Muddy Waters was looking for a new piano player when chain-smoking journeyman Pinetop Perkins showed off his aggressive keyboarding during a jam session.

"He liked what he heard. The rest is history," said Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, who was a drummer in Waters' band back in 1969.

A song by a California teenager that has been mercilessly panned by music critics has topped 30 million views on YouTube and rocketed up Apple's iTunes charts.

"Friday," sung by 13-year-old Rebecca Black, was uploaded to YouTube last month by Ark Music Factory, a Los Angeles-based company that was hired by the girl's parents to produce the song for their daughter.

For the first time ever, the Cirque du Soleil is forecasting that this year its special brand of circus melding death-defying feats with plot-driven theater and haunting music will bring in over $1 billion in revenues.

Founded by Guy Laliberte, the company has grown from a ragtag troupe of street performers in 1984 to a 5,000-employee entertainment giant presenting some 20 circus shows simultaneously around the world.

U.S. actress Sandra Bullock has donated $1 million to help victims of Japan's earthquake and tsunami crisis, the latest celebrity to pledge aid, the American Red Cross said Thursday.

The contribution, described as from Bullock and her family, came after the U.S. aid agency announced it had given $10 million to the Japanese Red Cross to help after last Friday's quake.

Michael Gough, the British actor best known for playing Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred in a series of Batman movies, has died at age 94.

Gough appeared in more than 150 movies and television shows, including British science-fiction show "Doctor Who." He died of old age at home in England on Thursday, surrounded by family, his ex-wife Anneke Wills said through her agent.

Singer Nate Dogg, whose near monotone crooning anchored some of rap's most seminal songs and helped define the sound of West coast hip-hop, has died at age 41.

Nate Dogg, whose real name was Nathaniel D. Hale, died Tuesday of complications from multiple strokes, said Attorney Mark Geragos.

Hundreds of thousands of people were expected to attend St Patrick's Day parades throughout debt-ridden Ireland on Thursday with the traditional celebrations a welcome relief from economic austerity measures.

More than 100 cities and towns were holding parades in what is a traditional early kick-start to the tourism season with the festivities bringing in a much-needed 50-million-Euro (70-million-dollar) spending injection for the battered economy.

In one life, Per Olov Enquist has been an oppressed child, an athlete, a journalist and a depressed and destructive alcoholic, but in another life -- the one that really counts in his eyes -- he is an author, a giant in the world of Swedish literature.

Spry for his 76 years, Enquist tells Agence France Presse in an interview that he is savoring "a different life", which is also the title of his latest work, an autobiography.

Johnny Depp has been crowned "hat person of the year," beating out other celebrity hat-wearers including U.S. singer Gwen Stefani and Australian actor Hugh Jackman, the U.S. Headwear Association said Tuesday.

Nearly four in 10 visitors to the Headwear Association's website voted in the annual poll for "Pirates of the Caribbean" star Depp and his wide-brimmed fedoras, helping him to roundly beat Stefani and Jackman who garnered 17 percent and 16 percent of votes cast, respectively.

On the stage that French-Canadian power ballads built, Celine Dion rolls her body, drops her hips and shimmies in a gold sparkly mini-dress that looks like it was swiped from Beyoncé's closet.

This is Dion as Tina Turner, her robust voice stretching into a soulful cover of "River Deep, Mountain High" as a row of back-up singers groove behind her during a sound check in the near-empty Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Or at least this is as Tina Turner as the "Beauty and the Beast" crooner is going to get in her Las Vegas sequel.