1.
Single (music)
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In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record, an album or an EP record. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats, in most cases, a single is a song that is released separately from an album, although it usually also appears on an album. Typically, these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular, in other cases a recording released as a single may not appear on an album. As digital downloading and audio streaming have become prevalent, it is often possible for every track on an album to also be available separately. Nevertheless, the concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a heavily promoted or more popular song within an album collection. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks on them. The biggest digital music distributor, iTunes, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as well as popular music player Spotify also following in this trend. Any more than three tracks on a release or longer than thirty minutes in total running time is either an Extended Play or if over six tracks long. The basic specifications of the single were made in the late 19th century. Gramophone discs were manufactured with a range of speeds and in several sizes. By about 1910, however, the 10-inch,78 rpm shellac disc had become the most commonly used format, the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format, songwriters and performers increasingly tailored their output to fit the new medium, the breakthrough came with Bob Dylans Like a Rolling Stone. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, other, less common, formats include singles on digital compact cassette, DVD, and LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc. Some artist release singles on records, a more common in musical subcultures. The most common form of the single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its speed,45 rpm. The 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable, the first 45 rpm records were monaural, with recordings on both sides of the disc. As stereo recordings became popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were produced in stereo by the early 1970s
2.
A-side and B-side
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The terms A-side and B-side refer to the two sides of 78,45, and 33 1/3 rpm phonograph records, whether singles, extended plays, or long-playing records. Creedence Clearwater Revival had hits with both A-side and B-side releases, others took the opposite approach, producer Phil Spector was in the habit of filling B-sides with on-the-spot instrumentals that no one would confuse with the A-side. With this practice, Spector was assured that airplay was focused on the side he wanted to be the hit side, the earliest 10-inch,78 rpm, shellac records were single sided. Double-sided recordings, with one song on side, were introduced in Europe by Columbia Records. There were no record charts until the 1930s, and radio stations did not play recorded music until the 1950s, in this time, A-sides and B-sides existed, but neither side was considered more important, the side did not convey anything about the content of the record. The term single came into use with the advent of vinyl records in the early 1950s. At first, most record labels would randomly assign which song would be an A-side, under this random system, many artists had so-called double-sided hits, where both songs on a record made one of the national sales charts, or would be featured on jukeboxes in public places. As time wore on, however, the convention for assigning songs to sides of the record changed. By the early sixties, the song on the A-side was the song that the company wanted radio stations to play. It was not until 1968, for instance, that the production of albums on a unit basis finally surpassed that of singles in the United Kingdom. In the late 1960s stereo versions of pop and rock songs began to appear on 45s. The majority of the 45s were played on AM radio stations, by the early 1970s, double-sided hits had become rare. Album sales had increased, and B-sides had become the side of the record where non-album, non-radio-friendly, with the advent of cassette and compact disc singles in the late 1980s, the A-side/B-side differentiation became much less meaningful. With the decline of cassette singles in the 1990s, the A-side/B-side dichotomy became virtually extinct, as the dominant medium. However, the term B-side is still used to refer to the tracks or coupling tracks on a CD single. With the advent of downloading music via the Internet, sales of CD singles and other media have declined. B-side songs may be released on the record as a single to provide extra value for money. There are several types of material released in this way, including a different version, or, in a concept record
3.
Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
4.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
5.
Songwriter
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A songwriter is an individual who writes the lyrics, melodies and chord progressions for songs, typically for a popular music genre such as rock or country music. A songwriter can also be called a composer, although the term tends to be used mainly for individuals from the classical music genre. The pressure from the industry to produce popular hits means that songwriting is often an activity for which the tasks are distributed between a number of people. For example, a songwriter who excels at writing lyrics might be paired with a songwriter with a gift for creating original melodies, pop songs may be written by group members from the band or by staff writers – songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Some songwriters serve as their own publishers, while others have outside publishers. The old-style apprenticeship approach to learning how to write songs is being supplemented by university degrees and college diplomas, a knowledge of modern music technology, songwriting elements and business skills are necessary requirements to make a songwriting career in the 2010s. Several music colleges offer songwriting diplomas and degrees with music business modules, the legal power to grant these permissions may be bought, sold or transferred. This is governed by international copyright law, song pitching can be done on a songwriters behalf by their publisher or independently using tip sheets like RowFax, the MusicRow publication and SongQuarters. Skills associated with song-writing include entrepreneurism and creativity, songwriters who sign an exclusive songwriting agreement with a publisher are called staff writers. In the Nashville country music scene, there is a staff writer culture where contracted writers work normal 9-to-5 hours at the publishing office and are paid a regular salary. This salary is in effect the writers draw, an advance on future earnings, the publisher owns the copyright of songs written during the term of the agreement for a designated period, after which the songwriter can reclaim the copyright. In an interview with HitQuarters, songwriter Dave Berg extolled the benefits of the set-up, unlike contracted writers, some staff writers operate as employees for their respective publishers. Under the terms of work for hire agreements, the compositions created are fully owned by the publisher. In Nashville, young writers are often encouraged to avoid these types of contracts. Staff writers are common across the industry, but without the more office-like working arrangements favored in Nashville. All the major publishers employ writers under contract, songwriter Allan Eshuijs described his staff writer contract at Universal Music Publishing as a starter deal. His success under the arrangement eventually allowed him to found his own publishing company, so that he could. keep as much as possible, songwriters are also often skilled musicians. In addition to selling their songs and musical concepts for other artists to sing, songwriters need to create a number of elements for a song
6.
Blues standards
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Blues standards are blues songs that have attained a high level of recognition due to being widely performed and recorded. They represent the best known and most interpreted blues songs that are seen as having permanent value, Blues standards come from different eras and styles, such as ragtime-vaudeville, Delta and country blues, and urban styles from Chicago and the West Coast. Many are also performed in styles that differ from the originals and reflect various music trends, including rhythm and blues, each song listed has been identified by five or more music writers as a blues standard. Nearly all have appeared on major music singles charts, since many of the songs were developed in American folk music traditions, spellings and titles may differ, the most common are used. Beaumont, Daniel E. Preachin the Blues, The Life,2002 Hall of Fame Inductees, Going Down Slow – St. Louis Jimmy Oden. 2010 Hall of Fame Inductees, Key to the Highway – Big Bill Broonzy,2011 Hall of Fame Inductees, Five Long Years – Eddie Boyd. 2016 Hall of Fame Inductees, Jimmy Rogers – Thats All Right, exploring Chicago Blues, Inside the Scene, Past and Present. Jackson, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, Blues Boy, The Life and Music of B. B. Jackson, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, deCurtis, Anthony, Henke, James, George-Warren, Holly, eds. The Language of the Blues, From Alcorub to Zuzu, kansas City Jazz, From Ragtime to Bebop – A History. Eagle, Bob L. LeBlanc, Eric S. Blues, Music in American Life, An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories that Shaped our Culture. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, ed. Artist entries, All Music Guide, The Definitive Guide to Popular Music. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, ed. Artist entries, All Music Guide, The Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, ed. Artist entries, All Music Guide to the Blues. Big Road Blues, Tradition and Creativity in Folk Blues, oakland, California, University of California Press. The NPR Curious Listeners Guide to Blues, woodstock, Three Days that Rocked the World. Soul of the Man, Bobby Blue Bland, jackson, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi. Tribute to Muddy Waters, Radio City Music Hall, king of the Blues Courts Fans
7.
