra, who had coached and managed the New York Mets to the 1973 World Series in the interim, returned to the Yankees as a coach that season under manager Billy Martin, a teammate on the 1950s Yankees teams. In 1983, he succeeded Martin as manager.

Legacy
In the years since the Harmonica Incident, it has been remembered both as the beginning of the Yankees' 1964 comeback and the harbinger of the team's collapse over the next two seasons. In 2005, Bobby Richardson recalled that there were some ways during that season in which "the team concept was eroding a bit". When it came to dividing World Series shares, he notes, the players did not give as much to younger players and the team's clubhouse attendants as they had in previous years. Even Berra, he says, was not immune—on the way home from St. Louis after the Series loss, he asked Richardson and Richardson's wife if he should ask for a two-year contract, and they agreed.

Berra never did the scouting his post-managerial contract called for. Within a week of his firing, he was contacted by the Mets and offered a coaching position with them, which he accepted, reuniting him and Stengel. He also returned to the lineup for four games; after performing poorly, he retired as a player for good.

Linz, who appeared in a Hohner ad with the line "Play it again, Phil" on the back of the Yankees' 1965 yearbook, was traded to the Phillies after the 1965 season. That team eventually traded him to the Mets in 1968, where he was reunited with Berra. The two posed for a humorous picture with Linz playing the harmonica and Berra covering his ears and smiling; Linz later used the picture on his business cards.

That season was Linz's last. "If people remember me at all", he recalled in 2013, "they remember me as a harmonica player, because I sure wasn't too good of a baseball player". As of 2015, he still had the harmonica and could play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" more expertly.

Ralph Houk managed the Yankees through the end of the 1973 season, never having done better than a second-place finish in the American League East in 1970. He later managed the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox during transitional periods that did not see either team reach the postseason. Upon Houk's death in 2010, Berra biographer Allen Barra reminded readers of Houk's role in Berra's 1964 firing. "Yes, Ralph Houk was a brave man and risked his life for his country at Normandy", he wrote. "But that doesn't excuse his complicity in a moment in Yankee history more shameful than anything perpetrated by George Steinbrenner".

Berra's later career

Berra stayed with the Mets as a coach through several other managerial changes, sharing in that team's 1969 World Series victory under manager Gil Hodges. After Hodges' death during spring training in 1972, Berra was named his successor. Despite significant injuries to some of the team's best position players, the Mets finished the season in third place, with a record of 83-73 in a strike-shortened season, an improvement upon their 83-79 record in Gil Hodges's final campaign. Also in 1972, Yogi was inducted into the Hall of Fame. The following season, he oversaw another comeback much like the 1964 Yankees, only more impressive. With the Mets 10 games under .500 and seemingly out of it on Auguest 30, the team rebounded by going 21-8 the rest of the way, winning the division, then upsetting the heavily favored Cincinnati Reds in the National League Championship Series, before losing to the Oakland A's in a close seven game World Series.

Clete Boyer has said that that achievement should put to rest any of the doubts about Berra's managerial acumen which were used to justify his dismissal. He told Berra biographer Allan Barra:

In 1974, shortly before his death, former Yankees' co-owner Del Webb relayed a message through his doctor, who also occasionally saw Berra, that he had made a mistake in firing Yogi.

After overachieving with the Mets in 1973, Yogi received a three year extension from the club. The 1974 Mets finished 71-91, good for fifth place in the six-team National League East. The Mets struggled in 1975. On August 5 of that year, after a number of players complained to the front office about Yogi, and just days after a major blowup with declining outfielder Cleon Jones, Yogi was let go, with the team's record at 56-53. Yogi's replacement, Roy McMillan, guided the club to a 26-27 record the rest of the way.

Yogi returned to the Yankees as a coach the next season under former teammate Billy Martin to win the pennant again and return to the World Series, albeit to be swept by the Cincinnati Reds (the coincidence of those two occurrences has been noted). The Yankees then won both the 1977 and 1978 World Series, the first with Martin as manager, the next after Bob Lemon replaced Martin during the 1978 season. Berra remained as a coach throughout that time, as well as through the team's numerous managerial changes of the early 1980s.

