Below you'll see everything we could locate for your search of “Rhythm and Blues”
How did Dewey Phillips and Hunter Hancock help bring Rhythm and Blues music to mixed race audiences?
What did R&B bring to early Rock and Roll, and how was early Rock and Roll different?
BACK IN THE MID-'50s, the Sun Records studio at 706 Union Avenue was the epicenter of a sudden, wrenching shift in world consciousness. Tremors had been felt for several years, and then, one afternoon in early 1954, Sam Phillips was busy with routine work in the tiny studio when Destiny walked in. Actually, Destiny, in the person of a handsome, painfully shy but flashily dressed young man with longish hair and greasy sideburns, paced up and down the sidewalk outside for some time before summoning the courage to actually walk in the door. Phillips, a thirty-one-year-old radio engineer from Florence,...
IN AUGUST LAST YEAR Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons celebrated ten years as one of the most successful recording groups America has ever produced. Their total world record sales now stand somewhere between 80 and 90 millions. Well below the Beatles, but higher than many more consistent artists like The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and Creedence Clearwater. But in the rush to document everybody who trod a recording studio floor from 1950 onwards the Four Seasons seemed noticeable by their lack of attention. Maybe as Nik Cohn points out in his definitive book Wopbopaloobop alopbamboom (Paladin) they were such a...
"WHEN I FIRST started Atlantic Records," reflects the label founder, Ahmet Ertegun, "I intended to make good blues and jazz music, as well as some pop music. My main interest was in jazz and blues." In the nearly 45 years since Ertegun and his original partner Herb Abramson first got together with this idea (and $10,000 from Ertegun's dentist), Atlantic has become one of the most consistently successful companies in music. So much the paradigm of the post WWII growth of the music business, Charlie Gillett used them for his model in his chronicle, Making Tracks. "The late 50s were a time...
FEW ENTERTAINERS have fallen quite so far from grace as Sam Cooke did when he died, 30 years ago, at the Hacienda Motel in south-central Los Angeles. Whatever the doubts and suspicions surrounding the shooting – and there are still many – it is hard to see it as a martyr's death. Yet think of Sam Cooke and you think: Grecian good looks, irresistible charm and style, and a voice that rings out like a glorious, golden peal, cooing ‘You Send Me’ down the corridors of eternity. For the best part of 15 years, Cooke was an archangel, a black American...
The King of Jive Who Made The Good Times Roll IF BILL HALEY AND ELVIS PRESLEY have to be dubbed the father and king of rock’n’roll, then Louis Jordan must be considered its godfather. Practically all of the black American rhythm and blues, rock’n’roll and early soul stars who upset the Fifties have cited Jordan as the main man of their youth and several of the white rock’n’rollers have acknowledged his influence or recorded his songs. Certain elements of rock’n’roll were developing even before Jordan appeared on the scene and others cropped up after his heyday. But most were completely...
IT IS NOW ABOUT A DOZEN YEARS since the pop music revolution – since Alan Freed began to play, instead of soupy white imitations, straight rhythm and blues in New York and called it rock'n'roll; since Wild Bill Haley and his Comets roared to the top of the Top Ten with 'Shake, Rattle and Roll'; since the advent of the 45 rpm record and the post-war prosperity stretched that Top Ten into the Top 40, and even the Top 100. Despite adult accusations of the sameness of all the bleating sounds, pop has changed many times in those years. Those...
ALAN FREED, the man responsible for giving rock'n'roll its name, was many things to many people. To some, he was the original Mr Clean, an innocent 'good guy', who opened up hitherto-segregated airwaves and made an unparalleled contribution to the advancement of black popular music. This was the sympathetic impression conveyed by the Floyd Mutrux 1978 bio-pic, American Hot Wax. 'He brought us rock'n'roll,' said Mutrux. 'I didn't want to say bad things about a guy who started all that.' To others like Alexander Walker, the London Evening Standard film critic who met the volatile disc jockey during his heyday, Freed was a pathetic...
"Will he burn it tonight?" asked a neat blonde of her boyfriend, squashed in beside her on the packed floor of the Fillmore auditorium. "He did at Monterey," the boyfriend said, recalling the Pop Festival at which the guitarist, in a moment of elation, actually put a match to his guitar. The blonde and her boyfriend went on watching the stage, crammed with huge silver-fronted Fender amps, a double drum set, and whispering stage hands. Mitch Mitchell, the drummer, came on first, sat down, smiled, and adjusted his cymbals. Then came bassist Noel Redding, gold glasses glinting on his...
WHEN ROCK'N'ROLL first stopped calling itself rhythm and blues in the mid Fifties, it became a young man's game. Teenage performers like Ritchie Valens began to influence the course of popular music; his double-sided smash hit 'Donna'/'La Bamba' dominated the charts in December 1958. But, unlike rock'n'roll, Ritchie Valens did not survive to face the Sixties. Ritchie's is not the most famous name in rock'n'roll but he had as many or even more hits than some celebrated stars. In a remarkably short career – he was not yet 18 years old when he died – Valens made some excellent individually-styled...
ON STAGE at the Apollo, Harlem: standing at one microphone, an immaculately dressed man dramatically insists his love. At the second mike, four men bend towards each other, sing a phrase in harmony, step back and spin into an intricate flowing movement as the lead singer takes a line by himself, but comes swooping back in time to echo his last phrase. Behind them, poised, seemingly somehow to control what they do without any obvious signs or instructions, stands the guitarist; near him, the organist and drummer. The scene doesn't change much from week to week. The names and faces are...
How did the electrification, amplification and design of the guitar facilitate its emergence as a dominant instrument of popular music?
How did multitrack recording technologies enable musicians to create a form of music that could only be realized in the studio?
How did synthesizers allow musicians to create new sounds and how did those sounds reflect American culture throughout the 20th century?
How did The Beatles’ use of cutting edge recording technology and studio techniques both reflect and shape the counterculture of the 1960s?
How has “the beat” been an object of both celebration and concern in the history of popular music?
How has Memphis music culture provided one example of art’s capacity to challenge the racial boundaries that have so often structured American life?
How were musicians and artists affected by McCarthyism in 1950s America?
How did the singer-songwriters of the 1960s and 70s address the concerns of the environmental movement?
How has the relation between sound and image shifted through the history of recorded music, and how did the rise of MTV bring that relationship to a culmination of sorts?
How did the Great Migration spread Southern culture, helping to give the Blues a central place in American popular music?
How did the recordings Sam Phillips produced at Sun Records, including Elvis Presley’s early work, reflect trends of urbanization and integration in the 1950s American South?
How was Punk Rock a reaction both to the commercialization of Rock and Roll and to the social climate in late 1970s Britain?
What factors led to the rise of the electric guitar as the dominant symbol of Rock and Roll?
How is the re-use and re-purposing of existing music at the heart of the Hip Hop recording experience?
How did the development of microphones in the 20th century change the way people make and listen to music?
How can teachers help students analyze and understand Rock and Roll?
How did car culture intersect with and inspire Rock and Roll?
How did wartime restrictions and other factors cause popular music ensembles to shrink in size during the 1940s, helping to set the stage for the small “combos” of Rock and Roll?
How were Bo Diddley’s recordings an anomaly in relation to 1950s Pop music, and how is his rhythm-driven sound and self-presentation a precursor to Hip Hop style?
What is the American Dream and how did Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash personify its ideals?
How did growing up in post-WWII Liverpool influence the Beatles?
How did 1970s Funk respond to African-American life in the decade following the Civil Rights movement?
How did the early Rolling Stones help popularize the Blues?
What are the roots of Hip Hop?
How do the Country Blues reflect the challenges of sharecropping, racial injustice, and rural poverty in early 20th-century African-American life?
How does Langston Hughes’ Blues-inspired poetry exemplify the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance?
What was the Red Power movement, and what role did Folk and Country music play within it?
How can society lower the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere?
What are the musical and cultural roots of Heavy Metal?
How was Heavy Metal involved in the 1980s controversy surrounding the creation of parental advisories for “offensive” music?
How have Native American musicians, poets, and visual artists negotiated their identity, and what role does physical space play in these negotiations?
How did Progressive Rock’s incorporation of classical traditions and countercultural values help to forge a unique Rock genre in the late 1960s?
In what ways did American Blues affect English musicians in the early 1960s?
How did Country Music influence Rock and Roll and the musicians who made it?
What does Link Wray’s biography say about how Native Americans lived in the first half of the 20th century, and what role did Wray’s upbringing have on his music?
What did the success of the female Singer-Songwriters of the early 1970s reveal about the changing roles of women in the United States?
How did Ritchie Valens meld traditional Mexican music and Rock and Roll?
How did Bob Dylan’s early experiences with Folk and Rock and Roll music influence his songwriting?
How did the Grateful Dead’s business practices create a dedicated fan culture and ensure the financial success of the group?
How did Bob Dylan merge poetry with popular music?
What role did the so-called "teen idols" of the late 1950s play in bringing Rock and Roll into mainstream American culture?
Why did nearly 100,000 young people descend upon San Francisco in 1967 for a “Summer of Love"?
How was Glam Rock part of a new teenage culture in the 1970s?
How did the Who represent “My Generation” in mid-1960s England?
How did Social Soul reflect a new vision of African-American identity in the late 1960s and early 1970s?
How can Gospel music help students identify the musical concepts of beat, meter, backbeat, subdivision, and syncopation?
How did the electric guitar transform Blues music from the 1940s forward?
In what ways did Jimi Hendrix help create a new "Hard Rock" sound while retaining a connection to the Blues and R&B of his past?
How did the careers of Italian American vocalists in the first half of the 20th century reflect the experiences of Italian American immigrants and attitudes toward them in the wider American culture?
When was the Progressive Era, how did the Labor and Women’s Suffrage movements achieve many of the goals of Progressivism, and how did music express the experience of the people in those movements?
How did changes in the Soul music of the early 1970s reflect broader shifts in American society during that time?
How did New York bands interact with the city's art scene to create something new?
What were the factors that contributed to the rise of Beatlemania?
In what ways did the music of Native Americans mark them as outsiders from the developing narratives of “American-ness” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how did the federal government attempt to use music as a tool to force assimilation?
Since the 1960s, how have artists used musical events to promote change?
Why is the Pop song such a common medium for expressing feelings about love, and how do individual songs relate to their historical moments?
What criticism did the Populist and Socialist Party have of the U.S. government and economy at the turn of the century, what solutions did they offer, and how have musicians since made similar critiques?
Why is Chuck Berry often considered the most important of the early Rock and Rollers?
How did antiwar protest music provide a voice for those opposed to the Vietnam War?
What is Quitiplás, how does it incorporate the natural world, and how is it an example of polyrhythm?
How have Asian immigrants and their descendants been uniquely affected by U.S. immigration policy, and how have the arts provided a source of strength and resiliency for Asian Americans confronting a history of prejudice and xenophobia?
How did teen dance shows and the Twist influence American culture?
How does the Union occupation of Port Royal highlight the complex issues behind the Civil War?
Were the Girl Groups of the early 1960s voices of female empowerment or reflections of traditional female roles?
How did black artists and white songwriters and musicians interact in the Soul era, and what contributed to that interaction?
How did Motown Records in Detroit operate during the 1960s?
How did radio influence American life in the years before the birth of Rock and Roll?
How did popular music amplify the voices and experiences of Americans serving in the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War?
How can math be used to better understand the Grateful Dead’s success?
How did the Beatles take a stand against segregation while touring America? And what did it mean for popular music culture?
Who are the Deadheads and how did their lifestyle contrast with the conservative values promoted by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s?
What is a PA system, how does it work, and how were the Grateful Dead pioneers in live sound technology?
How did the counterculture movement of the late 1960s challenge traditional American behaviors and values, and how did the Grateful Dead reflect these changing views of life and society?
How did Aretha Franklin represent a new female voice in 1960s popular music?
What is Cumbia, and how do you play its traditional rhythms?
What was South African apartheid, and how did musicians unite to challenge it?
How did movies help to introduce Rock and Roll culture to mainstream audiences in the 1950s?
How did Black and Latinx people in the LGBTQ+ community take initiative in the Stonewall Inn rebellions, Gay Liberation Movement, and in the preservation of LGBTQ+ history?
What was South African apartheid, and how did musicians unite to challenge it?
How did the Grateful Dead reflect new ideas about life and society in the 1960’s?
What is cultural appropriation, how does it affect Native American communities, and should it be regulated by law?
What was the Berlin Wall and how did music respond to what it symbolized?
How did Doo Wop develop as a musical genre?
What were the different reactions to songs and comments by Country musicians about the September 11th terrorist attacks versus the Iraq War?
How do Kendrick Lamar’s album DAMN. and the work of photojournalist Gordon Parks tell stories that bring attention to social issues?
Who is Dolores Huerta, what role did she play in the United Farm Workers movement, and how is she recognized today?
Who were the Jubilee Singers and how do their experiences reflect the final years of Reconstruction in the United States?
How did Sixties Soul help give voice to the Civil Rights movement?
What Latin American genres inspired Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s hit song “Despacito”?
What was the impact of the Spanish-American War on Cuba and Puerto Rico and how is that impact still present in the 21st Century?
What was Ellis Island, and what might have been the experience of Europeans who immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century?
How did Rock and Roll serve as an expressive tool for the working-class youth of Detroit?
How has the image and history of the American cowboy been reclaimed in the 21st Century?
What role do Blues lyrics and juke joints play in Black American literature and life?
IN THE short space of seven months in the 1930s, a slender youth from Robinsonville, Mississippi, recorded twenty-nine blues sides in madeshift conditions, and a year later he was dead. But these two sessions, in Dallas and San Antonio, contain the greatest legend the blues has ever known, and precipitated a whole string of tales, theories, fancies and fabrications about the man which present such a incongruous pastiche when woven together that indeed Johnson’s life, his sudden fame and immediate death, is reminiscent of the kind of mysteries usually recounted exclusively in black magic anthologies. But as that great authority...
How have works of literature and music by Black Americans shared an empowering theme of identifying and resisting Jim Crow?
How is plastic made, how does it affect our marine environments, and how can plastic waste be eliminated?
How did the LGTBQ+ community creatively respond to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, and protest government inaction in addressing the epidemic?
Who are the Wharf Rats, and how do they exemplify the practices of sobriety, peer support, and community building within a musical fan culture?
How did Gospel influence American popular music?
What role did cover songs like “Twist and Shout” play early in the Beatles's career, and how did their experiences growing up in post-WWII Liverpool and performing in Hamburg nightclubs help them to develop as a professional musical ensemble?
In what ways did the Transcontinental Railroad contribute to the physical, cultural, and musical growth of the American West in the late 19th Century?
How did teenagers become a distinct demographic group in the 1950s?
How was Glam Rock a reaction to the "seriousness" of popular music at the time?
How can one reproduce the effects seen in the music video for Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey’s song “The Middle” using a homemade projector?
What was the justification and impact of American imperialism in the Philippines and how does ALAMAT’s music video “kasmala” reflect American imperialism in the Philippines?
What was Third Wave Feminism, why did it occur, and how did musicians address some of the movement’s demands?
What is the Surf sound and where did it come from?
How have musicians responded to the Black Lives Matter movement?
How did female Country and Tejano artists approach the issues of feminism and Women’s Rights in the 20th and 21st century?
How were American’s divisive opinions over the Vietnam War articulated by musicians in the 1960s and early 1970s?
How did the annexation of Hawaii by the United States mark a significant turning point in Hawaiian history, and in the development of American music?
How have musicians helped spread climate activist Greta Thunberg’s message?
What did Punk Rock provide that opened the door for New Wave acts? And what are some among the defining attributes of New Wave?
How did same-sex marriage become legal in the United States?
How did the cassette tape change the audience’s experience by allowing the listener to record, compile and disseminate music?
How can you help someone struggling with addiction?
What was the Second Great Awakening, how did it change American society, and how does Sacred Harp singing exemplify its ideals?
What is Ciranda, and how can group singing and dancing help us feel like a part of a community?
How does the invention of the phonograph represent how the daily lives of Americans changed during the Gilded Age?
Who were the Hyers Sisters, and how did their work represent the Reconstruction era?
What is Joropo, and how is it inspired by nature?
How did Detroit’s cultural and economic history influence the sound and success of Motown Records?
What was NASA’s Apollo program and why was it controversial?
What were the Stonewall Riots, and what role did they play in ongoing struggles for LGBTQ+ equality in the United States?
Who is Dolores Huerta, what role did she play in the United Farm Workers movement, and how is she recognized today?
Who was Bert Williams and how does his life represent an American experience during the rise of Jim Crow laws and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson?
How have Black artists throughout the 20th century used music to speak about racial injustice in America?
How might visual artists use music as a tool for inspiration, and how might sound be reflected through art?
How do successful music producers practice positive leadership skills?
What social issues continue to confront Asbury Park today, and how are activists tackling them?
How did the Grateful Dead make their concerts more accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) community?
How did Muddy Waters’ music change after he moved to Chicago, and what does that say about the relationship between place and self-expression?
What does the founding and early history of Asbury Park reveal about practices of segregation in the Northern United States?
What different types of communities exist, and how do the people in our communities impact us?
What is the Flint water crisis, and why did it occur?
How does Common and John Legend's “Glory” signal Civil Rights movements of the past and the present?
How can the music of ChocQuibTown, from the Pacific Coast of Colombia, help students express and celebrate their cultural identity through Rap?
What were the experiences of Native Americans during Westward Expansion and how did the U.S. government use music and other aspects of culture to force assimilation on Native Americans?
Who is the ‘us’ in P!nk’s song “What About Us?”
IF YOU thought Jefferson Airplane was a weird name, let some of these drop off your tongue. Talking Heads. Tuff Darts. Ramones. Planets. Heartbreakers. Shirts. Television. Day Old Bread. Manster. They are names of some of the better known of hundreds of New York area bands, often categorized under the catch-all "punk rock" or "punk bands," that are attracting rock fans to lower Manhattan clubs like CBGB, Mothers and Max's Kansas City. That definition is misleading, because the punkiest thing about most of the bands is their names. They represent a variety of musical styles and competence levels. Some, like Television...
What is a logo, what are the elements of effective logo design, and how have musicians and bands used logos to brand themselves?
How did Country musicians’ responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks speak to the feelings of some Americans after the tragedy?
What is the relationship between the banjo and slavery, and how did music making by enslaved people influence the abolition debate during the 18th and early 19th century?
What shapes did Pablo Picasso use to create his piece Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass and how can similar shapes be used to create other instruments?
Dave Schulps, senior editor of Trouser Press, spent more than six hours with Page, one of the longest interviews Page ever did. The interview was scheduled to happen on the East Coast after the band's 1977 MSG gigs, but Page was too tired to talk. So Swan Song put Schulps on their chartered jet with the and flew him to California. Schulps ended up snagging the guitarist on three separate occasions a few days later in Beverly Hills. The interviews took place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, on June 16 and 17, 1977, while the band had a brief...
What are the cultural, economic, and geographic origins of Disco and how has the genre been presented, remembered, and represented in popular culture?
How does the story of “Hound Dog” demonstrate music culture’s racial mixing as it differed from mainstream American life in the 1950s?
How did Black radio empower Black Americans, aid the Civil Rights Movement, and influence U.S. society?