Freedom of choice
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Freedom of choice describes an individuals opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties. In the abortion debate, for example, the freedom of choice may be used in defense of the position that a woman has a right to determine whether she will proceed with or terminate a pregnancy. Similarly, other such as euthanasia, contraception and same-sex marriage are sometimes discussed in terms of an individual right of freedom of choice. Some social issues, for example the New York Soda Ban have been defended and opposed with reference to freedom of choice. In microeconomics, freedom of choice is the freedom of economic agents to allocate their resources as they see fit and it includes the freedom to engage in employment available to them. Ratner et al. in 2008, cited the literature on libertarian paternalism which states that consumers do not always act in their own best interests. They attribute this phenomenon to factors such as emotion, cognitive limitations and biases and they discuss providing consumers with information and decision tools, organizing and restricting their market options, and tapping emotions and managing expectations. Each of these, they state, could improve consumers ability to choose, in the event that a monopoly exists, the consumer no longer has the freedom to choose to buy from a different producer. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out, Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one refuses to satisfy our wishes. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy, as shown in the above quote, libertarian thinkers are often strong advocates for increasing freedom of choice. One example of this is Milton Friedmans Free to Choose book, there is no consensus as to whether an increase in economic freedom of choice leads to an increase in happiness. In one study, the Heritage Foundations 2011 Index of Economic Freedom report showed a correlation between its Index of Economic Freedom and happiness in a country. The axiomatic-deductive approach has been used to address the issue of measuring the amount of freedom of choice an individual enjoys, in a 1990 paper, Prasanta K. Pattanaik and Yongsheng Xu presented three conditions that a measurement of FoC should satisfy, Indifference between no-choice situations. Having only one option amounts to the same FoC, no matter what the option is, having two distinct options x and y amounts to more FoC than having only the option x. If a situation A has more FoC than B, by adding a new option x to both, A will still have more FoC than B. They proved that the cardinality is the measurement that satisfies these axioms. They illustrated this with the example of the set to travel by train or to travel by car. Some suggestions have been made to solve this problem, by reformulating the axioms, usually including concepts of preferences, or rejecting the third axiom
8.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
9.
Classic female blues
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Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and the singers in this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues. Blues, a type of folk music originating in the American South, were mainly in the form of work songs until about 1900. Rainey had heard a woman singing about the man she’d lost, learned the song, raineys example was followed by other young women who followed her path in the tent show circuit, one of the few venues available to black performers. Most toured through a circuit established by the black-owned Theatre Owners Booking Association on the East Coast, a key figure in popularizing the blues was the composer W. C. Handy, who published the first of his blues songs in 1912 and his compositions, notably The Memphis Blues and St. Louis Blues, quickly became standards for blues singers. Songs modeled on Handys were performed in stage shows and were also performed and recorded by white vaudevillians. In 1919, Handy and the Harlem songwriter and music publisher Perry Bradford began a campaign to record companies that black consumers would eagerly purchase recordings by black performers. Bradfords persistence led the General Phonograph Company to record the New York cabaret singer Mamie Smith in its Okeh studio on February 14,1920 and she recorded two non-blues songs, which were released without fanfare that summer and were commercially successful. Smith returned to the studio on August 10 and recorded Crazy Blues, the record sold over 75,000 copies in its first month, an extraordinary figure for the time. Smith became known as “America’s First Lady of the Blues”, in November 1920, the vaudeville singer Lucille Hegamin became the second black woman to record a blues song when she cut Jazz Me Blues. Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Mary Stafford, Katie Crippen, Edith Wilson, Blues had become a nationwide craze, and the recording industry actively scouted, booked and recorded hundreds of black female singers. Marion Harris meanwhile became the first white singer to credibly record the blues. Annette Hanshaw also made some recordings, such as Moanin Low. The most popular of the blues singers was Tennessee-born Bessie Smith. Known as the “Empress of the Blues, she possessed a voice with a “T’ain’t Nobody’s Bizness if I Do” attitude
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Sara Martin
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Sara Martin was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was billed as The Famous Moanin Mama and The Colored Sophie Tucker and she made many recordings, including a few under the names Margaret Johnson and Sally Roberts. Martin was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and was singing on the African-American vaudeville circuit by 1915 and she began a successful recording career when she was signed by Okeh Records in 1922. Through the 1920s she toured and recorded with such performers as Fats Waller, Clarence Williams, King Oliver and she was among the most-recorded of the classic blues singers. She was possibly the first to record the blues song Taint Nobodys Busness if I Do, with Waller on piano. On stage she was noted for a performing style and for her lavish costumes. In his book Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers, Derrick Stewart-Baxter said of her. she was never a great blues singer. The records she made varied considerably, on many she sounded stilted, occasionally, she did hit a groove and when this happened, she could be quite pleasing, as on her very original Brother Ben. The sides she did with King Oliver can be recommended, particularly Death Sting Me Blues, according to the blues historian Daphne Duval Harrison, Martin tended to use more swinging, danceable rhythms than some of her peers. Martins stage work in the late 1920s took her to New York, Detroit, and Pittsburgh and to Cuba, Jamaica and she made one film appearance, in Hello Bill, with Bill Bojangles Robinson, in 1929. Her last major appearance was in Darktown Scandals Review in 1930. She performed with Thomas A. Dorsey as a singer in 1932, after which she worked outside the music industry. Martin died in Louisville of a stroke in May 1955, black Pearls, Blues Queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick, N. J. and London, Rutgers University Press, aint Nobodys Business if You Do, The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country. Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers
11.
Alberta Hunter
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Alberta Hunter was an internationally known African-American jazz singer and songwriter who had a successful career from the early 1920s to the late 1950s and then stopped performing. After 20 years of working as a nurse, in 1977 Hunter successfully resumed her singing career until her death. Hunter was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Laura Peterson, who worked as a maid in a Memphis brothel, and Charles Hunter, Hunter said she never knew her father. She attended Grant Elementary School, off Auction Street, which she called Auction School and she attended school until around age 15. Her father left when she was a child, and to support the family her mother worked as a servant in a brothel in Memphis, although she married again in 1906. Hunter was not happy with her new family and left for Chicago, Illinois, around the age of 11, in the hopes of becoming a paid singer, she had heard that it paid 10 dollars an hour. Instead of finding a job as a singer she had to earn money by working at a boardinghouse that paid six dollars a week as well as room, hunters mother left Memphis and moved in with her soon afterwards. Hunter began her career in a bordello and soon moved to clubs that appealed to men, black. By 1914 she was receiving lessons from a prominent jazz pianist, Tony Jackson and she was still in her early teens when she settled in Chicago. Part of her career was spent singing at Dago Franks. She then sang at Hugh Hoskins saloon and, eventually, in many Chicago bars, one of her first notable experiences as an artist was at the Panama Club, a white-owned club with a white-only clientele that had a chain in Chicago, New York and other large cities. Hunters first act was in a room, far from the main event, thus. Theyd go upstairs to hear us sing the blues, thats where I would stand and make up verses and sing as I go along. Many claim her appeal was based on her gift for improvising lyrics to satisfy the audience and her big break came when she was booked at Dreamland Cafe, singing with King Oliver and his band. She peeled potatoes by day and hounded club owners by night and her persistence paid off, and Hunter began a climb from some of the citys lowest dives to a headlining job at its most prestigious venue for black entertainers, the Dreamland ballroom. She had an association with the Dreamland, beginning in 1917. She first toured Europe in 1917, performing in Paris and London, the Europeans treated her as an artist, showing her respect and even reverence, which made a great impression on her. Her career as singer and songwriter flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, the songs she wrote include the critically acclaimed Downhearted Blues
12.
Bessie Smith
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Bessie Smith was an American blues singer. Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was an influence on other jazz singers. The 1900 census indicates that Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892, the 1910 census gave her age as 16. A birth date of April 15,1894, appears on subsequent documents and was observed as her birthday by the Smith family, the 1870 and 1880 censuses report three older half-siblings, but later interviews with Smiths family and contemporaries did not mention them among her siblings. She was the daughter of Laura and William Smith, a laborer and he died while his daughter was too young to remember him. By the time Bessie was nine, her mother and a brother had also died and her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings. To earn money for their household, Smith and her brother Andrew began busking on the streets of Chattanooga, she sang and danced. Their favorite location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets, in 1904, her oldest brother, Clarence, left home, joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. If Bessie had been old enough, she would have gone with him, said Clarences widow, thats why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child, in 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe and arranged an audition for his sister with the managers of the troupe, Lonnie and Cora Fisher. She was hired as a rather than a singer, because the company already included the well-known singer Ma Rainey. Smith eventually moved on to performing in various lines, making the 81 Theater in Atlanta her home base. She also performed in shows on the circuit and became its biggest star after she signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. Smiths recording career began in 1923 and she was then living in Philadelphia, where she met Jack Gee, a security guard, whom she married on June 7,1923, just as her first record was being released. Their marriage was stormy with infidelity on both sides, including numerous female lovers for Bessie, Gee was impressed by the money but never adjusted to show business life or to Smiths bisexuality. In 1929, when she learned of his affair with singer, Gertrude Saunders, Smith ended the relationship. Smith later entered a marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan
13.