After the Martin-led Yankees finished with 91 wins in 1983, Martin was again dismissed by George Steinbrenner, who had bought the team from CBS ten years earlier; he then promoted Berra to the manager's position. The fans were happy to see Berra at long last given a second chance; the players liked him as much as their 1964 counterparts had, while many had tired of Martin's intensity and erratic behavior. The 1984 season followed the same pattern as 1964 and 1973 had under Yogi: A slow start, followed by the best record in baseball after the All-Star break. The team finished 87–75 in 1984, 17 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers, which had dominated all year and went on to win the World Series.

Despite the second-place finish, the Yankees had never been in contention, and Berra was concerned that the mercurial Steinbrenner might decide to make a change. Before the next season, Berra sought assurances that he would be allowed to manage the season out, and Steinbrenner responded by publicly guaranteeing that "Yogi is the manager, win or lose". Notwithstanding that promise, he fired Berra 16 games into the season, rehiring Martin. The players reacted angrily, so much so that when Martin hired former Tigers outfielder Willie Horton as a coach, insiders said Horton's real purpose was to be Martin's bodyguard should he and player Don Baylor fight.

Steinbrenner did not personally inform Berra that he had been fired, instead leaving that task to general manager Clyde King. The GM broke the news to Berra in the visiting manager's office at Comiskey Park, where the Yankees had once again been swept by the White Sox. Players, who had heard the news, were nevertheless surprised to find Berra seated in the front of the team bus, which let him off at O'Hare where he flew back to New York.

In 1964, Berra had reportedly taken the firing personally, but knew better than to be angry about it publicly. While Berra's initial comments were extremely conciliatory, he ended up even angrier than he had been after the 1964 situation, since Steinbrenner had sent King to do the job rather than face Yogi as Topping and Webb had. He publicly vowed never to set foot in Yankee Stadium again as long as Steinbrenner owned the team.

That lasted until 1999, when Steinbrenner traveled from Florida to Berra's home in New Jersey to personally apologize for having not fired him in person 14 years before. Berra's return to the stadium shortly afterwards was celebrated as "Yogi Berra Day". Don Larsen, whose perfect game in the 1956 World Series he had caught, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Berra. It was followed by Yankee pitcher David Cone throwing his own perfect game against the Montreal Expos.

See also

History of the New York Yankees

Notes

References

External links
"The Demise of the Yankees: 1964–66", by Al Featherston, arguing that the team's mid-1960s decline can solely be attributed to mishandling of injuries to key players and an inability to recognize existing talent, not age and a shortage of promising younger players as is commonly believed.

New York Yankees
1964 Major League Baseball season
Harmonica
August 1964 sports events in the United States
1960s in Chicago
1964 in sports in Illinois

Harmonica Incident


Boris Lushniak is a retired United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps rear admiral who served as the acting Surgeon General of the United States, from July 17, 2013 to December 18, 2014. He previously served as the Deputy Surgeon General from 2010 to 2013 and from 2014 to 2015 when Vivek Murthy assumed office as Surgeon General. He retired from the Public Health Service on December 8, 2015 after over 27 years of service. On October 4, 2016 he was appointed dean of the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Health, effective January 9, 2017.

Early life and education
A native of Chicago, Illinois, Lushniak is of Ukrainian ancestry, went to St. Ignatius College Prep and is a graduate of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and Harvard School of Public Health. He completed a residency in family medicine in 1987 at St Joseph Hospital in Chicago and a residency in dermatology at the University of Cincinnati in 1993.