What is Afrofuturism and what are some of the cultural traditions and historical events that inspired and reinforced it?
What was Hurricane Katrina, and how did Black Americans articulate the frustrations they felt in its aftermath?
What factors led up to the Asbury Park "Riots" in New Jersey in the summer of 1970?
What are Aguinaldos, and how do children in Venezuela celebrate the winter holiday season known as La Navidad?
What was Westward Expansion, and what effect did it have on American Popular music?
What role do ratios play in the Western musical concepts of rhythm and harmony?
What are the mathematical variables that give a sound its particular quality, and how can these variables be measured, visualized, and calculated?
What is the history behind Puerto Rican migration to New York City in the 1940s and 1950s, and how did Puerto Rican migration affect American Popular Music?
What is Chicana Punk, how does it relate to the Chicano Movement, and how did it transform the Punk music scene?
What is sound, and how are its characteristics explained scientifically?
THE MOST AMAZING thing about Dick Clark is not that "America's Oldest Living Teenager" still fits that role at age 61. It's not that he's one of the most successful (and wealthiest) people in show business. It's not even the fact that nearly all the great (and plenty of not-so-great) artists in the history of rock 'n' roll have appeared on his American Bandstand. The most amazing thing about Dick Clark is that he can't dance. He's admitted it. Dick Clark has two left feet. Beginning August 5, 1957, the Monday afternoon when he took over as host of the longest-running variety...
How did the Homestead Act of 1862 impact growth and development in the American West, and what is meant by the term “crossroads of culture” in the context of the American West?
How have visual artists worked with musicians without compromising their style?
Who are the gods and superheroes referenced in “Something Just Like This,” and what are the connections between them?
How does the song “Blowin’ in the Wind” use poetic devices to communicate an open-ended yet powerful message about the human condition, without ever losing its historical specificity?
How have palm oil plantations impacted indigenous communities in Indonesia and the global climate as a whole, and how have activists and musicians spread awareness about the issue?
Essential Question: How did Aretha Franklin’s foundation in Gospel music influence her recording of “Chain of Fools,” helping to establish a Soul sound and bringing black culture into mainstream America?
How are contemporary Latin artists pursuing activism and promoting positive change in their communities?
How did activism by Black students challenge Jim Crow segregation during the Civil Rights Movement, and what unique role did music play as an organizing tool?
How did the music of the Beach Boys reflect the suburbanization of postwar America?
What is the influence of Brazilian music and culture in the United States?
In what ways does Alessia Cara’s “Here” defy popular music conventions, and what does the song say about peer pressure in youth culture?
What is intersectionality, and how do musicians in the Punk music scene navigate life at different intersections?
How does the “Surf Sound” in Rock and Roll reflect early surf culture, and what are the roots of this genre of music?
Why might people dance, and how have dance trends changed in America since the 1920s?
How does Lydia Mendoza’s Tejano music connect to the history of Texas and the influence Mexico has had on that state?
What is Fania Records, and how does it reflect the history of Spanish-speaking Caribbean communities in New York City?
What was second-wave feminism, and how did music contribute to the movement?
How did the input of manager Brian Epstein and record producer George Martin help The Beatles develop and refine skills that aided the band in presenting their music and personalities to a mass audience?
How does music help us remember people we are close to, or those we have lost?
How did music advance the goals and inform the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement?
How can the guitar help us understand the scientific principle of transduction?
How did Westward Expansion and the idea of Manifest Destiny inform the image of the cowboy in American culture?
What is mountaintop removal, how does it affect the environment and people’s health?
How did the singer-songwriters of the 1960s and 70s address the concerns of the environmental movement?
What is plastic, how is it harmful for the environment, and how can it be used more responsibly?
How did the presence of Latin American artists challenge the image of 1950s American society seen in popular media?
Reporting for Newsweek took me to Monterey. I'd gone to work for Newsweekright out of college in 1965 – I was a reporter in the London bureau whenRubber Soul came out, Carnaby Street was jumping, and the Who were at the Marquee. In January '67, just as the '60s musical-social ball was bouncing westward, Newsweek moved me to San Francisco. I arrived in time for the Human Be-In and soon was hanging out at the Avalon and Fillmore, interviewing Jerry and Janis, and covering student demonstrations in Berkeley. In May I began to hear rumours of a huge hippie festival: all the best new bands...
Does Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” help humanize Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby?
What different types of communities exist, and how do the people in our communities impact us?
How might Beyoncé's song “I Was Here” inspire people to serve their community and make a positive impact on the world?
How does a bill become a law in the United States of America?
How did the bands X-Ray Spex, Bad Brains, and Death define Punk on their own terms?
What is distortion, and how did it become a desired guitar effect in Rock and Roll?
What was the cultural, social, and historical significance of the zoot suit during the period of World War II?
In downtown Manhattan the rock 'n' roll war rages on as potential crown princes of Punkdom battle for recognition.. NICK KENT interprets the action IN MANHATTAN you're either uptown or down town and there's really no halfway house to dissolve into while in transit. You case your bearings purely on instinct as the yellow cab careers awkwardly down, down, down from the uptown three-star 51st and 3rd Mafioso hotel (ageing Hawaiian bellboys/the overbearing aroma of styrofoam in the Coffee Shop/the tight-lipped Italianate retired hit-man of a receptionist who always makes you wait for the key, nodding suspiciously to the grease-ball house...
How did Ritchie Valens meld traditional Mexican music and Rock and Roll?
How do musical instruments produce different pitches, and what variables allow you to calculate the pitch of an instrument?
How do Indigenous perspectives contribute to international environmental protection policies?
What is Bystander Intervention and how does it make music spaces and other public gathering places more safe, accessible, and fun for everyone?
How can shapes be used to design an electric guitar?
How can data be analyzed and interpreted to better understand a band's success?
WHILE ENGLAND was paving the way for mass acceptance of white interpretations of classic blues material with bands like the Yardbirds and Bluesbreakers and talented individuals of the caliber of Clapton, Beck and Page, America produced two notable bands working in the same genre – the Al Kooper / Danny Kalb-led Blues Project and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The latter was not as prone as most to the inevitable "can a white man play the blues?" question (the issue being emotional honesty rather than technical ability), having honed their craft in Chicago’s South Side blues clubs and at the...
ALL ENTERTAINMENT HAS AN EXISTENTIAL dimension: all successful performances imply a life-style and a sense of values, a sub-structure of assumptions upon which the performer plays his part. The Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night, successfully crystallised the personalities that had made them the biggest successes in the history of show business: their surreal sense of humour, their sophisticated naïveté, and their four way plug-in personality – clever John, cuddly man in the street Ringo, sardonic George, and precocious cherubic Paul. The Beatles' personalities worked well in the movie since their rather repressed alienation from the feverish glamour of the...
How have writers, storytellers, and musicians explored the crossroads as a symbol in their work?
How did Emo music emerge from Punk to become its own unique genre, and how has Emo influenced a newer generation of artists and audiences?
LET'S PLAY the numbers game. According to Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-1986, Pat Boone is the fifth highest-ranking artist in the history of theBillboard singles charts. Only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, James Brown and Stevie Wonder were more successful (based on the number of singles charting and their positions). In the '50s, only Elvis was more popular, chart-wise, than Boone. Pat Boone reached the singles charts 60 times, putting him at #8 on that list. Six of those chart singles reached #1, spending a total of 21 weeks in that position, putting Boone in two more Top 10 lists. So much for...
How do Langston Hughes, Gladys Bentley, and Louis Armstrong effectively write personal narratives about living during the Harlem Renaissance?
TO PARAPHRASE the titles of two of the 20 Bo Diddley nuggets contained on His Best: The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection , you can't judge a book by its cover but you sure can tell something about how important a musician is by the artists who do cover versions of his songs. That's not to imply that Bo Diddley's legacy rests solely on the interpretations of his music by others. The rich body of work contained here offers ample testament to the multiple talents--as singer, songwriter, guitarist and creator of one of the archetypal rock rhythms--the man born Ellas McDaniels displayed on...
In what ways do indigenous views of water align with scientific views, and how do indigenous activists use artistic expression to advocate for water protection?
What is the science behind color theory, and how is it used in fashion and album cover design?
How can our brains be shaped by our mindset, and how has a growth mindset helped Steve Aoki become one of the most successful DJs and record producers in the world?
What is a Mӧbius strip, how do you create one, and what can it represent?
How can writing and evaluating algebraic expressions be used to anticipate a musician’s touring costs?
How do you use editing to create a final media product?
How can ratios be used to identify a music artist’s social media audience engagement?
How can writing and evaluating expressions be used to explain the scope of an artist’s concert schedule?
How can graphing be used to analyze music industry data?
He couldn't read. He couldn't write. He couldn't stop screwing up. Yet Hank Williams is a giant of popular music without whom rock'n'roll might never have happened. "I thought about Hank when I walked out on that Opry stage for the first time. all I could think of was, This is the same stage that Hank Williams was on and now I'm here." – Elvis Presley IN JAILHOUSE ROCK, VINCE EVERETT, PLAYED BY Elvis Presley, has a photograph on his cell wall. Unsurprisingly, it's of Hank Williams. Both singers were influenced by black music early in life, both won talent shows and learnt...
How do you prepare for a successful and insightful interview?
JERRY LEIBER AND MIKE STOLLER. They rank alongside Berry as rock ‘n’ roll’s wittiest composers and their influence as record producers has been immeasurable. As writers they were the first to bring satire and a social conscience to rock; as producers they ushered out the simplicity of an era in which groups were pulled off the streets to "doo-wop" and "doo-wah" into a microphone for three minutes. From these primitive beginnings to monaural overdubbing, the very first eight-track studios and on into the realms of the technological future-shock, Leiber and Stoller have directed all the phases of post-war record production....
How do you conduct and record an interview?
How can a logo help communicate a person or group’s unique personality?
Poisoned by the chalice of instant success, bedridden with road-rash after a ton of amp-smashingly intense gigs – what's happened to Nirvana's tortured singer and distillery of teen spirit, Kurt Cobain? "All I need is a break," he says... FOR NOW, Kurt Cobain and his new wife, Courtney Love, live in an apartment in Los Angeles' modest Fairfax district. The living room holds little besides a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier, a stringless guitar, a makeshift Buddhist shrine and, on the mantel, the couple's collection of naked plastic dolls. Scores of CDs and tapes are strewn around the stereo – obscurities such...
The Beatles are universally regarded as one of the most important bands in the history of Rock and Roll. Over the course of an active career that spanned just 10 years, the band released some of the most enduring popular music of the 20th century – a catalog whose influence would be hard to overstate. To give but one measure of the band’s stature, when Rolling Stone ranked the “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time,” four Beatles records made the top ten: Revolver, Rubber Soul, The Beatles (a.k.a. the “White Album”) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which...
By 1963, The Rollin' Stones lacked only a "g" and a manager. Enter Andrew Loog Oldham, 19-year-old music publicist and soon-to-be Stones Svengali... Andrew Loog Oldham: "In early 1963 I was doing public relations on a freelance basis for The Beatles and some other Brian Epstein acts. Contrary to popular opinion, I wasn't looking for anything else to do. I was a very happy man. One day, I went to see Peter Jones ofRecord Mirror, trying to sell him something, probably an Epstein act, but he wasn't interested, He kept talking about this other group, they were still called The Rollin'...
What role might music play in a person’s life, identity, and community?
LET'S FACE IT – much of what passes for music in our country is, in fact, nothing more than product, the worthless, soulless result of greed and stupidity. The sights are set low, and the history of rock and roll is awash with things that just don't matter. They don't come from the heart and they don't touch any hearts. They glitter for a minute and are gone. Black Flag is another story. Perhaps the most vilified, hated and harassed band in recent memory, Black Flag's entire career, virtually, has been circumscribed by how the police and media portray them. Not even...
AYLESBURY, ENGLAND. He is, as he had planned, magnificent. The stage appears impeccably struck, lights arranged to catch the finer angles of his face, making him seem at times wonderfully ape-like and primitive, at others supremely regal, capable of the grand gesture now and again. The band stands behind him in a shock of silver reflections, each part steadily notching its integral role – lead guitar flashy, but always a foil; bass hung back just a stride or two to let you hint the presence; drums anonymous, but precise, punctuating, emphatic. There is never any question of whether they will...
"WOW, YOU guys are really getting it on!" exclaimed Chuck Berry, observing the Rolling Stones cut 'Down The Road Apiece', a track he'd recorded himself just a few years earlier. It was June, 1964, and this youthful British beat band were happily messing around at the Chess studio in Chicago as their older black musical idols watched on, intrigued. In the background Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson argued loudly about a woman from Kentucky. Muddy Waters, whose song 'Rollin' Stone', had supplied the English band with its moniker, even helped them bring in their equipment. Later on, they chatted...
METALLICA. YOU KNOW the story. Those that don't are doomed to have me repeat it. Early '80s, a metal brat and a friend not ashamed to look like Frank Marina come crashing out of the Ulrich family garage in tree-lined Norwalk, California, and into the L.A. metal scene proper, only to be kicked in the corner by a batallion of stilettos. Not that there's anything wrong with stilettos, nor make-up nor spandex nor hairspray for that matter; all have been a better friend to me than any dog I've known. What was wrong, in the metal sense, was the behavior of...
THEY COULD hardly have been a bigger contrast in background and appearance: the young, very tall, bright white Englishman Long John Baldry, and the mature, short, dark brown American John Lee Hooker. But they had the blues in common and when I brought Baldry and Hooker together recently they got along like old friends. John Lee was amazed that Long John, who is a mere 23, has been listening to blues records for 11 years "Yes, the first disc I bought was Muddy Water singing 'Honey Bee' on French Vogue. Then I got another French Vogue, Big Bill Broonzy's 'Blues...
How does “the beat” of popular music reflect the histories of multiethnic populations and places?
THERE HAS BEEN a great increase recently in the number of popular artists whose songs are influenced by or taken from American folk music–both traditional and modern. The paranoiac need of modern man for a label for anything that comes near him resulted, in this case, in the term "folk-rock" to signify pop music with strong folk influences. Originally "folk-rock" meant pop music that used actual folk material; later, anything folk-influenced that retained a heavy beat, and still later, anything having anything to do with folk that happened to sell in the pop market. The term "folk-rock" is a silly...
I KNOW THIS may sound a little overboard, but there once was a time when the Young Rascals were the greatest rock & roll band in the world. I say this without flinching, and in full realization that such combinations as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were in the process of turning out their finest work. I say it in spite of the fact that there are those who would much rather see the Remains,Question Mark and the Mysterians, the Daily Flash, or some other heart-felt favorite stand in the top spot. And I say it knowing far...
KREATURE COMFORTS – "the Lowlife Guide to Memphis" – claims that Memphis can offer visitors "the best or worst of vacations: you could hit a jamming Keith Richards show on Beale Street or end up in line with 8,000 Elvis Zombies waiting to smell Elvis's bicycle seat at Graceland. The choice is yours." I'll take Graceland, thanks. Only inverted snobs contest the notion that the biggest musical phenomenon in Memphis – "Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll" – was Elvis Presley. For the last 20 years of his life, he lived at Graceland. When he died, in 1977,...
What other projects can students develop to showcase their Life Songs Interview?
SINCE ENTERING POP MUSIC in the Fifties, the Bees Gees have had three careers on three continents, each more successful than its predecessor. The first was in Australia as child prodigies. In 1967, they came to Britain as suitable opposition to the Beatles. Finally in the mid-Seventies they found themselves setting the pace for the disco boom and emerging as songwriters of note on the adult-oriented rock scene. The career of the three Gibb brothers began inauspiciously enough in December 1956 at the Gaumont cinema in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, where they volunteered for the regular mime spot preceding the Saturday morning...
If anybody is... WHFS IS A 5000-watt FM station with call letters that were meant to stand for High Fidelty Stereo. It was the first station to broadcast mutiplex in the D.C. area, transmitting from a 150-foot antenna atop the Triangle Towers, a fifteen-story apartment house at 4853 Cordell Avenue, right across the street from the Psyche Delli and the Bank of Bethesda in Bethesda, Maryland. You can always tell you're in Bethesda by the way they always keep the white lines white. Bethesda has one of the highest per capita incomes of all the municipalities in America. The WHFS studios...
Could a musical group “go viral” before the internet?
Since they blasted their way into prominence with the British Invasion, the Who’s sprawling half-century saga has been strewn with creative reinventions, personality clashes, breakups, reunions and death by misadventure. It’s also yielded one of the most respected bodies of work in the annals of Rock, from the band’s early days as scrappy Mod icons to its work as Rock-opera conceptualists to its ongoing incarnation as a bigger-than-life arena-rock juggernaut. The Who’s mass of contradictions is reflected in the contrasting yet oddly complementary personae of the four musicians who comprised the band’s classic lineup: guitarist-songwriter Pete Townshend, whose unsparingly personal...
THE ROLLING STONES are upstairs in Studio 1, where they've been for the past five weeks. Jagger strolls around the foyer, looking for something to do, all neat in white blouson jacket and fawn velvet jeans. But that, you may be surprised to hear, is not where the real action is at this night in Island Studios, Notting Hill. Not, at any rate, if you're a Wailers fan. On this occasion, even the Stones' long-delayed newie comes second to Bob Marley and his brothers from the shanty-towns of Kingston, Jamaica. The Wailers have been in Britain for some weeks now, playing various kinds...
JAMES BROWN will die on the stage one night, on the moving staircase of his own feet in front of a thirty-piece band; and then who knows what may be unloosed between black Americans and white? In Baltimore or Washington or Detroit, cities where the very peace between them has a quality of angry breathing, merely the presence of Brown has been reckoned to equal 100 policemen. Harlem, on the sweltering night after an atrocity, he can cool by one word. At the end of each performance he sings the chorus "Soul Power" over and over again with bass guitar...
THE SEX PISTOLS are four months old, so tuned in to the present that it's hard to find a place to play. Yet they already have a large, fanatical following. So their manager, who runs a rubber and leather shop called Sex, hired a strip club where the two sides could meet. The small, sleazoid El Paradise Club in Soho is not one of the more obvious places for English rock to finally get to grips with the '70s, but when you're trying to create the atmosphere of anarchy, rebellion and exclusiveness that's necessary as a breeding ground, what better...
STEVE VAN ZANDT, May 2011, Lillehammer, Norway: "The anti-apartheid Sun City project (single, album, video, documentary, book, teaching guide) was a high point and a rare clear cut victory from the ten years I spent immersed in the dark, murky, frustrating labyrinth of international liberation politics. It came in the middle of my five politically themed solo albums and had its roots – like all the charity and consciousness raising multi-artist events that would follow – in the Concert for Bangladesh." August 1st marks the 40th anniversary of two landmark benefit concerts that nearly 40,000 attended at Madison Square Garden...
How did the input of manager Brian Epstein and record producer George Martin help The Beatles develop and refine skills that aided the band in presenting their music and personalities to a mass audience?
"I was just a country boy, glad to get some sounds on wax" IT WASN'T unexpected; not like the sudden shock when a man is wiped out is his prime by ice on the wings, vomit in the throat, or a wayward bullet; but there was still a sense of irretrievable loss that came with the news of Howlin’ Wolf’s death. He'd been ill for a long time now. Overweight and subject to heart attacks, he'd been in and out of hospital since the late sixties and more or less inactive for the last couple of years. Now the news reports...