Jump blues
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Jump blues is an up-tempo style of blues, usually played by small groups and featuring saxophone or brass instruments. It was popular in the 1940s and was a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock, appreciation of jump blues was renewed in the 1990s as part of the swing revival. Jump blues evolved from the music of big bands such as those of Lionel Hampton and these bands of the early 1940s produced musicians such as Louis Jordan, Jack McVea, Earl Bostic, and Arnett Cobb. Blues and jazz were part of the musical world, with many accomplished musicians straddling both genres. Jump bands such as the Tympany Five, which came into being at the time as the boogie-woogie revival. Lionel Hampton recorded the stomping big-band blues song Flying Home in 1942, featuring a choked, screaming tenor sax performance by Illinois Jacquet, the song was a hit in the race category. When released, however, Billboard described the tune as an unusually swingy side. with a bounce in the medium tempo. Billboard also noted that Benny Goodman had a hand in writing the tune back in the old Goodman Sextet Days, Billboard went on to state that apart from the fact that it is Lionel Hamptons theme, Flying Home is a sure-fire to make the youngsters shed their nickels—and gladly. Five years later Billboard noted the inclusion of Flying Home in a show that was strictly for hepsters who go for swing and boogie, and beats in loud, hot unrelenting style a la Lionel Hampton. As this urban, jazz-based music became popular, both bluesmen and jazz musicians who wanted to play for the people began favoring a heavy. This music appealed to black listeners who no longer wished to be identified with life down home, Jump groups, employed to play for jitterbugs at a much lower cost than big bands, became popular with agents and ballroom owners. The saxophonist Art Chaney said e were insulted when an audience wouldnt dance. Jump blues was revived in the 1980s by artists such as Joe Jackson and Brian Setzer and is performed today by bands including Roomful of Blues, the Lucky Few, and Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88s. Contemporary swing bands, such as Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, african-American music List of jump blues musicians Swing revival West Coast blues Cohn, Lawrence, Humphrey, Mark A. Nothing but the Blues, The Music and the Musicians, jumptown, The Golden Years of Portland Jazz, 1942–1957. Deep Blues, A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta, escaping the Delta, Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Richie Unterberger, Jump Blues at Allmusic. com Lindy Hop Style of Dancing used with Jump Blues
14.
Jimmy Witherspoon
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James Jimmy Witherspoon was an American jump blues singer. Witherspoon was born in Gurdon, Arkansas and he first attracted attention singing with Teddy Weatherfords band in Calcutta, India, which made regular radio broadcasts over the U. S. Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II, Witherspoon made his first records with Jay McShanns band in 1945. He first recorded under his own name in 1947, and two later with the McShann band, he had his first hit, Aint Nobodys Business. These were recorded from a performance on May 10,1949 at a Just Jazz concert Pasadena. Another classic Witherspoon composition is Times Gettin Tougher Than Tough and he later recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Leroy Vinnegar, Richard Groove Holmes and T-Bone Walker. In 1961 he toured Europe with Buck Clayton and returned to the UK on many occasions, in 1970, he appeared on Brother Jack McDuffs London Blue Note recording To Seek a New Home together with British jazz musicians, including Dick Morrissey, again, and Terry Smith. In the 1970s he also recorded the album Guilty. with Eric Burdon and he then toured with a band of his own featuring Robben Ford and Russ Ferrante. A recording from this period, Spoonful, featured Spoon accompanied by Robben Ford, Joe Sample, Cornell Dupree, Thad Jones and he continued performing and recording into the 1990s. In the 1995 film Georgia, Witherspoon portrayed a traveling, gun-collecting blues singer, Trucker and he played Nate Williams in The Black Godfather, and Percy in To Sleep with Anger. Witherspoon died of cancer in Los Angeles, California on September 18,1997. 1957, Wilbur De Paris Plays & Jimmy Witherspoon Sings New Orleans Blues 1957, Goin to Kansas City Blues 1959, Battle of the Blues, Vol. A. 1989, Spoon Concerts 1990, Live at Condons 1991, Call Me Baby 1992, Live at the Notodden Festival 1992, The Blues, the Whole Blues & Nothing But the
15.
Race record
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Race records were 78-rpm phonograph records marketed to African Americans between the 1920s and 1940s. They primarily contained race music, comprising various African-American musical genres, including blues, jazz, and gospel music and these records were, at the time, the majority of commercial recordings of African-American artists in the US. Few African-American artists were marketed to white audiences, Race records were marketed by Okeh Records, Emerson Records, Vocalion Records, Victor Talking Machine Company, Paramount Records, and several other companies. Such records were labeled race records in reference to their marketing to African Americans, in the 16 October 1920 issue of the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper, an advertisement for Okeh records identified Mamie Smith as Our Race Artist. Most of the recording companies issued race series of records from the mid-1920s to the 1940s. Billboard published a Race Records chart between 1945 and 1949, initially covering juke box plays and from 1948 also covering sales and this was a revised version of the Harlem Hit Parade chart, which it had introduced in 1942. In June 1949, at the suggestion of Billboard journalist Jerry Wexler, the magazine changed the name of the chart to Rhythm & Blues Records. Wexler wrote, Race was a term then, a self-referral used by blacks. On the other hand, Race Records didnt sit well. I came up with a handle I thought suited the music well – rhythm. A label more appropriate to more enlightened times, the chart has since undergone further name changes, becoming the Soul chart in August 1969, the Black chart in June 1982, the R&B chart in October 1990, and the R&B/Hip-Hop chart in December 1999. Race Music, Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, Music of the African Diaspora,7. Berkeley and London, University of California Press, Chicago, Illinois, Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College. NPR, Mamie Smith and the Birth of the Blues Market St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Race music PBS, Race records NPR, Black and White, Crossing the Border, Closing the Gap
16.
Fats Waller
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Thomas Wright Fats Waller was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano and his best-known compositions, Aint Misbehavin and Honeysuckle Rose, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999. Waller was the youngest of 11 children born to Adeline Locket Waller and he started playing the piano when he was six and graduated to playing the organ at his fathers church four years later. His mother instructed him when he was a youth, at the age of 14 he was playing the organ at the Lincoln Theater, in Harlem, and within 12 months he had composed his first rag. Wallers first piano solos were recorded in October 1922, when he was 18 years old and he was the prize pupil and later the friend and colleague of the stride pianist James P. Johnson. Against the opposition of his father, a clergyman, Waller became a professional pianist at the age of 15, working in cabarets, in 1918 he won a talent contest playing Johnsons Carolina Shout, a song he learned from watching a player piano play it. Waller became one of the most popular performers of his era, finding critical and commercial success in the United States and he was also a prolific songwriter, and many songs he wrote or co-wrote are still popular, such as Honeysuckle Rose, Aint Misbehavin and Squeeze Me. Fellow pianist and composer Oscar Levant dubbed Waller the black Horowitz, Waller is believed to have composed many novelty tunes in the 1920s and 1930s and sold them for small sums, attributed to another composer and lyricist. Standards attributed to Waller, sometimes controversially, include I Cant Give You Anything but Love and he further supports the conjecture, noting that early handwritten manuscripts in the Dana Library Institute of Jazz Studies of Spreadin Rhythm Around are in Wallers hand. Machlin comments that the Singer conjecture has considerable justification, maurice Wallers biography similarly notes his fathers objections to hearing On the Sunny Side of the Street playing on the radio. The anonymous sleeve notes on the 1960 RCA Victor album Handful of Keys state that Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of them co-written with his closest collaborator, Razaf described his partner as the soul of melody. A man who made the piano sing, both big in body and in mind. After a balance had been taken, wed just need one take to make a side, on one occasion his playing seemed to have put him at risk of injury. Waller was kidnapped in Chicago leaving a performance in 1926, four men bundled him into a car and took him to the Hawthorne Inn, owned by Al Capone. Waller was ordered inside the building, and found a party in full swing, gun to his back, he was pushed towards a piano, and told to play. A terrified Waller realized he was the surprise guest at Capones birthday party and it is rumored that Waller stayed at the Hawthorne Inn for three days and left very drunk, extremely tired, and had earned thousands of dollars in cash from Capone and other party-goers as tips. After sessions with Ted Lewis, Jack Teagarden and Billy Banks Rhythmakers, he began in May 1934 the voluminous series of recordings with a band known as Fats Waller. This six-piece group usually included Herman Autrey, Gene Sedric or Rudy Powell, Waller wrote Squeeze Me, Keepin Out of Mischief Now, Aint Misbehavin, Blue Turning Grey Over You, Ive Got a Feeling Im Falling, Honeysuckle Rose and Jitterbug Waltz
17.
