TeachRock

people:
Jerry Lee Lewis

(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...

people:
John Lee Hooker

(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...

people:
Jerry Wexler

(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...

people:
Public Enemy

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...

people:
Ben Sollee

people:
Sam Phillips

(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...

people:
Chuck D.

(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...

people:
Frankie Avalon

(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...

people:
Big Mama Thornton

(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...

people:
Grateful Dead

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...

people:
Leonard and Philip Chess

(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...

people:
The Shirelles

One of the earliest and most consistently successful Girl Groups, the Shirelles were a quartet of teenagers from Passaic, N.J., who in the late 1950s and early 1960s scored a run of classic hits whose romantic innocence was sweet as the group's harmonies. Originally known as the Poquellos, the girls — originally Doris Coley (later Doris Kenner-Jackson), Addie "Micki" Harris, Shirley Owens (later Shirley Alston Reeves) and Beverly Lee — were schoolmates of the daughter of Scepter Records founder Florence Greenberg. Greenberg auditioned them and was impressed enough to sign the group and become their manager, renaming them the Shirelles....

people:
LaVern Baker

(1929 – 1997) LaVern Baker was one of first female R&B performers to cross over to reach large numbers of white listeners in the early days of Rock and Roll. Baker's exuberant delivery drove such mid-50s hits as "Tweedlee Dee" and "Jim Dandy," while 1958's "I Cried a Tear" showed her to be an effective ballad singer. Born Delores LaVern Baker in Chicago, she began singing in local clubs in the mid-40s. She did some early recording as Little Miss Sharecropper and Bea Baker; by the time she began recording for Atlantic Records in 1953, she was performing as LaVern Baker....

people:
The Chiffons

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...

people:
Devo

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"...

people:
The Flamingos

Formed in the early 1950s on the streets of Chicago’s south side, the influential vocal group the Flamingos became known for their graceful harmonies and sophisticated arrangements, their style owing as much to the sound of 1930s and 40s vocal groups like the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots as to Doo-Wop. The group was typical in having roots in the church – less typically, it was a Hebrew Israelite congregation that in 1952 brought together founding members Jacob and Ezekial Carey, Paul Wilson and Johnny Carter. Lead vocalist Earl Lewis joined soon after.  Many subsequent lineup changes would follow,...

people:
Aretha Franklin

(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...

people:
Sam and Dave

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...

people:
Curtis Mayfield

(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...

people:
The Angels

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...

people:
Talking Heads

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...

people:
The Who

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...

people:
Ray Charles

(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...

people:
Pete Seeger

(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...

people:
Meat Loaf

(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...

people:
Little Richard

(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...

people:
Bo Diddley

(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,...

people:
Albert Grossman

(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...

people:
U-Roy

(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...