FIRST KILL YOUR HOG. SKIN IT, singe off the hairs and leave the hide to soften. Tug it over a round frame, whittle out a neck, "and there's your banjo", says Roni Stoneman. "The five-string banjo is the only American instrument. The black people brought the four-string banjo, but the five-stringer and the clawhammer style came from the mountains." Roni, elderly Southern belle and professional banjo player, is one of the 15 of Ernest 'Pops' Stoneman's 23 children who made it to adulthood. "A lot of people made their own instruments. There wasn't much money around, but there was plenty...
How did The Beatles' rigorous work schedule during the years 1960-63 build their strengths as performers, as musicians, and as a band?
(b. 1946) Pioneering Punk poet Patti Smith is one the most influential female artists in Rock history, known not only for being an uncompromising iconoclast at a time when few women in Rock fit that description, but also for maintaining a literate, intellectually curious sensibility that was relatively unusual in the Punk milieu in which she first gained public attention. While growing up in New Jersey, the teenaged Smith found inspiration and solace in the writing of Arthur Rimbaud and the Beats, and in the music of Bob Dylan, James Brown and the Rolling Stones. After moving to New York City...
When The Police played New York's Shea Stadium it looked like something from outer space. 67,000 people were in the audience. One of them was Neil Tennant. APPROACHING it from New York in a big black car, Shea Stadium looks like the spaceship that lands at the end of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. It's almost round and completely bathed in light: a warm halo glowing against the night sky. Driving closer, an atmosphere of intense excitement and activity is evident. 67,000 people have bought tickets to see The Police play here tonight. Thousands more have been disappointed. "Don't show up...
A DEFT, HARD-DRIVING BLEND of country, gospel and blues, rockabilly was performed mainly by white artists who traded legitimate country backgrounds for a short-lived but frenzied involvement in music with a strong beat. Young, naturally exuberant musicians were the prime exponents, but traditional country singers were not without guile and, for a brief period around 1954-57, they too sang with a flash and glamour to match their rhinestoned clothes. The word rockabilly was first coined by American trade papers who required a catchall term to cover a new development which had a variety of names including ‘western and bop’, ‘cat...
(b. 1945) English musician Eric Clapton has had one of the most enduring and successful careers in Rock, spanning early years as a Blues-obsessed guitar “God,” a middle period as a laid-back, FM-radio hitmaker, and his latter years as an elder statesman beloved by Classic Rock fans. When lists of the best Rock guitarists are compiled, Clapton is unfailingly near the top; he’s also the only musician to be inducted three times into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; as a solo artist and as a member of Cream and of the Yardbirds. Clapton was born just as the Second World War...
You may find yourself...the leader of a rock band (of sorts)! You may find yourself...starring in a movie of that band's performance! You may find yourself...in a foreign country, staying in a fine hotel and talking to people about that band and that movie! And you may ask yourself...well, how did I get here? And you may ask yourself...what do I do now? Watch out! You might get what you're after. David Byrne, the talking head of Talking Heads, is one of pop music's stranger creatures. This is readily apparent when watching him perform: his onstage demeanour is hugely unsettling; nervous mannerism...
THERE WAS AN outpouring of grief this week when the White Stripes announced they were to split. Stevie Chick explains their magic while photographer Ewen Spencer talks about working with them Whether you're a fan or not, the massive outpouring of grief this week in response to the news that minimalist rock band the White Stripes were to split up might seem puzzling. In their exit statement on Thursday, the Detroit duo said they hoped the news would not be "met with sorrow by [our] fans", emphasising that the split was not due to health issues or artistic differences. Prolific singer/guitarist/songwriter Jack White...
What does a music producer do and in what ways does one hear the sound of a producer’s work in recordings?
Birth Name: Selena Marie Gomez Birthplace: Grand Prairie, Texas July 22, 1992 – Present Years Active: 2002 – Present Named after legendary Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla, Selena Gomez was perhaps destined to be a performer. Inspired by her mother, a struggling stage actress, Gomez began auditioning for roles at an early age, eventually landing a role (with Demi Lovato) in the children’s television series Barney & Friends. Gomez became a household name, however, after getting the title role of Alex Russo in the Disney series Wizards of Waverly Place. While working as an actor for Disney, Gomez also emerged as a talented singer. She...
IN 1979 A record called 'Rapper's Delight' by the Sugarhill Gang introduced us to rapping. Similar stuff soon followed — Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and the like. Even from white artists like Blondie, Tom Tom Club and Wham!. The next thing, Grandmaster Flash's 'Adventures On The Wheels Of Steel' hit us with the notion of "scratching" — creating new dance records by cutting together bits of old ones. Once again the "new wavers" followed — Malcolm McLaren came up with 'Buffalo Gals'. His video showed some incredible acrobatic dancers called Breakers. Meanwhile, a version of Eddy Grant's 'Walking On Sunshine' by...
Judas Priest are an iconic Heavy Metal band who helped to transform the genre from its 60s Blues-Rock roots to the mainstream phenomenon we know today. Alongside Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, the band are widely ranked among the most influential Heavy Metal bands of all time, and with a career that’s spanned over 40 years, they’re one of the most enduring. Judas Priest formed in the gritty industrial city of Birmingham, England, in 1971. They spent the next few years playing local shows and developing their heavy, Blues-based sound. Their debut album, Rocka Rolla, was released in 1974 and...
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SITS cross-legged on his half-made bed, and surveys the scene. Records are strewn across the room, singles mostly, intermixed with empty Pepsi bottles, a motley of underwear, socks and jeans, half-read and half-written letters, an assortment of tapes, and a copy of Richard Williams' Out of His Head, the biography of Phil Spector. The space is small, but Bruce and the two friends listening to Harold Dorman's 'Mountain of Love' don't mind. They're listening for the final few bars of 'Mountain', in which the drummer collapses and loses the beat – the song slows down to a noticeably improper...
From their early days as Blues-obsessed Londoners at the forefront of the British Invasion to their current status as living legends and a top draw on the arena circuit, the Rolling Stones – a.k.a. “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band – have proved one of the most influential and enduring bands in Rock. The Stones began their recording career in 1963 as just one of a legion of young British bands enamored with American Blues and R&B. Although they possessed a charismatic frontman in Mick Jagger, a punchy guitar tandem in Keith Richards and Brian Jones, and a solid,...
How did The Beatles establish a new paradigm for the image of "the star," and how did that image support their global success?
Perhaps more then any other band, the Grateful Dead helped develop and propagate the 1960s San Francisco hippie image, and it’s an image they unwaveringly maintained throughout their 30-year career. Hugely popular as a touring act, the band was singular in a number of aspects, including the way it combined Blues, Country, and Folk influences with a devotion to psychedelia-drenched improvisation, the way it achieved large-scale popularity without radio hits, and the rabid intensity of its itinerant army of fans, called Deadheads. The roots of the Grateful Dead go back to 1964, when lead guitarist/vocalist Jerry Garcia, keyboard player Ron...
PAUL THOMPSON's tom-toms ground slowly to a shuddering halt as Eno's synthesiser simulated the sound of Firestone Wide Ovals being pushed past their limit around a fast curve. The short final chord was almost obscured by the cheers and clapping. This was last Sunday night at the Greyhound in Croydon, South London's answer to Manhattan and Spaghetti Junction rolled into one. But it could have been several places over the past few weeks, because almost everywhere they've been, Roxy Music have been greeted with the kind of warmth that all new bands crave, but few ever achieve. To those who've...
Birth Name: Belcalis Almanzar Birthplace: The Bronx, New York, NY October 11, 1992 – Present Years Active: 2015 – Present Rapper/Singer Cardi B grew up in the Latin neighborhood Highbridge in the South Bronx with a Dominican father and Trinidadian mother. After growing up in the Bronx, she gained popularity after she had several videos go viral on Vine and Instagram in 2013. In 2015, she joined the cast of Love & Hip Hop: New York. Cardi B made her music debut in the fall of 2015 in Jamaican singer Shaggy’s song “Boom, Boom”. In 2017, she released her second mixtape and signed her...
Birth Name: Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio Birthplace: San Juan, Puerto Rico March 10, 1994 – Present Years Active: 2016 – Present Bad Bunny grew up in a home where music was part of family life. Under the influence of his mother, Bad Bunny joined the local church choir where his talent was first recognized. His mother also made music part of the family’s home by playing Salsa and romantic Latin ballads. At the age of 13, he started writing his own songs inspired by Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderon, Hector Lavoe and Vico C. In 2016, while studying audiovisual communication at the University of Puerto...
One of the first bands associated with the 70s Punk/New Wave movement to achieve widespread commercial success, the Police were initially ridiculed by some for their perceived lack of “authenticity.” But the bleach-blond, leather-jacketed threesome quickly got the last laugh on their critics, becoming one of the world's biggest recording acts with an expansive musical approach that won them a massive global audience. It's not surprising that the Police were initially dismissed as bandwagon-jumpers, since all three members were seasoned players whose technical skill violated Punk's embrace of amateurism. Singer/bassist Sting (born Gordon Sumner) had played with various Jazz-Rock combos,...
(1915 – 1983) A Mississippi native who rose to prominence in Chicago in the early 1950s, Muddy Waters is one the most esteemed figures in Blues, and a seminal figure in the postwar electrification of acoustic Delta Blues. He was a major influence on many Rock musicians of the 1960s, revered in particular among players who made up the British Blues scene. Waters was born McKinley Morganfield in 1915, and raised on the Stovall Plantation in the Delta town of Clarksdale, Mississippi. At age five Waters began to play harmonica and as a teen he taught himself guitar, emulating the style...
(1932 – 1964) During his short life, singer and harmonica player Cyril Davies played a key role in popularizing American Blues music in the U.K. in the 1960s, both as a performer and bandleader and as the driving force, with partner Alexis Korner, behind a pair of influential venues. Blues Incorporated, the band Davies started with guitarist Korner, is credited as the first British band to play electric Blues and R&B, and an inspiration for many musicians who would go on to fame, including members of the Rolling Stones, Cream, Led Zeppelin and the Yardbirds. Davies began playing music publicly in...
Until recently little was known of Berry Gordy Jnr’s background. Such information as was available made no sense at all except on a romantic level, and Motown’s official version of its own origins is curiously blunt. The aggressive young car-worker is said to have started the company that revolutionized the record industry on nothing more than an 800 dollar loan from his family’s credit union. But this rags-to-riches account overlooks two factors. In the first instance, Gordy was among the hottest songwriters of the late Fifties and had several million-selling compositions to his credit. Moreover, he came – to borrow...
IN A frame of reference where you might think of Elvis Presley as an idol and Little Richard as a hero. Buddy Holly has to be considered as an influence. Buddy Holly, the first rocker to actually go on stage wearing hornrimmed spectacles, who died in an air crash on February 3rd, 1959, and who thereby created rock's very first tragic legend, was much more than simply another fifties rock 'n' roll front man who got thrown into unnatural notoriety by his premature death. In any final analysis of the contribution of the stars of the fifties to the general steam...
"I DON'T EVEN like Led Zeppelin," the girl in the black velvet jacket and hotpants said petulantly as she bummed a cigarette off an acquaintance in the lobby of the Continental Hyatt House Hotel in L.A. "I'm only staying here because my friends have a room. I think Zep are really tacky." Methought the lady did protest too much. Why would three well-known L.A. groupies book a room at Zep's hotel if they didn't dig the band? Why would they spend most of their spare time either hanging out in the lobby or else trying to gatecrash the security on the ninth...
(1928 – 1984) Alexis Korner was never a household name, but his influence on the British Rock scene of the 1960s continues to be felt today. As one of the first British performers to embrace American Blues, Koerner — often called the “Father of British Blues” — was a mentor to the stars of the next generation, from the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin. Born in Paris in 1928 to an Austrian father and a Turkish/Greek mother, Alexis spent his childhood in France, Switzerland and North Africa, arriving in London at age 13, at the height of the Second World War....
Formed in London in the late 1960s, Led Zeppelin went on to become one of the most popular and influential bands in Rock and Roll history. Like many British bands of the era, Led Zeppelin were steeped in American Blues, but they took that influence in a heavier direction than most of their peers, creating a powerful, stomping sound that also incorporated elements of British Folk, Psychedelia, Soul, Reggae, and Celtic and Arabic music. As such, they wielded a huge influence over subsequent Hard Rock bands, and are often credited as forbears of Heavy Metal. The band was brought together...
What caused The Beatles to cease touring in 1966 and how did the innovative music they then created during their subsequent immersion in the recording studio both reflect and influence the world at that time?
THE WHO PLAY rock "n’ roll music ("it’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it," says Chuck Berry). Not art-rock, acid-rock, or any type of rock, but an unornamented wall of noise that, while modern and electronic, has that "golden oldies" feeling. Four Mod kids who started in 1963 as the High Numbers in London’s scruffy Shepherd’s Bush, the Who play a tight driving music which is a descendant of the rock of Elvis, Bill Haley, Gene Vincent, and even the early Beatles. In San Francisco near the end of a ten-week, fifty-city tour, the Who were at their...
What makes a work of art “original,” and how does the use of “sampling” technology in Hip Hop challenge perceptions of “originality”?
What is the significance of Reconstruction and what does it reveal about the freedom that the post-Civil War constitutional amendments secured for African Americans?
ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED MOMENTS IN late-Sixties rock comes at the beginning of 'To Be Alone With You' on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album. As the guitars begin to strum, Dylan drawls, "Is it rolling, Bob?" "Bob" is Bob Johnston, Dylan’s producer. With that single question Dylan brings to our attention Johnston’s role in the singer’s recording career. The producer is here acknowledged as a crucial part of the whole undertaking — as necessary as the tape machines, microphones, and instruments...almost as important as the singer himself. By the end of the Sixties, most rock fans could give you the names of...
How have singers responded as advances in studio recording techniques have enabled increased technological “perfection”?
White vocal groups of the Fifties embraced a variety of styles and sounds, ranging from adult pop groups (the Ames Brothers, the Four Aces, the Hilltoppers), through shameless pop-rockers who covered the R&B hits of the day (the Crewcuts, the McGuire Sisters, the Diamonds) to a vast army of teenage singing groups who naturally absorbed black vocal mannerisms. Some, like the Skyliners and the Belmonts, rivaled the best black harmony groups but, before the emergence of such quartets, white doo-wop was synonymous with plagiarism and what might be termed 'sham-rock'. The king of sham-rock was Bill Randle, a Cleveland disc jockey...
LOS ANGELES – Peter Gabriel's five o'clock shadow tints not only cheeks and chin but the shaved patch of flesh which cuts up from the top of his forehead into the center of his hair, as if a tiny lawnmower had gone to work. Will the style catch on? "There are one or two people in England who waddle about with it," he admits. "Very good for my ego. But I think it's too violent a step. I mean I'm not sure how many people would consider it an asset to their sex appeal. I think if I can link...
(1917 – 2001) One of the most distinctive and enduring of Blues icons, John Lee Hooker created a stark, brooding signature style rooted in his primitive, hypnotic guitar grooves, along with a highly original songwriting sensibility. His trademark sound and imposing presence helped to make "the Hook" one of the most popular Blues performers of the post-World War II era, and an influence on many Rock and Roll musicians. Although a native of Mississippi, Hooker came to prominence after relocating to Detroit in 1943, following unproductive stints in Memphis and Cincinnati. He began recording in 1948 and experienced immediate success with...
(1941 – 2005) Although he never achieved the fame of such contemporaries as Rod Stewart and Elton John — both of whom were members of his early bands and championed him after they became successful — 6'7" vocalist Long John Baldry was a key figure in the Blues revival that hit England in the early '60s. Baldry was one of the first on the London scene to perform American Blues material, and was an early member of the Alexis Korner’s seminal group Blues Incorporated. He was featured on Korner's 1962 LP R&B from the Marquee, which is generally regarded as the...
Led by mop-haired, gender-bending frontman Dee Snider, the Glam Metal band Twisted Sister had a brief ride as one of the most popular Metal bands of the 80s, driven in part by heavy MTV airplay of videos for their hit singles “We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock." The band formed in the early 70s in suburban Long Island, New York. Initially their music reflected the Glam Rock influence of the New York Dolls, but when lead singer Dee Snider joined in early 1976 the band took on a heavier sound, with influence from the music and theatricality of...
The Clash were part of the original wave of Punk bands that emerged in Britain during the mid 1970s; their first performance was opening for the Sex Pistols in 1976. But they soon moved past the stylistic limitations of Punk, demonstrating a depth of talent and musical ambition that peaked on 1979’s London Calling, a double LP that’s been hailed as a masterpiece. Formed in London, the band – singer Joe Strummer, guitarist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simenon and drummer Terry Chimes (soon replaced by Topper Headon) – released its first single, the stomping “White Riot” in March 1977. A month...
Although Nirvana was the band that broke the mainstream market open for Grunge and Alternative Rock combos, it was their fellow Pacific Northwest outfit Pearl Jam who rode the Grunge boom to the longest and most commercially successful career. The Seattle quartet merged a heavy but melodic sound with an ambivalent attitude towards the trappings of success and a resistance to such standard music-industry practices as music videos and high ticket prices. That stance doesn't seem to have hurt the band’s popularity, however, considering Pearl Jam’s worldwide album sales of over 60 million. Pearl Jam was launched by guitarist Stone...
Birth Name: Miguel Jontel Pimentel Birthplace: San Pedro, California October 23, 1985 – Present Years Active: 2004 – Present R&B singer Miguel grew up in a middle-class Hispanic community in San Pedro, California with a Mexican-American father and African-American mother. His love of music started young with his father being an amateur musician who was a fan of Funk, Hip Hop, Jazz and Classic Rock. However, it was his mother who introduced him to R&B. Miguel started pursuing a career in music in his early teenage years, working at a local production company called Drop Squad. In 2004, he signed with an independent record...
(1894 – 1937) Dubbed the “Empress of the Blues,” Bessie Smith was one of the most successful black stars of the 1920s, and one of a handful of women singers of the era who brought the Blues to a wider audience. Born in 1894, Smith had lost her mother, father and a brother by the age of 9, and was raised by her older sister in Chatanooga, Tenn. With limited job prospects, Smith and her brother Andrew began playing for spare change on the street to support the family. In 1912, Smith joined a traveling vaudeville show as a dancer and...
The British band Cream were only active for a short while, but their blend of Blues, Rock and psychedelia became instantly popular and proved an influence on many Hard Rock and Blues Rock bands that followed them. The three members of Cream were all veterans of various London bands when the power trio formed in mid-1966. As a member of the Yardbirds and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Eric Clapton had become a highly regarded guitarist; bassist/singer Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker had both been in the Graham Bond Organisation, a band that combined R&B and Jazz. All three were looking...
(1942 – 1970) Jimi Hendrix’s recording career lasted only a few years, but he blew a swath threw the late 1960s, doing things with a Fender Stratocaster guitar that nobody had done before. He’s widely acknowledged as one of the most influential and innovative musicians Rock has produced, and is often cited as the greatest electric guitarist in history. Hendrix was born in 1942 in Seattle, Washington, and raised mostly by his single father. As a boy Hendrix spent hours “playing” a broom as if it were a guitar, eventually graduating to a one-stringed ukulele he found in the trash. When...