Call and response (music)
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In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first. It corresponds to the pattern in human communication and is found as a basic element of musical form, such as verse-chorus form. Call and response patterns between two musicians are common in Indian Classical Music, particularly in the style of Jugalbandi, Call and response is likewise widely present in parts of the Americas touched by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is extensively used in Cuban music, both in the rumba and in the African religious ceremonies. In 1644, lining out – where one person sang a solo and it has influenced popular music singing styles. Scottish Gaelic psalm-singing by precenting the line was the earliest form of congregational singing adopted by Africans in America and it is common in folk traditions of choral singing of many people, especially in African musical cultures. In Cuban music and other Latin music genres such as salsa, call, the form is found in the military cadence or Jody which is used as an a cappella work song or to keep time when marching or running in formation. In Western classical music, call and response is known as antiphony, the phenomenon of call and response is pervasive in modern Western popular music, as well, largely because Western music has been so heavily shaped by African contributions. Cross-over rhythm and blues, rock n roll and rock music exhibit call-and-response characteristics, three examples are The Whos song My Generation, Black Dog by Led Zeppelin, and The Pogues Fairytale of New York. In Indian Film music, Ilaiyaraajas songs largely exhibit call-and-response pattern, but, each A and B part may itself consist of a short call and a short response, and those 2-bar calls and response may also be divided into 1-bar-each call-response pairs. To make an attempt at diagramming it, Twelve bars, A, 4-bar CALL A, 4-bar CALL B, a single leader makes a musical statement, and then the chorus responds together. American bluesman Muddy Waters utilizes call and response in one of his songs, Mannish Boy which is almost entirely leader/chorus call. CALL, Waters vocal, Now when I was a young boy RESPONSE, CALL, Waters, At the age of 5 RESPONSE, CALL, Drop the coin right into the slot. RESPONSE, CALL, You gotta get something thats really hot, RESPONSE, A contemporary example is from Carly Rae Jepsens Call Me Maybe. CALL, Hey I just met you RESPONSE, CALL, And this is crazy RESPONSE, while mostly in the chorus, it can also be heard in the breakdown between the vocals and distorted guitar. Part of the band poses a question, or a phrase that feels unfinished. In the blues, the B section often has a question-and-answer pattern, an example of this is the Christmas song Must Be Santa, CALL, Who laughs this way, ho ho ho. RESPONSE, Santa laughs this way, ho ho ho, a similar question-and-answer exchange occurs in the movie Casablanca between Sam and the band in the song Knock On Wood, CALL, Whos got trouble
18.
Mamie Smith
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Mamie Smith was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress. As a vaudeville singer she performed in styles, including jazz. In 1920, she entered blues history as the first African-American artist to make vocal blues recordings, willie The Lion Smith described the background of that recording in his autobiography, Music on My Mind. Robinson was probably born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but no records of her birth are known, the year of her birth is usually given as 1883, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc state that she was recorded as 20 years old in the 1910 census. When she was 10 years old, she found work touring with a white act, as a teenager, she danced in Salem Tutt Whitneys Smart Set. In 1913, she left the Tutt Brothers to sing in clubs in Harlem and married William Smitty Smith and this was the first recording by a black blues singer, the musicians, however, were all white. Hagar had received threats from Northern and Southern pressure groups saying they would boycott the company if he recorded a black singer, despite these threats the record was a commercial success and opened the door for more black musicians to record. Many copies of the record were bought by African Americans, although other African Americans had been recorded earlier, such as George W. Johnson in the 1890s, they were performing music that had a substantial following among European-American audiences. The success of Smiths record prompted record companies to seek to record other female blues singers, Smith continued to make popular recordings for Okeh throughout the 1920s. In 1924 she made three releases for Ajax Records, which, while heavily promoted, did not sell well and she made some records for Victor. She toured the United States and Europe with her band, Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds and she was billed as The Queen of the Blues. Mamie found that the new medium of radio provided a means of gaining additional fans. For example, she and several members of her band performed on KGW in Portland, Oregon, in early May 1923, Smith appeared in an early sound film, Jailhouse Blues, in 1929. She retired from recording and performing in 1931 and she returned to performing in 1939 to appear in the motion picture Paradise in Harlem, produced by her husband, Jack Goldberg. She also appeared in films, including Mystery in Swing, Sunday Sinners, Stolen Paradise, Murder on Lenox Avenue. NPR special on the selection on Crazy Blues
19.
Clarence Williams (musician)
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Clarence Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher. Williams was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, ran away home at age 12 to join Billy Kersands Traveling Minstrel Show. At first Williams worked shining shoes and doing odd jobs, by the early 1910s he was a well regarded local entertainer also playing piano, and was composing new tunes by 1913. Williams started a publishing business with violinist/bandleader Armand J. Piron in 1915. Handy, set up an office in Chicago, then settled in New York in the early 1920s. In 1921, he married singer and stage actress Eva Taylor. He was one of the primary pianists on scores of blues records recorded in New York during the 1920s and he supervised African-American recordings for the New York offices of Okeh phonograph company in the 1920s in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. He recruited many of the artists who performed on that label and he also recorded extensively, leading studio bands frequently for OKeh, Columbia and occasionally other record labels. He mostly used Clarence Williams Jazz Kings for his hot band sides and he also produced and participated in early recordings by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith, Virginia Liston, Irene Scruggs, his niece Katherine Henderson, and many others. King Oliver played cornet on a number of Williamss late 1920s recordings and he was the recording director for the short-lived QRS Records label in 1928. Most of his recordings were songs from his house, which explains why he recorded tunes like Baby Wont You Please Come Home, Close Fit Blues. Among his own compositions was Shout, Sister, Shout, which was recorded by him, in 1933, he signed to the Vocalion label and recorded quite a number of popular recordings, mostly featuring washboard percussion, through 1935. He also recorded for Bluebird in 1937, and again in 1941, in 1943, Williams sold his extensive back-catalogue of tunes to Decca Records for $50,000 and retired, but then bought a bargain used-goods store. Williams died in Queens, New York City, in 1965, on her death in 1977, his wife, Eva Taylor, was interred next to him. Clarence Williams is the grandfather of actor Clarence Williams III and his daughter Joy Williams was a singer-actress under stage name Irene Williams. Clarence Williams was also credited as the author of Hank Williams 1949 hit My Buckets Got a Hole in It, a song that was later recorded by Louis Armstrong
20.
Broadcast Music, Inc.
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Broadcast Music, Inc. is one of three United States performing rights organizations, along with ASCAP, Global Music Rights and SESAC. It collects license fees on behalf of songwriters, composers, and music publishers, in FY2015, BMI collected more than $1.013 billion in licensing fees and distributed $877 million in royalties. BMI songwriters create music in genres, ranging from mainstream pop and country, to death metal. BMI also represents Michael Jacksons music catalog, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, in the 1930s, radio was coming to prominence as a source of musical entertainment that threatened to weaken record sales and opportunities for live acts. The Great Depression was already draining artist revenues from recordings and live performances, in 1939, ASCAP announced a substantial increase in the revenue share licensees would be required to pay. BMI was founded by the National Association of Broadcasters to provide a lower-cost alternative to ASCAP, as such, BMI created competition in the field of performing rights, providing an alternative source of licensing for all music users. The vast majority of U. S. radio stations and all three radio networks refused to renew their ASCAP licenses for 1941, choosing to forgo playing ASCAP music entirely and relying on the BMI repertoire. The U. S. District Court in Milwaukee was chosen by the Justice Department to supervise the decree for both BMI and ASCAP, competing against the strongly established ASCAP, BMI sought out artists that ASCAP tended to overlook or ignore. BMI also purchased the rights to numerous catalogs held by independent publishers or whose ASCAP contracts were about to expire, BMI has offices in Atlanta, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York, and Puerto Rico. BMI annually hosts award shows that honor the songwriters, composers, ASCAP BMI Foundation Copyright collective Recording Academy David Sanjek Choquette, Frederic, The Returned Value of PROs, Music Business Journal, Berklee College of Music, May 2011
21.