Career
Starting out in the Epidemic Intelligence Service in 1988, Lushniak spent the next 16 years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, working on assignments in Russia, Kosovo and Bangladesh. He also worked at the World Trade Center site and with the CDC anthrax team. Lushniak joined the Food and Drug Administration in 2004. He served as the Chief Medical Officer, Office of Counter-terrorism Policy and Planning in the Office of the Commissioner before being named FDA Assistant Commissioner, Counterterrorism Policy and Director of the Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats within the Office of the Commissioner, the following year. In 2010 he was promoted to rear admiral (upper half) and named Deputy Surgeon General. Between July 2013 and December 2014 he served as Acting Surgeon General until the appointment of Vivek Murthy was approved December 15, 2014.

Retiring from the USPHS in September 2015, Lushniak joined the faculty of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. Lushniak served as the chairman of the Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics department.

Role in Ebola virus cases in the United States
During the ebola crisis in the US the vacancy of the position of Surgeon General was a topic of note. Lushniak "has not been confirmed, and lacks the authority to actively pursue a public health agenda for the nation" per New England Journal of Medicine Editors-in-Chief and executive editor in October 2014, who stated also: "We have heard little from him during the Ebola outbreak". The Washington Post wrote, that he has kept a low profile during the Ebola crisis, deferring to CDC Director Tom Frieden to speak publicly to educate and reassure the people. Yet CBS News quoted Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, and Michael Leavitt saying that a surgeon general would probably not be an effective leader in the fight against Ebola.

Awards and decorations
Lushniak is the recipient of the following awards and decorations:
Uniformed services awards and decorations

Personal life
Lushniak is married with two daughters, is active in the Ukrainian-American community and is member of Plast, serving at camps for Ukrainian scouts in Wisconsin and New York.

References

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
American people of Ukrainian descent
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni
Feinberg School of Medicine alumni
People from Chicago
Surgeons General of the United States
United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps admirals
University of Maryland, College Park administrators
St. Ignatius College Prep alumni
Recipients of the Public Health Service Distinguished Service Medal

Boris Lushniak


Geoff Simkins (born 13 October 1948) is a British jazz musician who plays alto saxophone.

Career
Simkins started playing jazz in his early teens. His first instrument was drums, but he quickly changed to the alto saxophone. He turned professional in 1977.

His early work included time with the Harry Strutters Hot Rhythm Orchestra and the Temperance Seven, but his principal stylistic influences have been the American alto player Lee Konitz and tenor player Warne Marsh.

Geoff has played at concerts, clubs and festivals in all parts of the UK, in Europe and beyond. He often works with American musicians who are visiting the UK, and over the years this list has grown to include Art Farmer, Bobby Shew, Al Cohn, Tal Farlow, Slide Hampton, Warren Vache, Al Grey, Kenny Davern, Bill Berry, Al Casey, Howard Alden, Ruby Braff, Bill Coleman and Conte Candoli.  He has recorded with UK tenor player Danny Moss and with US trumpeters Billy Butterfield and Yank Lawson. Since the 1980s he has worked regularly with UK guitarist Dave Cliff.

Geoff is also a respected teacher, and as well as running improvisation courses in Brighton, UK, he has been a regular tutor at the famous Glamorgan Jazz Summer School in Wales (now discontinued, but later held at Trinity College of Music in London and, from 2012, at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff). In 1994 he was invited to be a tutor at the Czech Jazz Summer School and appeared at clubs in Prague and on Czech Television.

Selected recordings
with Nikki Iles, piano
Don't Ask

with Dave Cliff
The Right Time (LP)
West Coast Blues (MC)
Sipping At Bells (CD)
The Music of Tadd Dameron (CD)
Conversation (CD)

with Allan Ganley and Dave Cliff
Live at the Station

with Howard Alden
Howard Alden's UK4 Live@Lewes

Sources
 John Chilton, Who's Who of British Jazz, Cassell, London 1997

External links
 Info about Simkins

1948 births
Living people
British jazz alto saxophonists
British male saxophonists
21st-century saxophonists
21st-century British male musicians
British male jazz musicians

Geoff Simkins