With a series of Top 40 hits featuring their good time take on Blue-Eyed Soul, the New York-based Young Rascals (later the Rascals) helped shape the sound of late 60s Pop. Eddie Brigati (vocals), Felix Cavaliere (keyboards, vocals), and Gene Cornish (guitar) had been members of Joey Dee’s backup band the Starliters before they teamed with Dino Danelli (drums) and started the Rascals. They began honing their sound in East Coast clubs, particularly a floating Long Island club called the Barge where they created a buzz with their mix of Soul and R&B covers, vocal harmonies, unique instrumentation (the band...
JONI MITCHELL has written songs for Tom Rush, and the Fairport Convention have used her songs on both their albums. In each case, I'd had the idea of an intricate delicacy; but tiny intonations in both interpretations indicated that the singers didn't own the songs they'd chosen. Rush is one of those singers whose songs lose tautness through musing; and Judy Dyble, the original Fairport singer, although she feels her songs, fails to charge them. An English girl singing "All alone in Carolina, and talking to you," for example, loses a crucial sense of place. Fairport Convention, however, are a...
Formed in Los Angeles in 1964, the Byrds are credited as the first Folk Rock group, pioneering a sound that bridged the gap between popular Folk acts like the Kingston Trio and the bands of the British Invasion. The core members of the band — Jim (Roger) McGuinn, Gene Clark and David Crosby — all had roots in the Folk world, having put their time in playing in coffee houses with groups like the New Christy Minstrels and Les Baxter’s Balladeers. As with so many musicians in the early 60s, it was the wake-up call of hearing the Beatles that...
REMIND SHAWN CARTER, aka Jay-Z, that his last long player, Vol.2...Hard Knock Life, which spawned the Annie-sampling single of the same name, sold 5 million copies (250,000 of those in four days) and his only reply is a broad smile and one word, "Yeah". The one-time Brooklyn drug dealer, who is now a captain of industry with his own Roc-A-Fella Records, may pull your regular "Pissed-Off-Rapper" pose for album sleeves and posters, but right now, as he sits in his palatial London hotel, slumped on a sofa, feet on an ornate coffee table, thumbing through the sports pages of a stack of...
Or how the '70s has seen a limp-wristed sell-out of the ideals of the 60s. MICK FARREN discusses the way the Uncle Toms of Teendom have taken Rock off the streets and into the penthouse. WHEN YOU spend a great deal of your waking time hard up against the outpourings of the rock and roll industry, it gets difficult to believe that the music we've all grown up with is actually drifting away from the mainstream of everyday life. Unfortunately, if you do step far enough back to get modern rock trends into perspective with the general movements in society at...
GRAM PARSONS is an artist with a vision as unique and personal as those of Jagger-Richard, Ray Davies, or any of the other celebrated figures. Parsons may not have gone to the gate as often as the others, but when he has he's been strikingly consistent and good. I can't think of a performance on record any more moving than Gram's on his 'Hot Burrito No. 1', and the first album of his old band, the Flying Burrito Bros.' Gilded Palace of Sin, is a milestone. The record brought a pure country style and a wrecked country sensibility to rock,...
ARGUABLY THE MOST famous line The Who's Pete Townshend ever wrote was "Hope I die before I get old" on 1965's angry young anthem 'My Generation'. Today, at the ripely Beatle-esque age of 64, Townshend will – in his own words – "carry the flag for the boomer generation" during the half-time show at Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. The entertainment spotlight doesn't burn much brighter. It may even remind the world just how great the Who once were. The group have long had to settle for third place in the pantheon of '60s rock giants behind the Beatles and...
(1928-2008) In the early 1950s, Bo Diddley created a trademark sound that brought together aspects of Blues, Gospel and R&B with Latin and African rhythms. In the process, Diddley (a.k.a. “The Originator”) became one of the early giants of Rock and Roll, widely credited as one of the genre’s pioneers. Diddley was born Otha Ellas Bates in southern Mississippi in 1928. Raised by his mother’s cousin, he moved north with her family to Chicago at the age of 6, and took her last name, becoming Ellas McDaniel. Growing up on the city’s South Side, he was an active member of his local Baptist church,...
(1925 – 2015) The combination of B.B. King’s gut wrenching vocals and his distinctive guitar style — marked by stinging vibrato, deft phrasing and fluid string bending — has made him one on the most recognizable, successful and influential Blues performers of all time. King was born Riley B. King on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, where his father abandoned the family when King was 4. Raised mostly by his grandmother, he worked the cotton fields and sang gospel by day, and played blues guitar on street corners for dimes by night. In 1947, King hitchhiked north to the thriving music scene of...
(1910 – 1976) A towering, larger than life performer with a distinctive, raspy growl, Howlin’ Wolf was among the most influential Blues musicians of the postwar years. A Mississippi native who relocated to Chicago and recorded for that city’s Chess Records, Wolf was at the forefront of transforming the acoustic Blues of the rural South to the electric, urban Blues of Chicago, and he was a particular favorite of many early Blues-influenced Rock musicians, including the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix. Howlin’ Wolf was born Chester Arthur Burnett in the small town of White Station, Mississippi. After his parents spilt up...
The White Stripes made for an unlikely international success story: a husband-and-wife duo who posed as brother and sister, playing raw, Blues-influenced Garage Rock with a bare-bones lineup of guitar and drums. The Stripes nonetheless became one of the most successful bands of the 2000s, selling 4 million copies of their 2003 album Elephant. The duo was formed in Detroit in 1997 by singer-guitarist Jack White, at the time working as an upholsterer, and drummer Meg White. Their early releases came out on the small garage-punk label Sympathy for the Record Industry; released in 1999, their self-titled 1999 debut album won a...
Probably the most self-consciously arty of the 1976 school of bands to rise from New York's Punk scene, Talking Heads managed to achieve considerable commercial success with music that grew more ambitious and challenging through the band's dozen-year recording career, ranging from tightly wound minimalism to expansive Funk to polyrhythmic Worldbeat to catchy Pop-Rock. Much of Talking Heads' distinctive sensibility was forged at the Rhode Island School of Design in the early 70s, where singer/guitarist David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth met as students. The trio subsequently landed in New York in time to become a part...
Slade were at the forefront of the 70s Glam Rock scene in Britain, racking up a long string of loud, catchy hits that made them one of the U.K.’s most successful bands of the decade, and one cited as an influence by bands across a range of heavy-hitting genres, from Punk to Pop Metal to Grunge. Slade’s formation goes back to the early 60s, when the members, led by singer and guitarist Noddy Holder, formed The 'N Betweens, a band influenced by Blues, R&B and Motown. Coming under the wing of manager Chas Chandler, the former Animals bassist who’d helped...
The vocal group the Four Seasons rose from their working-class roots in Newark, NJ, to become one the most commercially successful recording acts of all time. With over 25 singles in the Top 40, they helped define the sound of mid-60s Pop, and remain popular over 50 years after their initial success. Versions of the group were working in New Jersey clubs and lounges and recording for small labels as early as 1953 under various names. It wasn’t until lead singer Frankie Valli, guitarist-vocalist Tommy DeVito and bassist-vocalist Nick Massi added keyboardist-vocalist Bob Gaudio to the band in 1959 that...
The Ramones are generally acknowledged as the band that launched the Punk movement. Stripping guitar-driven Rock down to its most basic elements, the four misfits from Forest Hills, Queens, offered an anti-star stance and an anybody-can-do-this message that helped change Rock from an arena-bound spectator sport into a participatory activity, opening the door for countless Punk, New Wave, Hardcore and Indie-Rock combos to follow. Armed with three chords and four leather jackets, the Ramones – guitarist Johnny, bassist Dee Dee, drummer Tommy and frontman Joey, all of whom adopted the last name Ramone — played short, loud, manic-tempoed tunes, hammered...
Even amid the musical and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, the Velvet Underground registered as a revolutionary force, combining a raw, minimalistic musical vision with songs whose lyrical content had no precedent in popular music. At the time, chief songwriter Lou Reed's portrayals of drugs, sex and violence seemed so transgressive that it was easy to miss the humanity and compassion at their heart. Although they Velvets' immense influence is now universally acknowledged, the band barely registered on the mainstream radar during its actual existence. Reed and John Cale formed the band in New York City in 1965; the Velvets’...
GIRL GROUP ROCK flourished between 1958 and 1965, and though, with the passing of the Brill Building and the coming of the sophistication of the soul beat, the tradition thinned out, it’s still around. I don’t mean Shirley Alston puffing her way through greatest hits medleys on late-nite TV, the Three Degrees flashing pubic hair inside their latest offering, or even an authentic throwback like Spring – I mean the songs are still in the air, and sometimes even on the air: they’re at the heart of the Dolls, all over any John Lennon vocal, and of course there’s Bette...
(Leonard: 1917 – 1969; Philip: b. 1921) Immigrants from Poland, Leonard and Philip Chess got into the record business more or less by happenstance, and ended up creating one of the most revered labels of the 20th century, Chicago-based Chess Records. Founded in 1950, Chess became perhaps the most influential Blues label ever, issuing seminal records by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson and many others, while also becoming a force in early Rock and Roll, recording Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, among others. Born Lejzor and Fiszel Czy?, the brothers were just boys when they emigrated...
(b. 1936) From his pioneering 1950s work to his late-blooming mainstream stardom, Buddy Guy has built a track record as one of Blues’ most inventive and influential guitarists. His raw, forceful playing on numerous Chess Records sessions, as well as his flamboyant onstage showmanship, served as a crucial inspiration to such Rock players as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Stevie Ray Vaughan. The Louisiana native got his start playing with bands in Baton Rouge, before moving to Chicago in 1957. There, he joined Muddy Waters' band and began working for Chess as a session guitarist, playing on...
(1926 – 2017) John Lennon famously said, "if you tried to give Rock and Roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry." Indeed, Chuck Berry is one of the few to lay claim as a true founding father of Rock music. Born in St. Louis, Mo., Berry started playing guitar in high school, borrowing guitar riffs and stagecraft from Blues legend T-Bone Walker. By early 1953 Berry was performing with local pianist Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a longtime collaboration with Johnson. Although the band played mostly Blues and ballads — Berry idolized the hard driving Bluesman Muddy Waters and the...
(1905 – 1975) As a fiddler, singer, songwriter and bandleader, Bob Wills was the foremost practitioner of Western Swing, a genre-bending style incorporating elements of Country, Jazz, Blues, Big Band Swing and Pop. Through the late 30s and most of the 1940s, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were one of America's most popular and musically accomplished bands, packing dance halls across the Southwest and beyond. Born in Texas in 1905, the son of a cotton farmer and amateur fiddler, Wills entered show business as a teen, playing local dances. He formed a band that earned some regional popularity, and in the...
Iron Maiden With a career spanning three decades and tens of millions of records sold, the U.K.’s Iron Maiden are one of the most successful and influential Heavy Metal bands in history. Emerging in the early 1980s, the band spearheaded the so-called “New Wave of British Heavy Metal,” built around a sound that eschewed the Blues influence of progenitors like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in favor of faster tempos and a harder sound Iron Maiden was formed in east London in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. The band spent the next few years swapping players and developing...
One of the most iconoclastic acts to emerge from the American New Wave movement in the late 70s, Devo’s long and productive lifespan belies the assumptions of those who dismissed the group as a novelty act during its original heyday. Along the way, the Ohio-bred Art-Punk sci-fi surrealists managed to break into America's mainstream pop consciousness. Although they've shifted styles numerous times, from jagged Punk to bouncy Synth Pop to ironic Easy Listening and back again, Devo has remained true to its conceptual origins, while maintaining the playful sense of subversion with which it started. Devo's central concept of "devolution"...
While they may not have invented the genre, the Sex Pistols emerged in the late 1970s as the very face of Punk Rock. Forming in the midst of a harsh economic recession in Britain – and a musical landscape dominated by Prog, Disco and staged arena Rock — the Pistols were brash, crude, and gleefully provocative, spitting into the face of the British cultural establishment with a howled message of political anarchy and anti-authoritarianism. They were around for only two years and recorded only a single record, but their influence was vast in both the U.S. and the U.K....
Along with their Detroit-area contemporaries the Stooges, the MC5 helped to lay the musical and attitudinal foundations for punk rock. Both bands shared a loud, confrontational approach. But where the Stooges' wildness was an end in itself, the MC5 adopted an impassioned political stance, embracing radical rhetoric in a raw, uncompromising manner. The band's passionate advocacy of sex, drugs and revolution led them to regularly run afoul of legal authorities as well as their own record company. Singer Rob Tyner and guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith founded the Motor City Five as a fairly conventional high-school combo in...
Pioneers of Hardcore Punk, the Dead Kennedys were noted for their biting, often satirical sociopolitical diatribes against U.S. foreign policy, Ronald Reagan-era domestic policy, a culture they lambasted as conformist and superficial and anything else that roused the ire of lead singer Jello Biafra. A puckish, satirical provocateur with a quavering, caustic howl that cut like an icepick over the band’s furious riffing, Biafra (born Eric Boucher) formed the band in San Francisco in 1978, along with guitarist East Bay Ray. The band’s first single, “California Uber Alles,” was released in 1979 – that same year, Biafra ran for mayor...
SOME PEOPLE are going around saying that Aretha Franklin is the Queen Of Soul, many people are buying her records, and one person (show compère Johnnie Walker) even said that she was the best coloured girl singer ever to make records. Now it isn't every girl singer who is fortunate enough to have these things said about her or happen to her, whether you go along with them or not. After chasing around and about the metropolis, I tracked Aretha down to her hotel (in the Penthouse Suite) and asked her a few questions, some of which she answered in...
"TELL ME," I said, "all about you and James Brown. There was a two-second hush, and then Solomon Burke, king of rock & soul, launched into a torrent of attack upon fellow-R&B singer James Brown. Here's the printable, edited version. "Man, you wanna know about James Brown? You must be crazy. Listen, this James Brown, he wouldn't come within 500 miles of me. On or off stage. I know all about him. "He says he's sold over a million records in Britain on the Ember label. He says that he don't record for America anymore, only for Britain. Well I found...
Yes, it's an interesting one isn't it? I mean, five hours...that's a long time, and well...camels are different of course, so really it must be a problem. However, Smilin' Jerry Garcia doesn't let The Grateful Dead's music get bogged down with details like that. Read his answers in NME – the one that dares ask the big questions. IT'S DA Dead, mayun! Everybody's bloody grinning. The roadies who're running around Alexandra Palace launching frisbees into the stratosphere, the ones who're plugging things in and carrying things about, the Old Ladies'n Wives trucking around with their kids... Everybody is grinning. Jerry Garcia is grinning as...
THE BIGGEST TREND on the rock circuit this year is decadence. Go to any concert, and you'll be amazed at the sudden change in American youth, who are now as far from last year's organic coveralls and bushy hanks of hair as they are from the madras shirts and slacks of 1963; teenagers of both sexes are piling on clots of make-up and swaddling themselves in flashily indeterminate glad rags. Boys with rouge and glitter on their eyelids, girls with the stark white faces and rinsed-out blonde hair of the Marilyn Monroe look they picked up from the drag queens...
...especially it seems, at the Saville. Chuck Berry talks to RM's Norman Jopling for this in-depth interview CHUCK BERRY has become a musical institution in the eleven years that he has been making hit records. Since his first American hit single 'Maybellene' in 1955 (before Elvis Presley scored HIS first American hit), Chuck has endeared himself to the hearts of all types of pop music admirers – from never-say-die side-burned drape-jacketed rockers, to trendy mini-skirted young ladies. Just how much has Chuck himself changed in that considerable amount of time, musically? (to go back to Presley, think how much HE has changed!) "Then...
(1893 – 1929) One of the first Blues musicians to sell records in significant numbers, Lemon Henry Jefferson was born blind on a farm in east Texas to sharecropper parents. He took up guitar in his early teens — perhaps inspired by the many traveling guitarists who made their way through the farms and plantations of the South performing Blues and dance tunes for the workers — and was soon performing at picnics and parties. By 1912 he was a regular performer around Dallas, where he sometimes performed with Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Leadbelly. In 1925 Jefferson was discovered by a scout...
(1883 – 1946) Mamie Smith made history when in 1920 she became the first African American singer to make a record of a Blues song, “Crazy Blues.” The record became a massive hit, changing the record industry and launching a new era of “race records” aimed at black listeners. Born in 1883, Smith entered show business at the tender age of ten. She spent the next decade working in vaudeville as dancer and singer. At age 20 she married and settled down in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, where she became a regular performer in night clubs. On August 10, 1920, Smith...
(1915 – 2002) Folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax was an influential figure in 20th century American music, producing archival and field recordings that significantly boosted public awareness of American Folk, Blues and Jazz traditions, and was instrumental in launching the Folk and Blues revivals that took place among young white musicians and listeners in the 1950s and 60s. Lomax spent much of his life traveling and recording music, first traversing the backroads of the American South and eventually making his way around the world, interviewing musicians playing Folk, Blues, Jazz, Gospel, Calypso, Cajun music, and other genres, and capturing their music for...
(1908 – 1975) Saxophonist/vocalist/songwriter/bandleader Louis Jordan was an early R&B pioneer whose exuberant spirit and musical approach were key influences on early Rock and Rollers, perhaps most notably Chuck Berry, who cited Jordan as an inspiration. His swinging small-combo style was a bridge between the Big Band era and the birth of Rock and Roll. Although he began his career in Big Band swing in the 1930s, Jordan became a star in the following decade as one of the leading popularizers of the uptempo Jazz/Blues/Boogie Woogie hybrid known as Jump Blues. Funny and charismatic, he created a series of joyous, raucous,...
(1931 – 2002) Singer-guitarist-banjoist Lonnie Donegan is a key figure in the foundation of British Rock and Roll. In 1954, long before Rock reached the British Isles, the Scottish-born Londoner created Skiffle, an upbeat acoustic variation on American blues and folk that made Donegan a major star. Donegan’s infectious music and exuberant performing style captured the imaginations of a generation of young English boys. That generation included John Lennon and Paul McCartney — whose skiffle group the Quarrymen evolved into the Beatles — along with many of the performers who would populate the British Invasion. As a teenager in the post-World...
Formed in Seattle in 1988, Mudhoney have never seen major commercial success, but the band is often cited as a key influence on the breakout acts of the Seattle Grunge scene, Nirvana in particular. Mudhoney formed out of the remnants of Green River, the Seattle band that many credit for originating Grunge, with its blend of Garage Rock, Heavy Metal, Punk, and Blues. Assembled by onetime high-school classmates Mark Arm and Steve Turner, Mudhoney was the first band signed to the indie label Sub Pop, which released its first single,"Touch Me I'm Sick,” in 1988, followed by "Sweet Young Thing...
(1942 – 1969) Brian Jones was a founding member of the Rolling Stones, forming the group in 1962. He was responsible for recruiting Mick Jagger to the band; Mick in turn brought Keith Richards into the fold as a second guitarist. A blues fanatic, Jones initially functioned as the band's leader and manager. When the Stones acquired an official manager in Andrew Loog Oldham, Jones' role in the band began to diminish. Oldham encouraged Jagger and Richards to develop a catalog of original material, and Jones, who showed little inclination toward songwriting, saw his influence within the band dwindle. He would gradually isolate himself from...