Cher
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Cher is an American singer and actress. Commonly referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she is described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. Cher gained popularity in 1965 as one-half of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher after their song I Got You Babe reached number one on the American and she began her solo career simultaneously, releasing in 1966 her first million-seller song, Bang Bang. She became a personality in the 1970s with her shows The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, watched by over 30 million viewers weekly during its three-year run. She emerged as a trendsetter by wearing elaborate outfits on her television shows. While working on television, she established herself as a solo artist with the U. S. Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves, Half-Breed, and Dark Lady. After her divorce from Sonny Bono in 1975, Cher launched a comeback in 1979 with the disco-oriented album Take Me Home and earned $300,000 a week for her 1980–82 residency show in Las Vegas. In 1982, Cher made her Broadway debut in the play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and starred in the film adaptation of the same title. She subsequently earned critical acclaim for her performances in such as Silkwood, Mask. She then revived her career by recording the rock-inflected albums Cher, Heart of Stone. She reached a new peak in 1998 with the album Believe. It also features the use of Auto-Tune, also known as the Cher effect. Her 2002–2005 Living Proof, The Farewell Tour became one of the concert tours of all time. In 2008, she signed a $180 million deal to headline the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for three years, after seven years of absence, she returned to film in the 2010 musical Burlesque. Chers first studio album in 12 years, Closer to the Truth, Cher has won a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and a special CFDA Fashion Award, among several other honors. Throughout her career, she has sold 100 million records worldwide and she is the only artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in each decade from the 1960s to the 2010s. Outside of her music and acting, she is noted for her views, philanthropic endeavors and social activism, including LGBT rights. Cher was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in El Centro, California, on May 20,1946, Chers father was rarely home when she was an infant, and her parents divorced when Cher was ten months old
22.
James Booker
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James Carroll Booker III was a New Orleans rhythm and blues musician born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Bookers unique style combined rhythm and blues with jazz standards, musician Dr. John described Booker as the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced. Flamboyant in personality, he was known as the Black Liberace, Booker was the son and grandson of Baptist ministers, both of whom played the piano. He spent most of his childhood on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Booker received a saxophone as a gift from his mother, but he was more interested in the keyboard. He played the organ in his fathers churches, after returning to New Orleans in his early adolescence, Booker attended the Xavier Academy Preparatory School. He learned some elements of his style from Tuts Washington. Booker was highly skilled in music and played music by Bach and Chopin. He also mastered and memorized solos by Erroll Garner and Liberace and his performances combined elements of stride, blues, gospel and Latin piano styles. Booker made his debut in 1954 on the Imperial Records label, with Doin the Hambone. This led to session work with Fats Domino, Smiley Lewis. In 1958, Arthur Rubinstein performed a concert in New Orleans, afterwards, eighteen-year-old Booker was introduced to the concert pianist and played several tunes for him. Rubinstein was astonished, saying I could never play that, during this period, Booker also became known for his flamboyant personality among his peers. After recording a few singles, he enrolled as an undergraduate in Southern Universitys music department. In 1960, Bookers Gonzo reached number 43 on the United States record chart of Billboard magazine, following Gonzo, Booker released some moderately successful singles. In the 1960s, he started using drugs, and in 1970 served a brief sentence in Angola Prison for drug possession. At the time, Professor Longhair and Ray Charles were among his important musical influences, the album was produced by former Dr. John band member David L. Johnson and by singer/songwriter Daniel Moore. Bookers performance at the 1975 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival earned him a contract with Island Records. His album with Island, Junco Partner, was produced by Joe Boyd, in January 1976, Booker joined the Jerry Garcia Band, however, following two Palo Alto, California, concerts that involved Garcia backing up
23.
Eric Clapton
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Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the only inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important, Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazines list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time and fourth in Gibsons Top 50 Guitarists of All Time. He was also named number five in Time magazines list of The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players in 2009, in the mid-1960s Clapton left the Yardbirds to play with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Furthermore, he formed rock band Blind Faith with Baker, Steve Winwood. For most of the 1970s Claptons output bore the influence of the style of J. J. Cale. His version of Marleys I Shot the Sheriff helped reggae reach a mass market, two of his most popular recordings were Layla, recorded with Derek and the Dominos, and Robert Johnsons Crossroads, recorded with Cream. Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Claptons grief was expressed in the song Tears in Heaven, Clapton has been the recipient of 18 Grammy Awards, and the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004 he was awarded a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music, in 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers. Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, Fryer shipped off to war prior to Claptons birth and then returned to Canada. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the belief that Claptons real surname is Clapp. Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany, Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest. Two years later Clapton picked it up again and started playing consistently, Clapton was influenced by the blues from an early age, and practised long hours to learn the chords of blues music by playing along to the records. He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder and his guitar playing was so advanced that, by the age of 16, he was getting noticed. Around this time, Clapton began busking around Kingston, Richmond, in 1962, Clapton started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast David Brock in pubs around Surrey. When he was seventeen years old, Clapton joined his first band, an early British R&B group and he stayed with this band from January until August 1963. In October of that year, Clapton did a stint with Casey Jones & the Engineers. In October 1963, Clapton joined the Yardbirds, a rock and roll band
24.
Sam Cooke
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Samuel Cook, known professionally as Sam Cooke, was an American singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. Influential as both a singer and composer, he is known as the King of Soul for his distinctive vocals. AllMusic biographer Bruce Eder wrote that Cooke was the inventor of music, and possessed an incredible natural singing voice. Cooke had 30 U. S. top 40 hits between 1957 and 1964, plus three more posthumously. Major hits like You Send Me, A Change Is Gonna Come, Cupid, Chain Gang, Wonderful World, Another Saturday Night, Cooke was also among the first modern black performers and composers to attend to the business side of his musical career. He founded both a label and a publishing company as an extension of his careers as a singer and composer. He also took a part in the Civil Rights Movement. On December 11,1964, at the age of 33, Cooke was shot and killed by Bertha Franklin, after an inquest, the courts ruled Cookes death to be a justifiable homicide. Since that time, the circumstances of his death have been called into question by Cookes family, Cooke was born Samuel Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1931. In 1957 he added an e at the end of his name and he was the fifth of eight children of the Rev. Charles Cook, a minister in the Church of Christ, and his wife, Annie Mae. One of his brothers, L. C. later became a member of the doo-wop band Johnny Keyes. The family moved to Chicago in 1933, Cooke attended Doolittle Elementary and Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Chicago, the same school that Nat King Cole had attended a few years earlier. Sam Cooke began his career with his siblings in a called the Singing Children when he was six years old. He first became known as singer with the Highway QCs when he was a teenager. During this time, Cooke befriended fellow gospel singer and neighbor Lou Rawls, who sang in a rival gospel group. In 1950, Cooke replaced gospel tenor R. H. Harris as lead singer of the group the Soul Stirrers, founded by Harris. Their first recording under Cookes leadership was the song Jesus Gave Me Water in 1951 and they also recorded the gospel songs Peace in the Valley, How Far Am I from Canaan. Jesus Paid the Debt and One More River, among many others and his first pop/soul single was Lovable, a remake of the gospel song Wonderful
25.
