American singer and actor Gilbert Price was BOTD in 1942. Born in New York City, he studied at Erasmus Hall High School, singing in the school choir with classmate Barbra Streisand. After studying voice and theatre at the America Theatre Wing, he toured with Harry Belafonte. He played the lead in Langston Hughes’ pioneering 1964 gospel musical Jerico-Jim Crow, co-directed by Alvin Ailey. Price had an affair with Hughes, and is believed to be the man called “Beauty” in a sequence of love poems written by Hughes. Later that year, Price electrified Broadway with his performance in the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – the Smell of the Crowd, becoming famous for his rendition of the song Feeling Good, later recorded by Nina Simone. The role earned Price a Tony Award nomination, leading to further successful roles throughout the 1970s in Lost in the Stars, The Night that Made America Famous, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Timbuktu. In 1971, he appeared in the premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s secular oratorio Mass, performed at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In later years he struggled to find work on Broadway, and toured and performed around the world. He moved to Austria in 1991 to take up a teaching position, and recorded an album which was commercially unsuccessful. He died later that year of accidental asphyxiation, aged 48.