How did beat writers like Jack Kerouac influence the Grateful Dead’s music?
How did Disco relate to the sentiments and social movements of the 1970s?
(b. 1948) As the first performer to introduce horror-movie imagery to Hard Rock, pioneering Shock Rocker Alice Cooper mined social outrage and parental disapproval into transgressive stardom in his 1970s heyday. If his flamboyantly theatrical approach lacked the dangerous edge of his Michigan contemporaries the MC5 and the Stooges, Cooper's macabre imagery and catchy teen-rebellion anthems — not to mention elaborate concerts incorporating guillotines, boa constrictors, decapitated baby dolls, and gallons of stage blood — held considerably more appeal to middle American teens. A minister’s son born Vincent Damon Furnier, Cooper was a Detroit native who moved with his family to...
(b. 1943) A multi-racial, mixed-gender band that melded Soul, Funk, Rock, and Psychedelia, Sly Stone and his group the Family Stone had their heyday in the late 1960s and early 70s, with a streak of hits combining positive messages, sing-along choruses and infectious dance grooves. Born Sylvester Stewart, Stone was raised in the San Francisco Bay area, where he got an early start in the music business, forming a Gospel group with three of his siblings. Dubbed the Stewart Four, they performed at local churches and released a 78 rpm single. A prodigious talent, he could play keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums...
How did the Beatles’ image as a “rock band” affect young people in America?
(1942 – 2013) With a poetic sensibility, a street-level outsider mentality and a focus on dark themes, New York City-based singer, songwriter and guitarist Lou Reed proved one of the most influential figures in Rock and Roll over a five-decade career. A native of Long Island, NY, Reed sang in a Doo Wop group in high school, before attending Syracuse University in the early 1960s, where he studied with the poet Delmore Schwarz. After a stint as a staff songwriter at Pickwick Records, Reed came to prominence in the mid-late 1960s as the leader of the Velvet Underground, whose raw, arty minimalism...
(1933 – 2006) A monumental figure in the development of Rhythm and Blues, James Brown was a one-of-a-kind musical visionary whose influence is as massive as the larger-than-life stage persona that spawned such superlative nicknames as the Godfather of Soul, Mr. Dynamite, and the Hardest-Working Man In Show Business. In a recording career that spanned six decades, Brown’s innovations helped to build the foundation of Soul, Dance music, and especially Funk, while his electrifying performances established him as one of contemporary music's best-known and best-loved icons. Growing up poor and largely on his own, in and around Augusta, Georgia, Brown was...
(1916 – 2004) Generally recognized as the first West Coast disc jockey to play Rhythm and Blues on the radio, as well as one of the first to spin Rock and Roll, Hunter Hancock was an early white hipster whose affinity for the music and impish sense of humor captured Los Angeles-area listeners from 1947 until 1966. Hancock got his first radio experience in his home state of Texas, but held numerous other jobs early in life, including a stint touring as a singer in a vaudeville troupe. He settled in Los Angeles in the early 40s, landing a part-time job...
(died 1934) Though some of the details of Charley Patton's life are not definitively known, like his race and the exact year of his birth, what is agreed on is the impact he had on American Blues music. Often called the "Father of the Delta Blues," Patton influenced bluesmen from Robert Johnson to Howlin' Wolf; the Blues writer Robert Palmer went so far as to call him one of the most important American musicians of the 20th century. Born in Mississippi to sharecropper parents, Patton was raised in part at the Will Dockery Plantation in the Mississippi Delta. A huge operation, the plantation employed...
(1902 – 1969) One of the most influential of the Delta Blues players, Mississippi-bred Skip James' intricate, unconventional guitar technique and high, haunting vocals made him one of the genre's most distinctive and expressive performers. In his 1930s heyday, James – who played piano as well as guitar, a rarity for Country Blues singers — was notably an influence on Robert Johnson, who reworked James’ "Devil Got My Woman" and "22-20 Blues" as "Hellhound on My Trail" and "32-20 Blues, respectively. In his early life, James worked as a manual laborer on road-construction and levee-building crews, as well as a sharecropper...
(1902 – 1988) A onetime preacher who turned to secular music, Son House ranks among the most influential Country Blues singers of the prewar era. He had two distinct periods as a performer – in the South during the 1930s, and then in the North beginning in 1964, where he was embraced as part of the Folk revival. Eddie James “Son” House Jr. was born in Mississippi, where his parents worked the cotton fields. As a youngster House was drawn to religion and was said to loathe secular music; in his teen years House found regular work preaching sermons. He did...
(1923 – 2003) If he'd done nothing other than discover Elvis Presley and release his early singles, Sun Records founder Sam Phillips would be a crucial figure in the birth of Rock and Roll. But the Memphis-based impresario's music-related achievements were far broader than his pivotal association with Elvis. The Alabama native opened the Memphis Record Service in 1950, hiring out his services to record weddings, funerals, and civic events, while cutting sessions with such local (and soon to be legendary) Blues musicians as Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Junior Parker, James Cotton, Rufus Thomas, Rosco Gordon, Little Milton, and Bobby Blue...
(1889 – 1949) A singular figure in American music, Lead Belly is often called a Blues singer, but his repertoire ran well beyond Blues, and into a breadth of American Folk styles, from prison work songs and field songs to spirituals and square-dance calls. An itinerant singer who was both a songwriter and a repository for tradional songs, Lead Belly built an extensive repertoire that significantly influenced the Folk revival of the 1960s. Huddie Ledbetter was born in 1889 (by most estimates) near Shreveport, Louisiana. He was the son of sharecroppers and took an interest in music as a young boy,...
(1943 – 1970) With a powerhouse vocal style and a brash, larger-than-life persona, Blues-steeped singer Janis Joplin arrived in San Francisco from Port Arthur, Texas, a few years before the Summer of Love and rose to become one of the biggest stars of the late 1960s. As a charismatic female star at a time when Rock was heavily male-dominated, Joplin was a trailblazer – however, her career was cut short when she died of a drug overdose in 1970, at the age of 27. As a teenager growing up in Texas in the late 1950s, Joplin was smitten by old Folk,...
(1911 – 1938) Mythic Mississippi Bluesman Robert Johnson is generally regarded as the most distinctive, inventive and influential of all of the Delta blues artists. His haunted singing, complex guitar playing and formally ambitious songwriting give his music an emotional resonance that's made it a touchstone for multiple generations of Rock musicians. Although the handful of recordings that he left behind are now recognized as musical milestones, the records he released during his short career were never big sellers at the time, and he enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. Many details of Johnson's life remain shrouded...
(1949 – 2011) Acclaimed as a godfather of Rap and Soul Jazz, musician/poet Gil Scott-Heron forged a radicalized vision of the world with deep roots in the Black Power movements of the late 1960s. He came to prominence in the early 1970s, most notably with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” a provocative 1970 poem from his debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox that gave a militant voice to America’s ghetto street culture. Scott-Heron also made a string of albums with keyboardist Brian Jackson that influenced the “neo Soul” movement of the 1990s, as represented by Erykah Badu,...
Fusing Gospel, Blues, and Folk influences with positive messages, the two-generation family act the Staple Singers produced some of the most unique and critically acclaimed R&B hits of the 1970s. The Staple Singers’ roots go back to the childhood of family patriarch Roebuck "Pops" Staples, who learned Blues guitar growing up in 1920s Mississippi. He entertained locally and as a young man began singing and playing with various Gospel outfits, eventually moving to Chicago in the early 1940s. By 1948 he was performing with children Cleotha, Mavis, and Pervis at local churches under the Staple Singers name (spelled Staple, though the...
WHEN DION DiMucci made his major comeback at New York's Radio City Music Hall two years ago, he was joined onstage by an all-star quartet of backing singers: Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Paul Simon, and Billy Joel. It said a lot for the 48-year-old singer that he could bring together four such different examples of the New York street troubadour, each of them in their own way having come under the spell of the man who sang those swaggering classics of the early '60s 'The Wanderer' and 'Runaround Sue'. "When we were rehearsing that show," says Dion two years later, "I...
ON 3 February 1959 Richard Valenzuela died in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly whose final recordings foretold the Beatless sixties; a more pop than rock era for which Valens would have prescribed the remedy. He was a sixteen year old who passed for twenty-eight. A thick set, brutish greaser who carried on rockin' whilst, all around him, pretty boys like Fabian and Avalon ponced up the music. A look at the situation of the Mexican American – scarcely white by U.S. standards – belies America's devotion to freedom and democracy. From San Fernando, Valen's background typified the Mexican-American struggle...
One of the most successful and durable of the British Progressive Rock bands that proliferated in the 1970s, Yes built its reputation upon a distinctive blend of intricate musicianship, majestic soundscapes, a strong melodic sensibility and the mystical lyrics and elfin vocals of frontman Jon Anderson. Having outlasted countless musical trends, survived myriad personnel changes and withstood various commercial ups and downs, Yes remains both a musical institution and a popular live attraction more than half a century after its formation. After starting out as a charming post-flower power outfit on its early albums Yes and Time and a Word,...
GIL SCOTT-HERON aims to be a catalyst. Not a leader of revolutions, but an insistent elbow in the ribs, nudging people off their fence to bring them a little bit closer to the essence of their problems. He likes that word essence; uses it a lot. He uses all words a lot. They are his stock in trade. He's not loud or dramatic, but he's sure of himself and sure of what needs saying and sure as hell not afraid to say it. A conversation with Gil is a fascinating if demanding dialogue. Nothing's thrown away. He's attentive and analytical of...
DAN PENN WROTE his first hit ('Is A Bluebird Blue?' for Conway Twitty) at fourteen, and collaborated prolifically with Spooner Oldham, turning out mid '60s R&B hits like James and Bobby Purify's 'I'm Your Puppet'. In 1967 he produced the Box Tops' 'The Letter'. His more mercurial partnership with Chips Moman also created the much-recorded classic, 'Dark End Of The Street'. "Rick Hall built himself a studio, Fame, and wanted me to write for him. He was good enough to pay me 25 bucks a week, so I started writing for him in '63 and moved to Muscle Shoals from...
DETROIT– Pontiac Stadium is bigger than the Houston Astrodome. When they have football games here, they seat 80,000. When the Who played this joint, they sold between 76-78,000 tickets. Aerosmith, with the aid of Ted Nugent and Foghat, did 74,000. Bob Seger didn't sell out Pontiac Stadium, but he did move 65,000 tickets, forget seats, it's festival seating, in other words squat and bear it. Even if this place is, as the scoreboard kept reminding us, "The world's largest enclosed structure," with "The world's biggest sound system." I've seen Bob Seger open for "heavies" at Cobo Hall, I've seen him headline...
BRIAN WILSON AND COMPANY are currently at the center of an intense contemporary rock controversy, involving the academic "rock as art" critic-intellectuals, the AM-tuned teenies, and all the rest of us in between. As the California sextet is simultaneously hailed as genius incarnate and derided as the archetypical pop music copouts, one clear-cut and legitimate query is seen at the base of all the turmoil: how seriously can the 1968 rock audience consider the work of a group of artists who, just four years earlier, represented the epitome of the whole commercial-plastic "teenage music industry?"... The answer is a simple...
(b. 1949) Born to working-class parents in a small New Jersey town, Bruce Springsteen rose to become arguably the biggest American superstar in Rock. Now in the fifth decade of a career that’s spanned incarnations as a bar-band guitar hero, Dylanesque street poet, chronicler of blue-collar American life, writer of anthemic radio hits, and Woody Guthrie-esque balladeer, Springsteen has an especially devoted base of fans, who hail “the Boss” for his anti-Rock-star populism and for intense, long-haul performances that reflect both a dogged work ethic and a belief in the power of music as a redemptive, uniting force. A self-described loner...
Even more so than their rabble-rousing Detroit neighbors the MC5 or their cerebral New York contemporaries the Velvet Underground, the Stooges could be called the antithesis of the Hippie culture that coincided with the band's original lifespan. The Stooges were primal and confrontational, creating a pummeling sound that sounded palpably dangerous. Although the band’s three original albums came and went with little mainstream attention, the Stooges’ longterm impact is reflected its immense influence upon multiple generations of Punk outfits. The Stooges — frontman Iggy Pop (born James Osterberg, aka Iggy Stooge), brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums,...
Although Genesis is among the most commercially recording acts of all time, with approximately 150 million albums sold worldwide, the group's colorful four-decade history is actually the story of two very different bands with two very different bodies of work. After being formed by a group of classmates at England's posh Charterhouse school in the late '60s, Genesis emerged in the early 70s as a Progressive Rock powerhouse, distinguished by complex compositions, elaborate instrumental arrangements and frontman Peter Gabriel's imaginative lyrical flights and flamboyant onstage theatricality. Such albums as Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound and the elaborate...
In what ways do Indigenous views of water align with scientific views, and how do Indigenous activists use artistic expression to advocate for water protection?
(b. 1950) Although he's best known as a founding member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and as mob consigliere Silvio Dante on TV's The Sopranos, Steven Van Zandt (aka Little Steven) has a far-ranging resume that speaks to a lifelong devotion to music, and spans the roles of guitarist, songwriter, producer, arranger, radio host, label owner, human-rights activist and educator. Van Zandt's association with Springsteen stretches back to both men's early days of playing in little-known combos on the Jersey Shore bar scene. But he didn't officially join the E Street Band until Springsteen's third album, 1975's Born to Run,...
Minor Threat were a Washington DC-based Hardcore Punk band who were short-lived but influential, and notable both for their disciplined, DIY approach and their embrace of a no drugs/no alcohol ethic. Formed by high school friends Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson, the band emerged in 1980, amidst a wave of Hardcore Punk bands that included fellow pioneers Bad Brains (also from DC) and Black Flag. Minor Threat's rage-driven music was often set to furiously fast tempos, with many songs clocking in not far past the one-minute mark. Beyond the group's anti-establishment lyrical content, they championed a clean-living ethos that put...
(b. 1960) Bono is the lead singer for the Irish Rock band U2, one of the most enduring and popular bands of the past 30 years. Born Paul Hewson in Dublin, Ireland, he formed U2 while in his late teens, with drummer Larry Mullen, guitarist the Edge and bassist Larry Mullen. The band drew early inspiration from such Punk and post-Punk acts as Siouxie and the Banshees and Joy Division. He writes almost all of the band's lyrics, which have often reflected deep social and spiritual yearnings. With U2, he has released 12 studio albums and won 22 Grammy Awards, the most for any...
(1923 – 2006) A larger-than-life figure, Ahmet Ertegun’s long career with Atlantic Records paralleled the music business' evolution from quirky cottage industry to corporate enterprise. Ertegun and original partner Herb Abramson co-founded Atlantic in 1947 as a small independent label, and would eventually turn the company into one of the music industry's most powerful forces, releasing a great many commercial and critical successes and fostering artists ranging from John Coltrane and Ray Charles to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones to ABBA and Kid Rock. The Istanbul-born son of the Republic of Turkey's ambassador to the United States, Ertegun grew up...
(1915 – 1973) Both a Gospel superstar and a popular Rhythm and Blues singer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe achieved widespread popularity in the 30s and 40s, with a high-energy performing style that marks her as a pioneering early influence on Rock and Roll. A powerful singer, a distinctive songwriter and an expansive, effervescent personality, Tharpe made exuberant music that drew heavy inspiration from the Blues, often combining spiritual lyrics with raucous, earthy music, while exhibiting a level of showmanship and charisma that was uncommon in the Gospel field at the time. Tharpe was also an influential early exponent of the electric...
(1917 – 2008) A key figure in exposing Rhythm and Blues music to a wider audience, Jerry Wexler was highly influential during his days as executive and producer for Atlantic Records, helping to shepherd the label's growth from small R&B imprint to massive industry force. The Bronx native began his career as an editor and reporter for the music-industry trade journal Billboard, and it was he who coined the term "Rhythm and Blues" as a classification for what had previously been known in the industry as "race music" – a term Wexler found demeaning. He became a partner in Atlantic in...
(1886 – 1939) A hugely popular touring singer during the 1920s Ma Rainey was one of the earliest popular entertainers to perform and record Blues, spreading the popularity of the genre beyond traditional Blues audiences and earning her the nickname “The Mother of the Blues.” Ma Rainey was born Gertrude Pridgett in 1886 in Columbus, Georgia. She showed her abilities as an entertainer at an early age and went from local talent shows to touring with vaudeville and minstrel shows while still in her teens. In 1904 she married William "Pa" Rainey, a minstrel show manager, and took the stage name...
(1912 – 1982) With a career spanning six decades and hundreds of recordings, Lightnin’ Hopkins was among the most prolific and admired Blues players of the 20th century, and one who spanned the rural Country Blues tradition and the electric Blues of the postwar years. He was also an accomplished guitarist whose syncopated, thumping fingerpicking style directly or indirectly influenced many subsequent Blues and Rock players. Sam John Hopkins was born in 1912 in Centerville, Texas, the grandson of slaves and the son of sharecroppers. Immersedi in the Blues from a young age, Hopkins built his first “guitar” from a cigar box...
Although he's best known for Elvis Presley's covers of his songs "That's All Right" (which was Presley's debut single in 1954), "So Glad You're Mine" and "My Baby Left Me," singer-guitarist Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup is notable for his own contributions to the Blues canon. With a distinctive voice and a guitar style whose primitivism may have been attributable to the fact that he didn't pick up the instrument until he was 30, the Mississippi-bred Crudup had traveled around the South as a migrant worker and toured as a member of the Gospel act the Harmonizing Four before moving to...
(1899 – 1993) Hailed as the "father of Gospel music," composer and pianist Thomas Dorsey was responsible for writing many of the genre's best-known standards, including songs widely recorded by secular artists. He is credited with creating much of the template for 20th century African-American gospel music, incorporating Jazz and Blues rhythms that had previously not been a part of the genre. Dorsey also played a key role in the early career of Mahalia Jackson, working with her as songwriter and accompanist for 14 years. His composition "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" (which he wrote after his wife and newborn...
(1923 – 1953) In many ways, Hank Williams was Country music's first Rock star — not just for the fast lifestyle that killed him at the age of 29, but also for the uncompromising, personally charged edge he brought to his music. In addition to being a charismatic performer and a compelling, inventive songwriter, Williams was one of Country's most beloved superstars, scoring 35 Top 10 Country singles, eleven of which reached No. 1, and he was instrumental in expanding Country and Western's popularity beyond its traditional regional audience. Williams' performing style and musical sensibility inspired not only countless Country...
(1897 – 1933) A onetime railroad man dubbed “The Singing Brakeman,” Jimmie Rodgers is widely credited as the Father of Country music. By combining Folk, Hillbilly and Blues with a little bit of Jazz and his trademark yodeling, Rodgers helped create the classic American genre, and influenced countless performers who followed him. Rodgers was born in Meridian, Mississippi; his mother died when he was a young boy. After wining a talent show at age 12, young Jimmie, itching to try his hand at entertaining, ran away from home to start his own tent show. His father brought him home and offered...