Mary Coughlan (singer)
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Mary Coughlan is an Irish jazz and folk singer and actress. She has received great acclamation in her country, for her emotional. Mary Coughlan was born in County Galway, Ireland and she was the eldest of five and had endured a very erratic youth. She left convent school and started drinking alcohol and taking drugs at just 15, at this age she spent time in a mental hospital. After time in hospital and a graduation, Coughlan decided to leave home. In the mid-1970s, she moved to London, UK, where she married Fintan Coughlan and had three children, however, in 1981, she left her husband and took custody of her children. In 1984, Mary Coughlan moved back to Ireland, to her hometown of Galway and it was on her return to Ireland, when she started to perform in public, and soon was noticed by Dutch musician and producer Erik Visser. Visser, whose band Flairck were very popular in Europe at the time, helped Coughlan to record her first album, Tired, Visser would go on to become her long-term collaborator. The album sold an unexpected 100,000 copies in Ireland, despite her success, Coughlan lost her record contract with Warner Music Group. It included new compositions by Mark Nevin and Bob Geldof as well as covers of the Rolling Stones Mothers Little Helper, after receiving treatment for her personal problems, it seemed as though Coughlan had landed on her two feet once again. Sentimental Killer and Love for Sale were received well, in 1994, Coughlan lent her vocals to the hugely popular A Womans Heart Vol.2 album, along with the likes of Mary Black and Dolores Keane. Coughlan released her first live album, Live in Galway, and released another album in 1997, After the Fall. The best of shows was collected on the Mary Coughlan Sings Billie Holiday album. A new studio album was released the following April 2001, entitled Long Honeymoon, the 2000s saw the release of numerous Coughlan compilation albums and her appearance on the RTÉ reality charity show, Celebrity Farm. The release of her most recent offering in 2008, The House of Ill Repute and she has also taken part in the Sanctuary album with Moya Brennan. After her success in the mid-1980s with Tired and Emotional, Coughlan was dealing with serious mis-management in relation to her career and it was so bad that she ended up losing her car, her house and her recording contract with WEA. As a result, she started to drink regularly and was hospitalised over 30 times. Despite minor success with her acting and her music during this period, owing to treatment she received, she recovered in 1994 and found a new partner, Frank Bonadio, with whom she had two more children, bringing her total to five
26.
Billie Holiday
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Eleanora Fagan, professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed Lady Day by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a influence on jazz music. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and she was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of formal music education. There were other singers with equal talent, but Holiday had a voice that captured the attention of her audience. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by the producer John Hammond and she signed a recording contract with Brunswick Records in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson yielded the hit What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia Records and Decca Records. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles, after a short prison sentence, she performed a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, but her reputation deteriorated because of her drug and alcohol problems. Her final recordings were met with mixed reaction to her voice but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958, Holiday died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959. A posthumous album, Last Recording, was released following her death, much of Holidays material has been rereleased since her death. She is considered a performer with an ongoing influence on American music. She is the recipient of four Grammy awards, all of them posthumous awards for Best Historical Album, Holiday herself was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973. Lady Sings the Blues, a film about her life, starring Diana Ross, was released in 1972, Eleanora Fagan was born on April 7,1915, in Philadelphia, the daughter of Sarah Julia Sadie Fagan and Clarence Holiday, an unmarried teenaged couple. Her father did not live with her mother, not long after Eleanora was born, Clarence abandoned his family to pursue a career as a jazz banjo player and guitarist. Sarah moved to Philadelphia at age 19, after she was evicted from her parents home in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, for becoming pregnant. With no support from her parents, she made arrangements with her older, married half-sister, Eva Miller, the child was of African-American ancestry and was also said to have had Irish ancestors through her mothers mixed heritage. Her mother often took what were known as transportation jobs. Holidays autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, first published in 1956, is sketchy on details of her early life, some historians have disputed Holidays paternity, as a copy of her birth certificate in the Baltimore archives lists the father as a man named Frank DeViese
27.
Mississippi John Hurt
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John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer and guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine and he worked as a sharecropper and began playing at dances and parties, singing to a melodious fingerpicked accompaniment. His first recordings, made for Okeh Records in 1928, were commercial failures, tom Hoskins, a blues enthusiast, located Hurt in 1963 and persuaded him to move to Washington, D. C. He was recorded by the Library of Congress in 1964 and this helped further the American folk music revival, which had led to the rediscovery of many other bluesmen of Hurts era. Hurt performed on the university and coffeehouse concert circuit with other Delta blues musicians who were out of retirement. He also recorded albums for Vanguard Records. Hurt died a year after he returned to Mississippi, in Grenada, material recorded by him has been re-released by many record labels. Hurt was born in Teoc, Carroll County, Mississippi, and raised in Avalon, Mississippi. He taught himself to play guitar at the age of nine, stealthily playing the guitar of a friend of his mothers, as a youth he played old-time music for friends and at dances. He worked as a farmhand and sharecropper into the 1920s and his fast, highly syncopated style of playing was meant for dancing. On occasion, a show would come through the area. Hurt recalled that one wanted to him, One of them wanted me. In 1923 he played with the fiddle player Willie Narmour as a substitute for Narmours regular partner, when Narmour got a chance to record for Okeh Records as a prize for winning first place in a 1928 fiddle contest, he recommended Hurt to Okeh producer Tommy Rockwell. After auditioning Monday Morning Blues at his home, Hurt took part in two recording sessions, in Memphis and New York City, while in Memphis, he recalled seeing many, many blues singers. Lonnie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, and lots, lots more, Hurt described his first recording session as follows. A great big hall with only the three of us in it, me, the man, and the engineer. I sat on a chair, and they pushed the right up to my mouth. I had to keep my head absolutely still, oh, I was nervous, and my neck was sore for days after
28.
B.B. King
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Riley Benjamin King, known professionally as B. B. King, was an American blues singer, electric guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. King introduced a style of soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that influenced many later electric blues guitarists. King was known for performing throughout his musical career, appearing at more than 200 concerts per year on average into his 70s. In 1956, he appeared at 342 shows. King was born on a plantation in Berclair, Mississippi. He was attracted to music and the guitar in church, and began his career in juke joints. He later lived in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, King died at the age of 89 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 14,2015, from congestive heart failure and diabetic complications. Riley Benjamin King was born on September 16,1925, on a plantation called Berclair, near the town of Itta Bena, Mississippi. He considered the city of Indianola, Mississippi to be his home. When Riley was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so the boy was raised by his grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael. While young, King sang in the choir at Elkhorn Baptist Church in Kilmichael. King was attracted to the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ because of its music, the local minister led worship with a Sears Roebuck Silvertone guitar. The minister taught King his first three chords and it seems that at the age of 12 he purchased his first guitar for $15.00, although another source indicates he was given his first guitar by Bukka White, his mothers first cousin. In November 1941 King Biscuit Time first aired, broadcasting on KFFA in Helena and it was a radio show featuring the Mississippi Delta blues. King listened to it while on break at a plantation, a self-taught guitarist, he then wanted to become a radio musician. In 1946, King followed Bukka White to Memphis, Tennessee, White took him in for the next ten months. However, King returned to Mississippi shortly afterward, where he decided to prepare himself better for the next visit and he performed on Sonny Boy Williamsons radio program on KWEM in West Memphis, where he began to develop an audience. Kings appearances led to engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis
29.
Freddie King
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Freddie King was an American blues guitarist and singer. He has been described as one of the Three Kings of electric guitar, along with Albert King. He was an influential guitarist with hits for Federal Records in the early 1960s and his soulful and powerful voice and distinctive guitar style inspired countless musicians, particularly guitarists. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, King based his guitar style on Texas and Chicago influences. He was one of the first bluesmen to have a backing band at live performances. According to his birth certificate he was named Fred King. When Freddie was six years old, his mother and his uncle began teaching him to play the guitar, in autumn 1949, King and his family moved from Dallas to the South Side of Chicago. In 1952 King started working in a steel mill, in the same year he married another Texas native, Jessie Burnett. King formed his first band, the Every Hour Blues Boys, with the guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson, in 1952, while employed at the steel mill, the eighteen-year-old King occasionally worked as a sideman with such bands as the Little Sonny Cooper Band and Earl Paytons Blues Cats. In 1953 he recorded with the latter for Parrot Records, as the 1950s went on, King played with several of Muddy Waterss sidemen and other Chicago mainstays, including the guitarists Jimmy Rogers, Robert Lockwood, Jr. Eddie Taylor, Hound Dog Taylor, the bassist Willie Dixon, the pianist Memphis Slim, in 1956 he cut his first record as a leader, for El-Bee Records. The A-side was a duet with Margaret Whitfield, Country Boy, the B-side was a King vocal. Both tracks feature the guitar of Robert Lockwood, Jr. who during these years was also adding rhythm backing, King was repeatedly rejected in auditions for the South Sides Chess Records, the premier blues label, which was the home of Muddy, Wolf, and Walter. The complaint was that King sang too much like B. B. King, a newer blues scene, lively with nightclubs and upstart record companies, was burgeoning on the West Side, though. The bassist and producer Willie Dixon, during a period of estrangement from Chess in the late 1950s, asked King to come to Cobra Records for a session, meanwhile, King established himself as perhaps the biggest musical force on the West Side. He played along with Magic Sam and reputedly played backing guitar, uncredited, on some of Sams tracks for the Mel Londons Chief and Age labels, in 1959 King got to know Sonny Thompson, a pianist, producer, and A&R man for Cincinnatis King Records. Kings owner, Syd Nathan, signed King to the subsidiary Federal Records in 1960, King recorded his debut single for the label on August 26,1960, Have You Ever Loved a Woman backed with Youve Got to Love Her with a Feeling. Hide Away was originally released as the B-side of I Love the Woman, Hide Away was Kings melange of a theme by Hound Dog Taylor and parts by others, such as The Walk, by Jimmy McCracklin, and Peter Gunn, as credited by King
30.