(1941 – 1967) Although his recording career lasted just over five years and was cut short by his premature death, Otis Redding left a legacy as one of the most important figures in Soul music. An electrifying performer with an impassioned voice and a volcanic performing style, as well as a distinctive songwriter whose compositions became classic hits for other artists, Redding's influence continues to loom large over American Rhythm and Blues. Although he was the seminal Memphis label Stax's biggest star, the Georgia native first arrived at the company not as an artist, but as driver for guitarist Johnny Jenkins. ...
(1935 – 1977) Hailed as the “King of Rock and Roll," Elvis Presley is one of the most important cultural icons of the 20th century and is universally credited with breaking Roll and Roll music into the mainstream. Born in Tupelo, Miss., in 1935 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Elvis was a product of the musical culture of the American South — from the Gospel he heard in church, the Country music he heard on the radio to the black Blues and R&B he heard on Beale Street as a Memphis teenager, Elvis absorbed it all. He began his singing career with...
Poison was one of the most successful of the Pop Metal acts that dominated the landscape in the second half of the 1980s, combining a swaggering Hard Rock stance, a flamboyant Glam look and catchy Pop tunes that made female MTV viewers swoon. The Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania-via Hollywood quartet achieved massive success during its original run, selling over 45 million records worldwide and over 15 million in the United States alone, while scoring half a dozen U.S. Top 10 singles. With an androgynous, long-haired image that seemed to establish the band members as vaguely dangerous yet non-threatening, frontman Bret Michaels, guitarist...
The pioneering Heavy Metal band Black Sabbath was formed in the industrial city of Birmingham, England, in 1968, by four teenage friends: bassist Geezer Butler, guitarist Tony Iommi, singer Ozzy Osbourne, and drummer Bill Ward. At first the quartet, called Earth at the time, played straightforward Blues Rock in the vein of popular bands like Cream. But the band quickly found their own sound: their lyrics took on darker themes, often focusing on occultism and drugs, and the music became thicker, louder and more riff-based. It also became more dissonant, making use of the tritone, or so-called “devil’s chord,”...
How do Nimrod Workman’s songs and stories about his life as a coal miner illustrate the struggles of working class people during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era?
Formed in 1974, Blondie is a pioneering American New Wave group fronted by lead singer Debbie Harry. The group was part of the fruitful New York underground scene of the 1970s, which included such bands as Television and Talking Heads, and revolved around the club CBGB. Blondie's first two major-label releases charted in Australia and the United Kingdom, but it was their third record, "Parallel Lines," that charted the band in the United States and became New Wave's big Pop breakthrough. Rolling Stone called the album "a perfect synthesis of raw punk edge, Sixties-pop smarts and downtown-New York glamour." During the late 70s and...
(b. 1943) Carly Simon emerged in the early 1970’s as a consistent hit maker and one of the most popular of the confessional Singer-Songwriters who helped define the laid-back sound of that era. Raised in New York City (where her father Richard was co-founder of the publishing giant Simon & Schuster), Simon began her professional career as part of a Folk duo, playing nightclubs in the city’s Greenwich Village neighborhood with her sister Lucy. Billed as the Simon Sisters, they made three albums together before Lucy quit to start a family. As a solo artist, Simon had several false starts – unreleased...
In their first two decades, the Kinks went from playing raw, R&B-influenced Rock and Roll to recording nuanced, experimental concept albums to becoming arena rockers, along the way wracking up numerous hit singles and cementing their status as one the most influential bands to emerge from the British Rock scene of the 1960s. The Kinks formed in the suburbs of London as brothers Ray Davies (lead vocals/guitar) and Dave Davies (lead guitar) moved from family sing-alongs to playing Rock and Roll and Skiffle at school dances and eventually gigs in local pubs. After various name changes and short-lived lineups (including...
A one-of-a-kind foursome that combined Hard-Rock bombast, singsongy music hall Pop and campy Glam theatricality, Queen rode its unlikely mix of elements to massive worldwide success, reigning as one of the world's most popular bands throughout most of a 20-year career. Queen formed in London in 1971, when singer Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar) teamed with guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor. The band's self-titled debut LP arrived two years later, followed by a string of '70s albums — Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races,...
(1946 – 1973) When it comes to the melding of Country and Rock, no figure looms larger than Gram Parsons, whose small but accomplished body of work — encompassing landmark recordings as a member of the Byrds, the International Submarine Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers as well as a pair of now-classic solo albums – exerts an influence that outstrips any popularity Parsons achieved during his short lifetime. A North Carolina native, Parsons began pursuing a Rock-Country melding while attending Harvard University, founding the International Submarine Band in 1966. Parsons favored the term “Cosmic American Music” to describe his vision,...
For many, Jefferson Airplane epitomized the psychedelic sound that emerged from San Francisco in the late 1960s. Formed in San Francisco in 1965 by vocalist Marty Balin and guitarist Paul Kantner, the group’s members were drawn largely from the local Folk scene, and their early recordings featured Folk-Rock inspired by bands like the Byrds and the Beatles. After their debut album failed to make an impact they refined their sound to reflect the ethos of San Francisco’s burgeoning hippie youth culture; in 1966, they also replaced their singer, who left to have a baby, with former model Grace Slick. Their...
(1925 – 1981) A disc jockey and Western Swing bandleader in Chester, Pa., Bill Haley was perhaps an unlikely purveyor of the first smash hit of the Rock and Roll era. But that's exactly what he became, when his song "Rock Around the Clock" was featured over the opening scene of the juvenile-delinquent drama "Blackboard Jungle," and became a worldwide hit, by some estimates making Haley the first Rock and Roll star. A working guitarist by the age of 15, Haley was rooted in Country and Western Swing (the Saddlemen was his group's initial name), but added elements of Rhythm and Blues...
JAMES TAYLOR was the first artist signed to the Beatles’ Apple label, and ironically, the first to leave it as well. While there, he produced an album so effective in its understatement that it went almost unnoticed. Since then he has drifted into the waiting arms of the Warner/Reprise empire (which is beginning to look like a haven for dispossessed artists) for whom he has produced this second album. I’m glad to report that this new album is as beautiful as the first. Glad for myself, because a visit from Mr. Taylor is always welcomed. I must admit that Sweet Baby James took...
(b. 1939) Although he originally emerged as a swaggering, Doo Wop-singing teen idol in the late 1950s, streetwise New Yorker Dion DiMucci (better known simply as Dion) quickly showed himself to be a sublimely soulful vocalist as well as an artist of depth and versatility. In the half-century since his original run of hits ended, he's continued to make personally charged, if not always commercially successful, music in a variety of styles. Dion's musical sensibility was shaped by the Blues, R&B and Country records he heard while growing up in the Bronx in the pre-Rock and Roll 50s. After an unsuccessful...
What are the arguments for and against Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature?
With A Mixture Of Folk, Rock And Comedy, Dylan Shows He Can Take Every Insult But Not A Compliment "EQUALITY, I spoke the word, as if a wedding vow, ah but I was so much older than, I'm younger than that now..." Bob Dylan thus changed. It all began with a song called 'My Back Pages' recorded some three years ago on an LP and reached its probable culmination at the Royal Albert Hall the other week when he performed his last British concert. As always, Dylan is logical and compromising. A full half of his concert is given purely to his...
HIS first million-seller was named after himself. Until last year he had more million-sellers than Elvis, who finally caught up with him after a hard struggle. He had more Gold discs before his biggest hit – in 1956 – than after. That hit was 'Blueberry Hill', the first disc was 'The Fat Man' and the man himself is Antoine "Fats" Domino. When Fats first came on the scene back in 1948 the big trend in pop music was jazz, and watery pops. There was no "vital" music for the kids except some obscure Blues that wasn't commercial enough anyway. Fats made 'The...
(1933 – 2003) Beyond her status as one of Jazz's most distinctive and dynamic vocal stylists, singer-pianist Nina Simone won attention and respect for her feisty, commanding personality. Performing her own personally charged compositions as well as a broad array of outside material drawn from the worlds of Jazz, Pop, Soul, Blues, Folk, Gospel, and Broadway, Simone resisted easy categorization but put a fiercely personal stamp on every song she sang. Over a performing and recording career that covered four decades, Simone’s uncompromising approach to her work helped establish her as a role model for subsequent generations of performers. Born Eunice...
(1935 – 1980) Larry Williams was an R&B singer and an outsized character whose raucous late 50s recordings would become favorites of many of the young rockers of the 1960s British Invasion. Growing up in New Orleans, Williams learned to play piano as a boy. As a teen he joined a local R&B band in Oakland, Calif., when his parents relocated there. In 1954 he returned to New Orleans and began to work as a chauffer/valet for singer Lloyd Price, eventually becoming pianist for Price as well as R&B singers Roy Brown and Percy Mayfield, who were all recording for Specialty...
Black vocal groups once sang for enjoyment on street-corners throughout ghettos in each of the big American cities. Late into the night they harmonised together, sublimating a frustration which exploded by day. Zip-gun safely stored in the cistern, a Harlem teenager could leave his decaying tenement and join others for an acapella session in a dingy pool-hall or on a deserted subway platform. Street-corner talent-spotting became the normal way for a group to obtain a record contract. An audition from the guy who crossed the road to listen might mean gifts for all the folks and a shiny Cadillac. As groups proliferated...
(b. 1944) After spending most of the 60s reaping massive success as lead singer of the Supremes, Diana Ross transitioned smoothly into her next incarnation as a glitzy solo diva — and the personification of Motown boss Berry Gordy's grand crossover ambitions. Ross and Gordy were laying the groundwork for Ross' solo career long before her departure from the Supremes was announced in November 1969. After giving her final performance with the group in January 1970 at Las Vegas' Frontier Hotel, Ross immediately scored a pair of major solo hits with "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Reach Out and Touch...
Founded in Washington D.C. in 1977, Bad Brains are known for their ferocious energy, their instrumental prowess and their unlikely melding of two genres: Hardcore Punk and Reggae. Formed by a group of high-school classmates, Bad Brains started as a Jazz Fusion ensemble, but took an early turn toward Punk, drawing inspiration from bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols. Reggae soon began to figure prominently into the sound of the band, whose members — singer Paul "H.R." Hudson, guitarist Gary "Dr. Know" Miller, bassist Darryl Jenifer and drummer Earl Hudson — became dedicated Rastafarians. Bad Brains' brand of Punk Rock was musically tight and often blisteringly fast, performed with...
The Sweet (later just Sweet) were among the most popular (and Pop-oriented) purveyors of 1970s Glam Rock, racking up a string of hit singles in their native U.K. and beyond. The origins of Sweet go back to 1967, when core members got together as the Sweetshop and began attracting fans on the London pub circuit. Their sound initially was in the Bubblegum Pop vein of acts like the Archies and the Monkees, but the band began to toughen it with a Hard Rock edge, inspired in part by the Who. Their popularity grew steadily throughout Europe, especially in the U.K., where...
A WRITER SHOULD never admit as much, but I'm still not entirely confident that mere words can communicate the full extent to which I abhor the music of Rush. In my time I've been heard to threaten to sing the praises of such dedicatedly moronic stuff as the first two Stooges albums and Electric Warrior in front of the highest court in the land, so you may rest assured that it isn't the mindlessness of Rush's music that so pisses me off. Rather, it's its utter soullessness – the fact that it's neither fun nor outrageous nor sexy nor anything save exploitative. Well,...
ON THE FIRST Friday of the month, in fine weather and sometimes foul, you will find Pete Seeger, the folk-singing legend and pioneering environmentalist, in a small wooden clubhouse by the Hudson river, 70 miles north of Manhattan. At 87, and only slightly stooped by age, he looks much as he did 40 years ago, when he was the voice of the left, and an inspiration to young folk singers like Bob Dylan. Here at his beloved Beacon Sloop Club, in jeans and with shirt sleeves rolled up, he is still the driving force for a weekly dinner that draws...
With roots in Britain's Glam and Art Rock movements, Roxy Music's flamboyant mix of pop hooks and avant-garde adventurousness has exercised a significant influence on multiple generations of bands, who emulated Roxy Music's distinctive sound as well as its glamorous pop-art sensibility. The band’s influence ran particularly deep among bands associated with the New Wave movement of the late 70s and early 80s, especially “New Romantic” acts such as Spandau Ballet and Ultravox. The band's 1972 debut, Roxy Music, and its followup, For Your Pleasure, were driven largely by the creative tension between suave singer Bryan Ferry and experimentally inclined...
THEY'RE REAL. The Beatles, that is. I had never seen them in the flesh before, so I expected some kind of supermen to step out of the plane at Metropolitan Airport last Saturday morning. After all, aren't they the group who changed the whole face of pop music over the past four years? They showed people that pop music can have meaning and its creators can be intelligent, talented artists. Then there they were, coming down the plane's ramp, four smiling, slightly tired looking guys. John topped his casual outfit with yellow steel-rimmed sunglasses. Paul wore black slacks and a wild strawberry...
(b. 1948) With his warm, intimate voice and personal, often brooding songs, James Taylor rose to prominence in the early 1970s as one of the leading voices of the West Coast Singer-Songwriter movement, becoming in the eyes of many the avatar of the sensitive, male Singer-Songwriter. A star and hitmaker throughout the 1970s, he endures as a popular concert draw and recording artist. Taylor was born in Massachusetts but grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where his well-off family moved when he was three. He studied cello as a child, but switched to guitar at age 12. He credited his...
How can music help tell the story of your hometown?
Nirvana wasn't the first Indie band to graduate to the major-label big leagues, nor was it the first Punk-influenced act to enter the Rock mainstream. But with the multi-platinum success of their 1991 album Nevermind and its indelible hit anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the Seattle trio singlehandedly brought the Punk and D.I.Y. ethos to millions of teenagers across America and around the world, while putting “Grunge” – the Pacific Northwestern sub-genre incorporating elements of Punk, Hardcore, Indie Rock, and Heavy Metal – on the mainstream radar. Nirvana married Punk's primal energy with infectious Pop songcraft to make music that...
British singer and songwriter Graham Parker emerged in London in 1976, rising to prominence with a sound that was steeped in Rock and Roll tradition – Dylan, Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones, and classic Soul music were obvious influences – but that crackled with a ferocious energy and an angry edge that presaged the Punk explosion. Parker came more or less out of nowhere – a resident of the London suburb Deepcut, he was working at a gas station and writing songs on his own when he placed an ad in the British music newspaper Melody Maker seeking backing musicians....
(1929 – 2012) Dick Clark was a 26-year-old Philadelphia radio disc jockey when he took over the local television dance show Bandstand in 1956. He convinced the ABC network to take the show – which featured teens dancing to the hits of the day — national the following year, re-christening the show American Bandstand. Launching in January 1957, the show became a hit, and a significant force in expanding the popularity and influence of Rock and Roll in the music’s early years. As the host of the show for 33 years, Clark introduced to the world an endless number of...
When De La Soul burst upon the Rap scene in 1989, their laid-back vibe, eclectic musical tastes and clever wordplay immediately made an impact for their sharp contrast to the macho bragging and intense beats that ruled the day. Their gentler take on Hip-Hop is credited with expanding the definition of what Rap music could be, and paving the way for future “alternative” Rap artists. De La Soul was formed in suburban Amityville, Long Island, NY, by high school friends Kelvin Mercer, David Jude Jolicoeur and Vincent Mason, who’d soon be better known by their stage names: "Posdnuos," "Trugoy the...
'LOS ANGELES Police Department reminds you the use of fire works is illegal,' warned the notice outside the Los Angeles Forum. With all the bravado of rock'n'roll rebels, Kiss set up the whole stage with firecrackers, furnaces, Roman candles and what can only be described as exploding waste-paper bins. What Kiss lack in musical subtlety, they more than make up for in special effects. Gone are the days when a band would go on tour with one transit van, a few instruments, a roadie and a groupie or two. The Kiss set-up boasted five truck-sized trailers, necessary when you're lugging...
(1943 – 2001) George Harrison was only 14 when he teamed up with classmate Paul McCartney and a neighboring high-schooler, John Lennon, to form a skiffle group called the Quarrymen in 1958. By 1960, the group would change their name to the Beatles. The band would go on to become one of the most popular and influential Rock acts of all time, releasing a record-breaking 27 No. 1 hits in the United States and Britain. The Beatles' songwriting was chiefly a Lennon and McCartney collaboration, with lead guitarist George struggling to distinguish himself as a writer during the band's near decade together. Harrison's best material with the...
(1926 – 1984) Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton was described by songwriter Jerry Stoller as “a bit frightening,” “a force of nature” and “absolutely magnificent.” With her larger-than-life personality and spicy take on the Blues she was one of the R&B performers that helped usher in the coming of Rock and Roll. Like many R&B performers of her generation, Thornton started singing in church as a youngster. By her teens she was playing drums, guitar and harmonica and developing her earthy singing voice playing shows around her home base of Montgomery, Ala. She spent much of the 1940s touring the South...
(b. 1943) Initially branded as a Folk singer, Joni Mitchell came to prominence as part of the wave of introspective Singer Songwriters who emerged in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. A restless creative spirit, she soon moved beyond those labels, embracing Jazz, Pop, and African and Latin rhythms, and turning out an idiosyncratic body of work that earned her critical plaudits and a legion of devoted fans. Her 1971 album Blue was particularly hailed as a masterwork, and is often ranked among the 20th century’s best and most influential albums. Growing up in Alberta, Canada, Mitchell was drawn to painting...
(b. 1942) A native of the Kingston, Jamaica, U-Roy (born Ewart Beckford), also known as the Originator, is credited with bringing wider popularity to the Jamaican “toasting” style — an ancestor to modern Rap that traces its roots back to the late 1950s. U-Roy landed his first professional gig as a DJ in 1961, when he was 19. At the time in Jamaica, the actual choice of a record was the job of the “selector,” while the DJ was the “hype man” on the microphone, much like those on American radio. Early Jamaican DJs would improvise call-and-response routines with the original...
(1912 – 1967) Before Bruce Springsteen, before Bob Dylan, there was Woody Guthrie, the original Folk hero. During the 30s and 40s, Guthrie was instrumental in elevating Folk music to a form of social protest and observation, and in doing so, inspired a generation of songwriters. Guthrie was born into relatively fortunate circumstances; his father had established a successful real estate career in their native Oklahoma. However, by Woody's eighth birthday, the elder Guthrie's business collapsed, and a hardscrabble existence befell the Guthrie family for the remainder of Woody's formative years. He was a voracious reader and had a natural affinity for music, and in...
In the '80s and '90s, Metallica almost singlehandedly brought the attitude and sensibility of the Heavy Metal underground into the mainstream, bringing Metal back to its earthy roots at a time when commercial Hard Rock had become dominated by the more commercial sounds of Pop Metal (derided by its detractors as “Hair Metal” for its photogenic, elaborately coiffed bands). Maintaining an unpretentious regular-guy image, Metallica combined the Thrash Metal subgenre's emphasis on speed and volume with intricate songwriting and aggressive yet complex instrumental interplay. Founded in Los Angeles, Calif., by Danish-born drummer Lars Ulrich and fronted by singer/guitarist James Hetfield,...
(b. 1929) Although he began his musical career as a songwriter and producer, Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr. made his fortune, and his mark on popular culture, through his ability to recognize and nurture the musical talents of others. At a time when black-owned record labels were largely restricted to a relatively small piece of the Pop marketplace, Gordy created a radio-friendly Pop-R&B hybrid that appealed equally to black and white listeners, and built a musical empire that rivaled the bands of the British Invasion for chart dominance through the 1960s. The Detroit native was a former boxer and all-around hustler...
(b. 1932) One of Rock and Roll's flashiest performers, Little Richard has often proclaimed, "I am the innovator! I am the originator! I am the architect of Rock and Roll!" Such grandiose statements aren't too far off the mark. The flamboyant piano-pounder's wild, uninhibited mid-to-late-'50s singles are landmarks of the early Rock and Roll era, spotlighting his exuberant vocals and crystallizing his fusion of swinging New Orleans R&B and ecstatic Gospel fervor. Richard Penniman grew up in a poor, religious family in Macon, Ga. He sang Gospel as a child, and began performing secular R&B with various groups in the late...
(b. 1960) Public Enemy founder/leader Chuck D is one of Hip-Hop's most influential artists, as well as one of its most respected minds. His booming, authoritative voice is regarded as one of the most distinctive in Rap, and his righteous, politically charged lyrics helped to raise the genre's creative stakes during PE's rise to prominence in the late 80s. In the years since, he's continued to build a prestigious body of work that's kept him on Hip-Hop's cutting edge, while remaining one of Hip-Hop's most articulate spokesmen. Born Carlton Douglas Ridenhour to politically active parents in Roosevelt, Long Island, Chuck turned...
(b. 1941) Beyond her stature as a performer and recording artist, Joan Baez is significant for her status as one of the first musicians of her era to use her talent as a vehicle for political activism. A prominent voice during the 60s Folk revival, Baez was one of the scene's most distinctive vocal interpreters, and her commitment to social justice has led her to lend her voice to a variety of antiwar, human rights, and environmental causes. She was also instrumental in popularizing the work of Bob Dylan, as well as several other soon-to-be-famous songwriters. The daughter of a Mexican-born...
(b. 1971) The most commercially successful female Hip Hop artist of all time, Missy Elliott is also lauded as an innovative creative force whose influence extends across the genre. A distinctive rapper-singer-writer with a verbal wit to match her visual panache, Elliot has sold over 30 million records in the United States and won five Grammys. In addition to her own releases, she has worked extensively as a songwriter and producer for other artists, both on her own and in collaboration with childhood friend Timbaland. Born Melissa Arnette Elliott in Portsmouth, Va., Missy had a difficult upbringing; she has said her...
(1945 – 1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter and bandleader Bob Marley is the biggest star Reggae has produced, credited with bringing the music to international prominence. A charistmatic performer, he was also a gifted songwriter, whose best-known hits include "I Shot the Sheriff" "No Woman, No Cry," "Could You Be Loved," "Stir It Up," "Get Up Stand Up," "Redemption Song," "One Love," "Buffalo Soldier" and "I Shot the Sheriff" (prominently covered by Eric Clapton, who had a hit with the song in 1974). Much of Marley's music was heavily influenced by the social issues of his native Jamaica, and his popularity and stature were such that his pronouncements on public issues were accorded the attention usually reserved...
(b. 1950) A prolific source of melodic, personally-charged, guitar-driven Rock and Roll, Tom Petty has proven one of America’s most enduring hitmakers, earning wide respect for maintaining a consistent level of creative integrity throughout a four-decade recording career. During that time he’s racked up scores of Top Ten singles, while maintaining his long association with backup band the Heartbreakers, which includes musicians (including guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench) whom Petty has played with since his bar-band days in his hometown of Gainesville, Florida. Petty and the Heartbreakers emerged in the late 1970s, and with their catchy choruses and concise...
The Bee Gees’ public image has long been dominated by the sibling trio's massively successful comeback as one of the most popular acts of the 70s Disco era. But brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb had already achieved international stardom and built a unique and accomplished body of recordings long before they became the white-suited dancefloor smoothies whose Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album burned itself deeply into popular culture. Eldest sibling Barry and twins Robin and Maurice were born in England, moving with their family to Austrailia in 1958, when they were in their early teens. Performing as a trio,...
Made up of three young women from Detroit's Brewster-Douglass housing project, the Supremes went on to become the most commercially successful act of Motown Records' 1960s heyday — and by many measures the most successful American recording act of that decade. As such, they exemplified Motown founder Berry Gordy’s crossover-minded melding of R&B and Pop. The three Supremes — Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, and Mary Wilson — were still teenagers when they won a deal with Motown, but they released half a dozen unsuccessful singles with the label before 1963's "When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes" finally put...
(b. 1947) In a career spanning five decades, Sir Elton John has notched more than 50 Top 40 hits and sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most popular and successful singer-songwriter-performers of all time. He remains best known for his output during the 1970s, a decade he started as a sincere, somewhat somber piano-playing singer-songwriter and ended as an arena-packing Pop star, and during which he had a phenomenally prolific streak of No. 1 albums and hit songs. Elton was born Reginald Dwight in Middlesex, England. He was picking out songs on the piano at age three;...
The Beach Boys' saga encompasses triumph and tragedy, innovation and excess, success and disappointment. It also involves some of the most acclaimed popular music ever created, thanks largely to the prodigious talents of sonic architect and main creative force Brian Wilson. To the generation that came of age in the first half of the 1960s, the Beach Boys will forever be identified with the vision of an innocent, carefree pre-flower power America. The quintet's lengthy string of early hits – “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “I Get Around,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Surfer Girl” — mythologized middle-class teenage life and the golden ideal of California, with...
How did changes in the technology of record manufacturing effect popular music, radio, and the people who consumed both?
MAKING THEIR NME Chart debut with 'Love Me Do' this week are the Beatles, a vocal-instrumental group who hail from Liverpool, the birthplace of such stars as Billy Fury, Frankie Vaughan, Norman Vaughan and Ken Dodd. Their own composition, 'Love Me Do', is their first disc to be released on a British label. Previously they were with Polydor and had several discs released on the Continent, including one with singer Tony Sheridan, of 'Oh Boy!' note. Why are they called "the Beatles" ? The boys laughingly put off this question by saying : "The name came to us in a vision!" The line-up is...
(1911 – 1996) Bill Monroe was a pioneering Country music performer and bandleader, credited as the Father of Bluegrass, a genre that drew from the Appalachian folk, Gospel and Blues music with which Monroe had grown up. Monroe was born the youngest of eight children in Rosine, Ky., to a musical family. Orphaned at the age of 16, Monroe moved to Indiana, working through the Great Depression in an oil refinery. He subsequently formed a duo with his brother Charlie and as half of the Monroe Brothers scored an immediate hit single with the Gospel song "What Would You Give In Exchange For Your...
NOW hear this — and kindly hear it good! Are you one of the fans who think there's nothing much new happening on the pop scene? Right… then we want to bring your attention to a new artist, a new star-in-the-making, who we predict is going to whirl round the business like a tornado. Name: Jimi Hendrix. Occupation: Guitarist-singer-composer-showman-dervish-original. His group, just three-strong: The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Bill Harry and I dropped in at the Bag O'Nails' club in Kingley Street to hear the trio working out for the benefit of Press and bookers. An astonished Harry muttered: "Is that full, big,...
(1930 – 2004) As much as any musician, Ray Charles can be credited for creating what came to be known as Soul music, and laying many of the foundations for what became Rock and Roll. By combining the rhythmic fervor of African-American Gospel with the sound and instrumentation of Jazz and R&B, the singer-pianist made music that was both gritty and sophisticated, and blazed multiple musical trails through the 50s and 60s. In the process, Charles, whose emotion-charged vocals are instantly identifiable, emerged as one of America's most beloved musical icons. Born Ray Charles Robinson in Georgia, the artist lost his...
(b. 1950) Of all the notable artists who emerged from the Motown label in the 1960s, Stevie Wonder is perhaps the most accomplished. Blind since infancy, he was a multi-instrumentalist child prodigy who quickly established himself as both a major star and a musical visionary with a singular voice. He was also the first Motown artist to rebel against the company's restrictive hit-factory approach and win creative control of his own musical output. While growing up amid poverty and domestic violence in Michigan, Stevie — born Steveland Hardaway Judkins — demonstrated a precocious musical talent and mastered multiple instruments in early...
(1939 – 1984) Of all of the performers who passed through Motown Records' Detroit hit factory in the 1960s, Marvin Gaye was perhaps the most iconoclastic. Beyond the smooth voice, good looks, and snappy Pop Soul tunes that fueled his initial success, Gaye subsequently revealed an ambitious sonic vision and deeply personal songwriting talent that would help to rewrite the rules of Soul music and establish him as one of R&B's most influential creative forces — as well as the first artist to successfully break away from Motown's rigid musical formula to pursue his own creative vision. Growing up in Washington,...
What is Folk music? To what extent did Folk Rock sustain the spirit of Folk music?
Sam Moore and Dave Prater made for one of the most successful Soul acts of the 1960s, racking up a string of hard-grooving hits with a tag-team vocal style that owed a debt to the church music both men had grown up singing. Solo performers at the outset, the two southerners – Moore from Florida, Prater from Georgia – formed a duo in 1961, after meeting at a club in Miami. After bouncing between various labels and issuing a series of singles that received regional airplay but failed to ignite, the pair’s moment came when they were signed by Jerry Wexler...
Founded in 1948 by four students at Butler University in Indianapolis, Ind., the Four Freshmen were a vocal group whose harmonies embraced the Barbershop Quartet tradition and took it a step further, adding Jazz influences and ultimately exerting an influence on Rock and Roll. The Freshmen started as a barbershop quartet called Hal’s Harmonizers, founded by brothers Ross and Don Barbour, who were enrolled in the university’s Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music. After morphing into the Four Freshman, the members – all of whom doubled as instrumentalists, some playing several instruments — began performing in venues around the midwest, honing...
(1940 – 1980) John Lennon was always the Beatles' most restless creative force, as well known for his acerbic humor and his taste for the outré as for the iconic hits that he and Paul McCartney wrote for the band. Not surprisingly, it was Lennon whose post-Beatles life was the most colorful and provocative, and his musical and personal moves consistently kept him in the headlines, even during his extended break from musical activity in the second half of the 1970s. Lennon had already began to pursue outside creative outlets while still a Beatle, writing a pair of books of humorous...
(1942 – 1999) As a songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and record-label owner, Curtis Mayfield was a significant force in shaping the Soul music of the 60s and 70s. Among his achievements, he is credited as a pioneer in bringing a social consciousness to Soul music, creating music that reflected the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s; his song “People, Get Ready” in particular was embraced as something of an anthem for the movement. Born in Chicago and raised in the city’s massive Cabrini-Green housing project, Mayfield started singing in his grandmother's Traveling Soul Spiritualists' Church at age 7. He picked up...
(1911 – 1972) Widely acknowledged as the "Queen of Gospel," Mahalia Jackson was a major musical and cultural force whose popularity and influence made her an icon in African-American culture for decades; Harry Belafonte once described her as "the single most powerful black woman in the United States." Possessing both a powerful presence and an authoritative contralto voice, Jackson remained one of America's top-selling Gospel artists for most of her career. Growing up in New Orleans, Jackson began singing in church as a child in the 1920s, and performed around the city with the Johnson Gospel Singers, one of the first...
(1919 – 2014) Although he's never made a Rock record, Folk music legend Pete Seeger is nonetheless an important Rock influence. That's partially a result of his songs, which have been widely covered by Rock and Pop acts. But Seeger's stature is more a matter of his uncompromising commitment to his ideals, which has made him a role model for politically committed musicians for multiple generations. The Manhattan-born son of composer, ethnomusicologist and New Deal administrator Charles Louis Seeger Jr., Pete fell under the spell of Folk music in his teens, while traveling with his father and stepmother in the rural...
More than any other Rap act, Public Enemy are credited with rewriting the rules of Hip Hop, both as a musical form and as a market force. To many, the group's arrival in the late 80s signaled Hip Hop's maturation into a serious art form, while broadening the genre's appeal to white Rock listeners. The massively influential crew's early releases — Yo! Bum Rush the Show, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of A Black Planet — were landmarks, both for their militant, socially conscious lyrics and for their innovative, groundbreaking sound. Public Enemy also...
(b. 1941) Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, singer and songwriter Bob Dylan is one of the most influential and revered figures in Folk and Rock. Among the most celebrated songwriters of the 20th century, Dylan is often credited with introducing literary and intellectual ambition into popular music. Dylan came to prominence as part of the American folk revival of the early 1960s, and has maintained an active career that spans five decades and over 30 albums. Bob Dylan was a teenager when Rock and Roll exploded onto the American landscape in the mid-1950s and the young Dylan was an avid...
How did Gangsta Rap and Conscious Hip Hop respond to the social and political conditions of the 1990s?
OKAY, ALL you, out there. How many of you remember Jan and Dean? If they weren't the great innovators of surf music, they were at least the second in line... the only people who ever shut them down were the Beach Boys. Of course, there were other surfing bands, the Ripcords, Ronnie and the Daytonas, the Surfaris, the Rivingtons and even the Trashmen. But these were no competition. If they weren't an amalgam of Jan, Dean or members of the Beach Boys, they were invariably recording either a Beach Boys or a Jan and Dean tune. Jan and Dean had a...
DYLAN: Well, let me say that I was born in Duluth, Minnesota – give that a little plug. That's where I was born and, uh, out in the midwest most of my life. Well, about three-quarters of my life around the midwest and one quarter around the southwest – New Mexico. But then I lived in Kansas – Marysville, Kansas, and, uh, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I bounced around a lot as a kid. Was that your choice? It was my choice partly. Partly it wasn't. I ran away a lot – stuff like that. I'd rather say just that. When was...
IF YOU ARE not a Kinks fan, you are either a) uninformed, or b) not a Kinks fan. If it's the latter, there's nothing you can do about it. The Kinks, rather like Johnny Hart's B.C. or the novels of Kurt Vonnegut, are absolutely indefensible (and unassailable). I can't tell you why they're great: there are no standards by which the Kinks can be judged. Ray Davies' music has nothing to do with almost anything else. It's in a category unto itself, and if you don't like it, well, there you are. I would like to say that Face to Face is...
"BUT WOULD YOU LIKE your daughter to marry one?" is what you ask yourself about the Rolling Stones. They've done terrible things to the musical scene – set it back, I would say, by about eight years. Just when we'd got our pop singers looking neat and tidy and, above all, cheerful, along come the Rolling Stones, looking almost like what we used to call beatniks. (I use this démodé word liberally. I hope you can remember what beatniks looked like.) The Stones, which is what they are called by intimates, have wrecked the image of the pop singer in the...
The Chiffons formed in 1960, when high school schoolmates Judy Craig, Patricia Bennett and Barbara Lee started singing together in the New York City borough of the Bronx. When their Doo-Wop-influenced harmonies and sassy demeanor were paired with hook-laden arrangements and catchy songs from New York City’s top songwriters, the Chiffons became one of the best-known purveyors of the “girl group” sound. The band's first hit, "He's So Fine," was written by their manager, 22-year-old songwriter Ronnie Mack. Mack initially pitched the song to the vocal group the Tokens, who were just coming off their 1961 hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and looking to...
Pioneers in the development of American Punk, Black Flag was formed in Hermosa Beach, CA, in 1976. Spearheaded by guitarist and chief songwriter Greg Ginn, a UCLA graduate with a degree in economics, Black Flag incorporated the shot-out-of-a-cannon speed of East Coast punk rockers like the Ramones but substituted the Ramones's buzzsaw sound with a sloppier, growling, bass-heavy din. Black Flag's message was anti-authoritarian and non-conformist — an alienated rage against suburban, middle-class values. Originally fronted by vocalist Keith Morris, who left to form the Circle Jerks, Black Flag went through several vocalists before settling into their most productive period with Henry Rollins, a fan from Washington D.C. who...
Australia's minimalist, Hard Rock answer to the over-inflated character of 70s Stadium Rock and Art Rock, AC/DC formed in 1973 with brothers Malcolm and Angus Young handling guitar duties. Stripping back their sound to the Rock and Roll basics, and eschewing the glam stylings and theatrics favored by some Hard Rock acts, the brothers left a wide-open space for the larynx-ripping vocal stylings of Bon Scott. The spare but heavy quality of what they created is reminiscent of Free's infectious "All Right Now," a song that managed to be lean, rocking, and ready for the pop charts without ever sacrificing its power. After...
Booker T. and the MGs were the house band at Stax Records in Memphis, Tenn., and their lean, tough grooves are an integral part of the Stax sound. For years, the group — Booker T. Washington on Hammond organ, Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass, Steve Cropper on guitar and Al Jackson on drums — backed almost every artist to record at the Stax studio, including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Rufus & Carla Thomas, and Sam & Dave. The band also found time to record instrumentals under their own name, producing hits including "Green Onions," "Time Is Tight" and "Hang 'em High." At the time...
(1940 – 1985) Ricky Nelson was born into show business — his parents were chart-topping Big Band performers who transitioned into radio and television personalities during the 1940s. As a teen during the 1950s, Ricky starred as himself, alongside his parents and brother, in the television hit The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. For years, each episode would conclude with a musical performance by Ricky Nelson and his band, in the style of his rockabilly idols Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Nelson's performances on the show, along with his boy-next-door good looks, attracted a massive teenage audience and landed him a...
(1941 – 1959) The first Rock and Roll star of Latin-American descent, Ritchie Valens had only a brief musical career, which was cut short when he died at 17 in the same 1959 airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. He’s best known for his single “La Bamba,” a rocked up version of a traditional Mexican wedding song, which was only a minor hit on its release, but has endured as a classic of the early Rock and Roll era, as well as perhaps the first example of Latin culture and Rock and Roll intersecting. Born Richard Valenzuela,...
How is Rock and Roll's power, at least in part, a result of its being born on the margins of society?
(b. 1945) In a career spanning five decades, Neil Young has earned wide admiration as an iconoclast who’s taken full advantage of Rock’s capacity for endless reinvention. His idiosyncratic career path has found him alternating superstar smashes with staunchly uncommercial and/or highly personal projects — a pattern that he set early in his career and has maintained in the decades since. The Canadian-born singer, songwriter, and guitarist achieved his first major recognition in 1966 as a member of the Los Angeles-based Country Rock band Buffalo Springfield, which established Young as a distinctive, prodigious talent. He had already launched a solo career when...
(b. 1947 – 2016) One of Rock’s most enduring auteurs, David Bowie was notable for his influence, his eclecticism, and the knack for self reinvention he repeatedly displayed over a long and prolific career that saw him working in Glam Rock, Soul, Dance Pop, Electronica, Folk, and other genres. Born David Robert Jones in London, Bowie showed his musical restlessness from the beginning. By the time be became a star in the early 70s, he’d already been kicking around the British music scene for several years, with stints as a mod Rock and Roller, a twee music-hall Popster, and a hippie troubadour. He had...
A trio of sassy, glamorous young women from Spanish Harlem, the Ronettes exemplified the Girl Group ideal, exuding both youthful innocence and worldly sensuality. They were the ideal vehicle for the eccentric, visionary producer Phil Spector, who combined his innovative “Wall of Sound” production techniques with the Ronettes' sweet-but-sexy voices to create such teen classics as "Be My Baby," "Baby I Love You," "Do I Love You?," and "Walking in the Rain." (Spector also married lead singer Ronnie Bennett.) Although they're now known almost exclusively for their work with Spector, the Ronettes actually got their start a few years earlier....