Willie Nelson
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Willie Hugh Nelson is an American musician, singer, songwriter, author, poet, actor, and activist. He was one of the figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has involved in activism for the use of biofuels. Born during the Great Depression, and raised by his grandparents, Nelson wrote his first song at age seven, during high school, he toured locally with the Bohemian Polka as their lead singer and guitar player. After graduating from school in 1950, he joined the Air Force but was later discharged due to back problems. After his return, Nelson attended Baylor University for two years but dropped out because he was succeeding in music, during this time, he worked as a disc jockey in Texas radio stations and a singer in Honky-tonks. Nelson moved to Vancouver, Washington, where he wrote Family Bible, in 1958, he moved to Houston, Texas after signing a contract with D Records. He sang at the Esquire Ballroom weekly and he worked as a disk jockey, during that time, he wrote songs that would become country standards, including Funny How Time Slips Away, Hello Walls, Pretty Paper, and Crazy. In 1960 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and later signed a contract with Pamper Music which allowed him to join Ray Prices band as a bassist. In 1962, he recorded his first album. And Then I Wrote, due to this success, Nelson signed in 1964 with RCA Victor and joined the Grand Ole Opry the following year. After mid-chart hits in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Nelson retired in 1972 and moved to Austin, the ongoing music scene of Austin motivated Nelson to return from retirement, performing frequently at the Armadillo World Headquarters. In 1973, after signing with Atlantic Records, Nelson turned to country, including albums such as Shotgun Willie. In 1975, he switched to Columbia Records, where he recorded the acclaimed album. The same year, he recorded another outlaw country album, Wanted, the Outlaws, along with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser. In 1990, Nelsons assets were seized by the Internal Revenue Service, the difficulty of paying his outstanding debt was aggravated by weak investments he had made during the 1980s. In 1992, Nelson released The IRS Tapes, Wholl Buy My Memories, the profits of the double album—destined to the IRS—and the auction of Nelsons assets cleared his debt. During the 1990s and 2000s, Nelson continued touring extensively, reviews ranged from positive to mixed. He explored genres such as reggae, blues, jazz, Nelson made his first movie appearance in the 1979 film The Electric Horseman, followed by other appearances in movies and on television
31.
Diana Ross
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Diane Ernestine Earle Ross, known professionally as Diana Ross, is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer. As part of the Supremes, her success made it possible for future African-American R&B, Dianas high-pitched and bright lyric-soprano voice has been enjoyed and still is by fans around the world. The group released a record-setting twelve number-one hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100, including the hits Where Did Our Love Go, Baby Love, Come See About Me, Stop. In the Name of Love, You Cant Hurry Love, You Keep Me Hangin On, Love Child and she later released the album Touch Me in the Morning in 1973, its title track reached number 1, as her second solo hit. That same year, her album Lady Sings The Blues, which was the soundtrack of her film based on the life of jazz singer Billie Holiday. By 1975, the Mahogany soundtrack included her third number-one hit and her eponymous 1976 album included her fourth number-one hit, Love Hangover. In 1979, Ross released the album The Boss and her 1980 semi-eponymous album Diana reached number 2 on the US Billboard albums chart, and spawned the number-one hit Upside Down, and the international hit Im Coming Out. After leaving Motown, Ross achieved her sixth and final US number-one hit, Ross has also ventured into acting, with a Golden Globe Award and Academy Award-nominated performance for her performance in the film Lady Sings the Blues. She also starred in two films, Mahogany and The Wiz, later acting in the television films Out of Darkness, for which she also was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Ross was named the Female Entertainer of the Century by Billboard magazine, Ross has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, when her releases with the Supremes and as a solo artist are tallied. In 1988, Ross was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as member of the Supremes, alongside Mary Wilson and she was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. She is a 12-time Grammy nominee, never earning a competitive honor, in December 2016, Billboard magazine named her the 50th most successful dance artist of all time. Diane Ross was born at Hutzel Womens Hospital in Detroit on March 26,1944 and she was the second eldest child of Ernestine, a schoolteacher, and Fred Ross, Sr. a former Army soldier. Much has been made of whether her first name ends in an a or an e, according to Ross, her mother actually named her Diane but a clerical error resulted in her name being recorded as Diana on her birth certificate. She was listed as Diane during the first Supremes records, she introduced herself as Diane until early in the groups heyday and her friends and family still call her Diane. Rosss grandfather John E. Ross, a native of Gloucester County, Virginia, was born to Washington Ross, Virginia Baytops mother Francis Frankey Baytop was a former slave who had become a midwife after the Civil War. Ross and her family lived at Belmont Road in the North End section of Detroit, near Highland Park, MI. When Ross was seven, her mother contracted tuberculosis, causing her to seriously ill
32.
Film
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A film, also called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession, the process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. The word cinema, short for cinematography, is used to refer to the industry of films. Films were originally recorded onto plastic film through a photochemical process, the adoption of CGI-based special effects led to the use of digital intermediates. Most contemporary films are now fully digital through the process of production, distribution. Films recorded in a form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack. It runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it and is not projected, Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them, Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into the language of the viewer, some have criticized the film industrys glorification of violence and its potentially negative treatment of women. The individual images that make up a film are called frames, the perception of motion is due to a psychological effect called phi phenomenon. The name film originates from the fact that film has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for a motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Terms for the field, in general, include the big screen, the screen, the movies, and cinema. In early years, the sheet was sometimes used instead of screen. Preceding film in origin by thousands of years, early plays and dances had elements common to film, scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, much terminology later used in film theory and criticism apply, such as mise en scène. Owing to the lack of any technology for doing so, the moving images, the magic lantern, probably created by Christiaan Huygens in the 1650s, could be used to project animation, which was achieved by various types of mechanical slides
33.
Lady Sings the Blues (film)
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It was produced by Motown Productions for Paramount Pictures. Diana Ross portrayed Holiday, alongside a cast including Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, James T. Callahan, in 1945 New York City, Billie Holiday is arrested on a drugs charge. In a flashback to 1928, Billie is working as a housekeeper in a brothel in Baltimore where she is raped and she runs away to her mother, who sets up a job cleaning for another brothel in the Harlem section of New York. The brothel is run by an arrogant, selfish owner who pays Billie very little money, eventually, Billie tires of scrubbing floors and becomes a prostitute, but later quits and returns to a nightclub to unsuccessfully audition to become a showgirl. After Piano Man accompanies Billie when she sings All of Me, Billies debut begins unsuccessfully until Louis McKay arrives and gives her a fifty dollar tip. Billie takes the money and sings Them There Eyes, Billie takes a liking to Louis and begins a relationship with him. Eventually she is discovered by Harry and Reg Hanley, who sign her as a soloist for their tour in hopes of landing a radio network gig. During the tour, Billie witnesses the aftermath of the lynching of an African-American man, the harsh experiences on the tour result in Billie taking drugs which Harry supplies. One night when Billie is performing, Louis comes to see Billie, in her dressing room, Louis notices her needle marks, knows that she is doing drugs, and tells her she is going home with him. Billie promises to stay off the drugs if Louis stays with her, in New York, Reg and Louis arrange Billies radio debut, but the station does not call her to sing, the radio sponsors, a soap company, object to her race. The group heads to Cafe Manhattan to drown their sorrows, Billie has too much to drink and asks Harry for drugs, saying that she does not want her family to know that the radio show upset her. He refuses and she throws her drink in his face and she is ready to leave, but Louis has arranged for her to sing at the Cafe, a club where she once aspired to sing. She obliges with one song but refuses an encore, leaving the club in urgent need of a fix, Louis, suspicious that Billie has broken her promise, takes her back to his home but refuses to allow her access to the bathroom or her kit. She fights Louis for it, pulling a razor on him, Louis leaves her to shoot up, telling her he does not want her there when he returns. Billie returns to the Harlem nightclub, where her drug use intensifies until she hears of the death of her mother. Billie checks herself into a clinic, but because she cannot afford her treatment the hospital secretly calls Louis. Impressed with the initiative she has taken to straighten herself out, just as things are looking up, Billie is arrested for possession of narcotics and removed from the clinic. In prison, Billie goes through crippling withdrawal, Louis brings the doctor from the hospital to treat her, but she is incoherent
34.