The Last Poets were a collective of African American and Hispanic poets and percussionists that formed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) in Harlem, New York, in 1968. In casual get-togethers, group members would recite their poetry, sometimes improvised and often political in nature, while the percussionists played African-based rhythms. The results have often been cited as a precursor to Rap music. Their 1970 self-titled debut album featured politically charged songs like "When the Revolution Comes" and "Wake Up, Niggers" — messages of self-empowerment that sought to inspire and educate, and that put the group at the forefront of the Black...
(b. 1942) Known as "the Queen of Soul," Aretha Franklin is one of many soul singers who started singing as a youngster in church. She was born in Memphis, Tenn., but her family eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan where her father, C.L. Franklin, was a popular Baptist minister. Her father often entertained popular gospel stars, who encouraged and coached the young singer. At the age of 19, Aretha made her first album for the Columbia label, after being signed by legendary talent scout John Hammond. Her recordings for the label, aimed at the Pop and Jazz market, met with some success, but failed to connect with...
(1932 – 2003) With his rumbling baritone voice, spare, percussive guitar and imposing, black-clad presence, Johnny Cash was an iconic figure whose influence spans the 50s Rockabilly explosion, multimedia stardom in the 60s and a late-life comeback in the '90s. Cash remained a beloved star in the Country field for decades, despite his refusal to play by the genre's established rules. Meanwhile, the empathy for the underdog and passion for social justice that fueled much of his music aligned him with the Rock counterculture from the '60s onward. The Arkansas-bred Cash first recorded in the 50s for the Sun label, where...
(b. 1935) Perhaps the wildest of Rock and Roll's early pioneers, Jerry Lee Lewis embodied an unruly mass of contradictions that manifested themselves on such hits as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," "Great Balls of Fire" "Breathless," and "High School Confidential." Shouting his lusty lyrics and pounding his piano like a man possessed, Lewis — affectionately known, then and now, as the Killer — balanced the sacred and the profane like nothing that had ever been in heard in American popular music, establishing himself as a walking embodiment of American parents' darkest fears about this strange new music. When he showed...
(1926 – 1968) As the most popular radio disc jockey in Memphis in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Dewey Phillips was a trailblazer in several ways. He had a larger-than-life on-air persona that presaged later Rock and Roll DJs. In a segregated southern city he was a white DJ who played both black and white artists for an integrated audience. And he played a mix of styles – Blues, R&B, Country, Rockabilly, Gospel — that were the building blocks of what soon would be called Rock and Roll. Philips served in the Second World War, and when he returned to Memphis his desire...
(b. 1973) Beginning in the late 90s, socially-conscious rapper Mos Def — more recently known as Yasiin Bey — established a reputation as one of Hip Hop's most forward-thinking artists, while building a parallel acting career that's demonstrated the same thoughtfulness and versatility that are hallmarks of his music. Born Dante Terrell Smith in Brooklyn, Mos Def began rapping at age nine and began acting professionally at 14. He formed Urban Thermo Dynamics with his brother and sister, and later made guest appearances on albums by Da Bush Babees and De La Soul. But his musical career didn't really take off...
One of the most influential and controversial groups in the history of Hip Hop, N.W.A. were almost solely responsible for elevating Gangsta rap from a street phenomenon in South Central Los Angeles to national prominence, through their raw, provocative debut Straight Outta Compton, which sold 3 million copies in the year after its 1988 release. N.W.A. (short for “Niggaz Wit Attitude”) began taking shape in early 1986, when Eric “Eazy-E” Wright sought out Dr. Dre and DJ Yella, who had performed together in an electro-rap band and produced beats and mixtapes for the KDAY radio station. The trio then recruited...
(b. 1948) Jackson Browne emerged from Los Angeles to become the quintessential “sensitive singer-songwriter.” His ability to craft melodic but intimate songs brought him widespread commercial acceptance and helped set the tone for the soft California Rock sound that would flourish in the 70s. Raised in Los Angeles, Browne began writing original songs and performing in local clubs while still in his teens. Shortly after graduating high school in 1966 he moved to New York City to concentrate on songwriting. He became a staff writer for a publishing company and developed a reputation for writing poetic, confessional songs that belied his...
Known to fans as P-Funk, Parliament-Funkadelic is an ever-morphing collective of musicians founded by singer and songwriter George Clinton. Originally it was comprised of two groups, the first being the Parliaments — a Doo Wop group that came together in the late 1950s in the back of a New Jersey barbershop where Clinton straightened hair. The second was an ad-hoc backing band for the Parliaments, assembled by Clinton in the early 1960s, that by 1967 had solidified under the name Funkadelic. As the mad genius behind P-Funk, Clinton – a former staff writer for Motown — drew inspiration from the...
(b. 1934) Clean-cut singer/actor Pat Boone had a lengthy run as a major recording star in the years prior to the British Invasion, scoring 38 Top 40 hits and becoming a familiar, wholesome presence in films and TV shows. Boone is notable figure in Rock and Roll’s early history for his smooth covers of then-current hits by such black artists as Little Richard and Fats Domino, which critics blasted as “watered down” versions aimed at listeners and radio stations for whom the originals were too musically — or racially — incendiary. While rocking out may not have been Boone’s forte,...
One of the most successful groups of the Disco era, the Village People were undeniably a manufactured novelty act in a genre that spawned many. But no other disco novelty act managed to break into mainstream consciousness to the degree that the Village People did – an achievement is all the more impressive considering the flamboyantly costumed group's grounding in gay culture and its unabashed, albeit lighthearted, use of gay archetypes. Despite this, in their heyday the Village People managed to win acceptance with mainstream audiences, who embraced the group's cartoonish image and such catchy hits as "Y.M.C.A.," "Macho...
What was Grunge and where did it come from?
Childhood friends Joseph “Run” Simmons and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels were barely 16 when they started rhyming together at loosely organized DJ jams in their neighborhood of Hollis, Queens, in New York City. After graduating high school, they met DJ Jason Mizell, who was spinning records as Jazzy Jase before adopting the handle Jam Master Jay. As Run-DMC, the trio changed the course of Hip Hop music and fueled its commercial acceptance by the “MTV generation” of the mid-1980s. Their 1984 debut album, Run-DMC, made the case almost overnight. With the stripped-down arrangement of the single “It’s Like That” and its...
(1931 – 1964) A Gospel singer who crossed over to Pop, Sam Cooke was hailed as one of the most gifted singers of his era, and he was also one of the most successful, with a prodigious run of hits between 1957 and 1964. Widely credited as a pioneer of Soul music, Cooke – who maintained huge popularity with black audiences even as he commandeered the Pop charts and built a substantial following among whites — had a notable influence on late 60s singers such as Otis Redding and Al Green. Cooke was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, one of eight children....
The most prominent purveyors of teen melodrama in the Girl Group genre, the Queens, N.Y.-bred Shangri-Las specialized in songs of heartbreak and tragedy, vividly conveyed by impassioned lead singer Mary Weiss, the cinematic production of Shadow Morton, and emotion-packed songs penned by Morton and such Brill Building pros as Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. The Shangri-Las — originally two sets of sisters, Mary and her sibling Betty, and twins Marge and Mary Ann Ganser — established their trademark mix of adolescent innocence and haunted fatalism with their first two hits, "Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)" and "Leader of the Pack,"...
(b. 1942) It's tempting to imagine how different the world would be today if Paul McCartney hadn't run into John Lennon on July 6, 1957, at the Liverpool church fete where Lennon's group the Quarrymen was performing. But it's also hard to imagine that, even if the Beatles had never existed, McCartney's prodigious talents and considerable ambition wouldn't have found an outlet somehow, or that he wouldn't have become an influential cultural figure even if the British rock explosion that the Beatles ignited had never happened. It's an oft-repeated if overly simplistic meme that McCartney was the facile Pop tunesmith to...
(b. 1942) Perhaps the most successful female songwriter of the Rock era, Carole King did much to shape the sound of 60s and 70s Pop music, first as a prolific writer of hits for others and then as a hugely successful solo artist. The writer or co-writer of well over 100 songs that have made the Billboard singles chart, she also recorded one of the best-selling records in history, 1971’s Tapestry, considered one of the most important and influential albums connected to the Singer-Songwriter movement of the early 1970s. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, King demonstrated her musical ability at...
In their 1960s heyday, the all-American vocal duo of Jan Berry and Dean Torrence embodied the same California Pop ideal as their friendly rivals the Beach Boys. They scored 16 Top 40 hits, most of them about surfing and drag racing, and laden with infectious choruses, distinctive harmonies, and goofy humor. The pair shared vocals, but it was Berry who was the duo's main songwriter, vocal arranger, and sonic architect. Berry's talents were sufficiently advanced to earn the admiration of Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson, who added vocal harmonies at several Jan and Dean sessions, and gave them his composition...
(b. 1969) Widely regarded as one the greatest rappers of all time, Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) is one of Hip Hop's most successful entrepreneurs as well as one of its most innovative and influential artists. Such landmark Jay-Z albums as 1999's Reasonable Doubt, 2001's The Blueprint, and 2003's The Black Album — all included in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time — are widely regarded as landmarks of the genre. The 17-time Grammy winner is one of the best-selling artists in any genre, with more than 75 million records sold. He holds the record for most...
(b. 1940) Pop singer Frankie Avalon was among the premiere “teen idols” of the late 50s and early 60s, scoring many hits in the pre-Beatles era and starring in dozens of films, among them a popular series of beach movies that paired Avalon with Annette Funicello. As a boy growing up in Philadelphia Avalon studied the trumpet, and played with local bands. He scored a break thanks to an encounter with singer Al Martino, who hailed from the same south Philly neighborhood where Avalon lived. Martino was back home visiting friends and celebrating a recent hit when Avalon talked his way into Martino’s party and played...
The epitome of 70s Prog Rock pomp, Emerson, Lake and Palmer were one of the genre's most successful acts, selling over 40 million albums and headlining huge stadiums. They were also singled out by critics for embodying some of Prog's excesses. Although the trio produced several shorter, melodic tunes that found radio airplay at the time of their release, ELP's real forte was epic Classical-Rock pieces that often took up entire album sides and became centerpieces of the threesome's increasingly grandiose concert extravaganzas. As a supergroup whose members had previously been featured in notable English bands, ELP was tipped for...
(b. 1930) As one of Stax Records' two founding partners (with his sister Estelle Axton), Jim Stewart helped create a golden age of Southern Soul music in the 1960s. Within a few years of the company's launch, Stax — based in a Memphis movie theater converted into a recording studio/office/record store — became a trend-setting hit factory where black and white music-makers collaborated to create a dizzying string of Soul classics. Stax's creative and commercial successes were all the more impressive in light of the fact that the company was based in racially segregated Memphis, while civil rights struggles and...
(1942 – 2003) Though his career stretched from Doo-Wop to Disco, Edwin Starr will best be remembered for his groundbreaking hit “War,” one of the first Soul records to deliver serious social commentary along with the beat. Born Charles Edwin Hatcher, Starr pursued a musical career in Detroit after serving in the army, adopting his stage name and signing to the local Ric-Tic label. Starr recorded a series of moderately successful singles for Ric-Tic; then he became a Motown artist when Motown owner Berry Gordy bought the label in 1968. Though Starr’s rough vocal style was atypical for Motown, his...
(1937 – 2019) Dick Dale is known as "The King of the Surf Guitar," and it’s a title that few have contested. The fervid instrumentals he cut in the early 1960s are widely credited as landmarks in the development of Surf Rock – his 1961 single “Let’s Go Trippin’” is often cited as the first Surf record. Dale (birth name Richard Monsour) was born in Boston, Mass., to a Lebanese-American family. His family moved to Southern California when he was 16, and Dale became a passionate surfer. He's said that his love of surfing inspired him to come up with a...
(b. 1941) Memphis songwriter and producer Dan Penn is credited as one of the behind-the-scenes architects of 1960s Southern soul. Songs Penn has written or co-written include the classics "The Dark End Of The Street" (a hit for James Carr), "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" (Aretha Franklin), "I'm Your Puppet" (James and Bobby Purify), "Cry Like a Baby" (the Box Tops), "You Left the Water Running" (Otis Redding) and "Out of Left Field" (Percy Sledge), while Penn's work as a producer yielded a long series of blue-eyed Soul hits for the Box Tops during the same period. Born in Vernon,...
(1915 – 2009) A virtuoso guitarist steeped in Country, Jazz, and Pop who found fame as part of a duo with singer Mary Ford, Les Paul was also one of the driving forces behind the development and popularization of the electric guitar, creating one of the first solid-body models using a block of wood. His namesake model, the Gibson Les Paul, is an iconic instrument that’s been played by countless Rock guitarists. Paul is also known for his innovations in recording techniques – among his achievements was pioneering the use of “overdubbing,” or layering multiple tracks atop one another in...
Folk Rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young rose in the late 1960s from the ashes of several highly successful acts. Both Neil Young and Stephen Stills were previously part of Buffalo Springfield, David Crosby was a member of the Byrds, and Graham Nash arrived from the British Invasion group the Hollies. Known for their soaring harmonies and laid-back Folk Rock sound, the group’s core is the trio of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, with Young as an on-and-off fourth member. The group initially formed after Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang together at a party in Los Angeles and were excited by...
(b. 1941) Chubby Checker changed the way Americans danced with his hit record “The Twist,” which took the country by storm in the early 1960’s, launching a dance fad that lasted years and crossed social and racial boundaries. Checker’s recording was actually a cover of a song by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, who had released it only a few months earlier. Their version was a modest success, but it was Checker, a Philadephia-based singer who recorded for the local Cameo-Parkway label, who took it to the top of the Billboard singles chart, after he appeared singing the song and dancing...
The Foo Fighters are an American rock band formed in 1994 by former Scream and Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, who switched to guitar and vocals for his new project. Grohl is joined by Pat Smear on guitar, Chris Shiflett on guitar, Nate Mendel on bass, and Taylor Hawkins on drums.
(b. 1958) A native of Newark, N.J., who migrated to Los Angeles as a teen, Ice-T (born Tracy Marrow) is widely credited with having sparked the West Coast “gangsta” rap style. His music has exerted a deep influence on such artists as N.W.A., Compton’s Most Wanted, Snoop Dogg and many others. Before he turned 13, Marrow lost both parents to heart failure, and moved west to live with his father’s sister. There he attended South Central’s Crenshaw High, then considered one of the roughest in the nation because of its proximity to gang-controlled neighborhoods. A devotee of pimp-turned-author Iceberg Slim and...
(b. 1940) Although his early hits with the Miracles were instrumental in putting Motown Records on the map, William "Smokey" Robinson was more than just the label's first star. His gifts as a a songwriter, record producer, and spotter of talent played a crucial role in Motown's musical and commercial success, and his behind-the-scenes contributions remained a key element of the company's musical output throughout its glory days. Robinson's graceful presence, sweet voice, and witty lyrical romanticism made him the company's first idol, with Bob Dylan calling him "America's greatest living poet." In the mid-50s, the Detroit native began singing with...
(b. 1977) As famous for his outsized media presence as for his music, Kanye West is nonetheless regarded as one of Hip Hop's most innovative creative forces. In the space of a few years, he went from respected producer and beatmaker to international superstar. Both a sonic visionary and a distinctive, verbally inventive rapper, West makes music whose creativity and flamoyance are more than a match for his cocky personality and dapper visual image. Although the Chicago native started as an aspiring rapper, West first gained significant attention in the late 90s for his production work with the likes of Foxy...
The Mills Brothers’ career lasted over 50 years, from the Jazz Age of the 1920s through the Rock and Roll era and beyond. During that time the vocal group recorded many hit records, featuring inventive four-part harmonies that were a formative influence on Doo Wop. Actual siblings who grew up in the small town of Pioqua, Ohio, the Mills brothers — Donald, Herbert, Harry and John Jr. — learned to harmonize from their father, who sang in his own barbershop quartet (and was an actual barber). In addition to their singing, the brothers became known for their ability to imitate...
(b. 1965) Back in the early 1980s, when a teenaged Lawrence Krisna Parker began tagging the Bronx River Projects in New York City with the graffiti name KRS-ONE, he didn’t yet know he had a talent for writing and rhyming that would help change how Hip Hop is perceived as an art form. Throughout a long career that includes six years as frontman for the Rap group Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One (also known to fans as “The Blastmaster”) has established a politically charged and message-conscious style that’s rich in historical, philosophical, religious and literary references. In 1985, Parker was a 20-year-old...
Formed in New Jersey in 1961 by sisters Barbara and Phyllis Allbut, the Angels are best known for scoring one of the premiere hits of the Girl Group era, 1963’s “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Before “Boyfriend,” the Angels had moderate success with a few singles, and the Allbut sisters and lead singer Peggy Santiglia supplemented their incomes working as studio singers in New York City, singing backup on other people’s records and recording demos, commercials and radio jingles. In 1963 the group signed to Smash Records and began working with the team of Bob Feldman, Richard Gottehrer and Jerry Goldstein, who...
(1926 – 1986) Albert Grossman was an American talent manager who is most famous for representing Bob Dylan between the years 1962 and 1970. A shrewd and aggressive businessman, Grossman foresaw the 1960s Folk revival, and smelled opportunity. He co-founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, famously saying at the time, "The American public is like Sleeping Beauty, waiting to be kissed awake by the prince of Folk music." Over the years, Grossman represented many of the most prominent names in the folk and rock worlds, notably John Lee Hooker, Odetta, Todd Rundgren, The Band, Gordon Lightfoot, Peter, Paul and Mary, Electric Flag and...
(b. 1986) Beginning with her 2008 debut, The Fame, Lady Gaga has emerged as one of the biggest Pop stars of the new millennium, with a flamboyant, shape-shifting persona and a theatrical approach to music that’s often likened to performance art, whether she’s wearing a dress made of meat or wrapping herself in gauze like a burn victim. A New York City native, Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in 1986. She showed musical ability from an early age, and spent her childhood taking music and acting classes. By her teen years was writing songs, appearing in school plays and...
(b. 1947) Cutting an imposing figure at 350 pounds and belting out songwriter Jim Steinman's Wagnerian compositions with appropriate grandiosity, Meat Loaf achieved stardom in 1977 with his blockbuster breakthrough album Bat Out of Hell, which eventually sold more than 43 million copies worldwide and spent nine years on the Billboard album chart. Although his fame arrived virtually overnight, Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) had actually been kicking around the fringes of showbiz for a decade. He had led an L.A. band known alternately as Meat Loaf Soul, Popcorn Blizzard, and Floating Circus, had been a cast member of the...
The most successful male group of Motown Records' 1960s heyday, the Temptations personified the label's R&B-pop crossover ideal. With powerful vocal harmonies, snappy attire, and slick dance moves — not to mention access to Motown's best songwriters, producers, and studio musicians — the quintet made music that was immaculately crafted yet punchy and gritty, appealing to black and white listeners alike. The Temptations were a consistent chart presence from the mid-60s through the early 70s, with their evolving sound reflecting the era's volatile mood. The five Detroit singers who comprised the Temptations' classic lineup — David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Paul...