Taj Mahal (musician)
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Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician. He often incorporates elements of music into his works. Born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, Jr. on May 17,1942, in Harlem, New York, Mahal grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Raised in an environment, his mother was a member of a local gospel choir and his father was a West Indian jazz arranger. His family owned a radio which received music broadcasts from around the world. Early in childhood he recognized the differences between the popular music of his day and the music that was played in his home. He also became interested in jazz, enjoying the works of such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk. His parents came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, instilling in their son a sense of pride in his West Indian and African ancestry through their stories. Because his father was a musician, his house was frequently the host of musicians from the Caribbean, Africa. His father, Henry Saint Clair Fredericks Sr. was called The Genius by Ella Fitzgerald before starting his family, early on, Henry Jr. developed an interest in African music, which he studied assiduously as a young man. His parents also encouraged him to music, starting him out with classical piano lessons. He also studied the clarinet, trombone and harmonica, when Mahal was eleven his father was killed in an accident at his own construction company, crushed by a tractor when it flipped over. This was a traumatic experience for the boy. His stepfather owned a guitar which Taj began using at age 13 or 14 and his name was Lynwood Perry, the nephew of the famous bluesman Arthur Big Boy Crudup. In high school Mahal sang in a doo-wop group, for some time Mahal thought of pursuing farming over music. He had developed a passion for farming that nearly rivaled his love of music—coming to work on a farm first at age 16 and it was a dairy farm in Palmer, Massachusetts, not far from Springfield. By age nineteen he had become farm foreman, getting up a bit after 4,00 a. m. I milked anywhere between thirty-five and seventy cows a day. Mahal believes in growing ones own food, saying, You have a generation of kids who think everything comes out of a box and a can
35.
Susan Tedeschi
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Susan Tedeschi is an American blues and soul musician known for her singing voice, guitar playing, and stage presence. A multiple Grammy Award nominee, she is a member of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, which is a conglomeration of her band, her husband Derek Truckss the Derek Trucks Band, Tedeschi served as a judge for the 7th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists careers. Susan Tedeschi was born on November 9,1970, in Boston, Massachusetts, to a family of Italian ancestry and was raised in Norwell, Tedeschi made her public debut as a six-year-old understudy in a Broadway musical. As a youth she sang for members and listened to her fathers record collection of old vinyl recordings of musicians such as Mississippi John Hurt. In bands since the age of 13, she formed her first all-original group at 18, after graduating Norwell High School, Tedeschi attended the Berklee College of Music, where she sang in a Gospel choir. She performed show tunes on the Spirit of Boston and received her Bachelor of Music degree in musical composition, during that time, she began sitting in on blues jams at local venues and immersed herself in the Boston music scene. Tedeschi formed the Susan Tedeschi Band in 1993 featuring Tom Hambridge and she learned how to play blues guitar in Boston from musician Tim Gearan in 1995. It was then she began to hone her skills on the instrument. In December the band released Better Days to regional audiences, record contracts were difficult to keep together, however, recording sessions from 1997 were acquired by Richard Rosenblatt and the band was signed to indy label Tone-Cool Records. Just Wont Burn, featuring young guitarist Sean Costello, was released in February 1998 to very positive reviews, particularly from blues critics, Susan was the first artist to play Michele Clark s very first Sunset Sessions in March 1998 at the Marriott in the US Virgin Islands. In 1999, Tedeschi played several dates in the traveling festival Lilith Fair organized by Sarah McLachlan. Throughout 1998 and 1999 she toured throughout the United States. Eventually Tedeschi was opening for John Mellencamp, B. B. King, Buddy Guy, The Allman Brothers Band, Taj Mahal, in 2000, Just Wont Burn reached Gold record status for sales of 500,000 in the United States, rare for a blues production. She recorded two tracks with Double Trouble band members Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon for their album and she opened for The Rolling Stones in 2003 and played in huge venues, gaining national exposure. Somewhat surprisingly, the gig wasnt financially lucrative, according to Tedeschi, They pay, but its not great. I dont make any money cause Ive got to pay all my sidemen, ill be lucky if I break even. The performance was well received. Susan Tedeschis voice has been described as a blend of Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin and her guitar playing is influenced by Buddy Guy, Johnny Guitar Watson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Freddie King and Doyle Bramhall II
36.
Dinah Washington
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Dinah Washington was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as the most popular black female recording artist of the 50s. Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music. She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, Ruth Lee Jones was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Alice Jones, and moved to Chicago as a child. She became deeply involved in gospel and played piano for the choir in St. Lukes Baptist Church while still in elementary school and she sang gospel music in church and played piano, directing her church choir in her teens and being a member of the Sallie Martin Gospel Singers. She sang lead with the first female gospel singers formed by Ms. Martin and her involvement with the gospel choir occurred after she won an amateur contest at Chicagos Regal Theater where she sang I Cant Face the Music. After winning a talent contest at the age of 15, she began performing in clubs, by 1941–42 she was performing in such Chicago clubs as Daves Rhumboogie and the Downbeat Room of the Sherman Hotel. She was playing at the Three Deuces, a jazz club, club owner Joe Sherman was so impressed with her singing of I Understand, backed by the Cats and the Fiddle, who were appearing in the Garricks upstairs room, that he hired her. During her year at the Garrick – she sang upstairs while Holiday performed in the downstairs room – she acquired the name by which she became known and she credited Joe Sherman with suggesting the change from Ruth Jones, made before Lionel Hampton came to hear Dinah at the Garrick. Hamptons visit brought an offer, and Washington worked as his female band vocalist after she had sung with the band for its opening at the Chicago Regal Theatre, both that record and its follow-up, Salty Papa Blues, made Billboards Harlem Hit Parade in 1944. She stayed with Hamptons band until 1946, after the Keynote label folded, signed for Mercury Records as a solo singer and her first record for Mercury, a version of Fats Wallers Aint Misbehavin, was another hit, starting a long string of success. Between 1948 and 1955, she had 27 R&B top ten hits, making her one of the most popular and successful singers of the period. Both Am I Asking Too Much and Baby Get Lost reached Number 1 on the R&B chart and her hit recordings included blues, standards, novelties, pop covers, and even a version of Hank Williams Cold, Cold Heart. In 1959, she had her first top ten pop hit, with a version of What a Diffrence a Day Made and her band at that time included arranger Belford Hendricks, with Kenny Burrell, Joe Zawinul, and Panama Francis. She followed it up with a version of Irving Gordons Unforgettable and her last big hit was September in the Rain in 1961. She also notably performed two numbers in the dirty blues genre, the songs were Long John Blues about her dentist, with lyrics like He took out his trusty drill. He said he wouldnt hurt me, but he filled my whole inside and she also recorded a song called Big Long Sliding Thing, supposedly about a trombonist. In the 1950s and early 1960s before her death, Washington occasionally performed on the Las Vegas Strip, tony Bennett said of Washington during a recording session with Amy Winehouse, She was a good friend of mine, you know. She used to just come in two suitcases in Vegas without being booked
