1.
Stephen Foster
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Stephen Collins Foster, known as the father of American music, was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlor and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs, among his best-known are Oh, Susanna, Hard Times Come Again No More, Camptown Races, Old Folks at Home, My Old Kentucky Home, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, Old Black Joe, and Beautiful Dreamer. Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them and his compositions are thought to be autobiographical. He has been identified as the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century and his compositions are sometimes referred to as childhood songs because they have been included in the music curriculum of early education. Most of his music manuscripts are lost, but copies printed by publishers of his day can be found in various collections. There are many biographers who have published works on the life of Stephen Collins Foster, in addition, Foster wrote very little biographical information himself. His brother Morrison Foster destroyed much of the information about Stephen that he judged to reflect negatively upon the family, Stephen Foster was born on July 4,1826. His parents were William Barclay Foster and Eliza Clayland Tomlinson and he was the youngest of three sisters and six brothers. Foster attended private academies in Allegheny, Athens, and Towanda and he received an education in English grammar, diction, the classics, penmanship, Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Though they lived in a northern city, his family did not support the abolition of slavery. His older brother Morrison was an influence throughout Stephens life. Foster was able to teach himself to play the clarinet, violin, guitar, flute and he did not have formal instruction in composition but he was helped by Henry Kleber, a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh. Kleber was a songwriter, impresario, accompanist, and conductor, in 1839, his elder brother William was serving his apprenticeship as an engineer at nearby Towanda and thought Stephen would benefit from being under his supervision. The site of the Camptown Races is 30 miles from Athens, PA, Stephen attended Athens Academy from 1839 to 1841. He wrote his first composition, Tioga Waltz while attending Athens Academy and performed it during the 1841 commencement exercises and it was not published during the composers lifetime, but it is included in the collection of published works by Morrison Foster. Fosters education included a period at Jefferson College in Washington. His tuition was paid, but he had little spending money and he left Canonsburg to visit Pittsburgh with another student and did not return. During his teenage years, Foster was influenced by two men, Henry Kleber, one of Fosters few formal music instructors, was a classically trained musician who emigrated from Darmstadt, Germany, to Pittsburgh and opened a music store. Dan Rice was an entertainer, a clown, and blackface singer, in 1846, Foster moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a bookkeeper with his brothers steamship company
2.
Currier and Ives
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Currier and Ives was a successful American printmaking firm headed by Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives based in New York City from 1834 to 1907. The prolific firm produced prints from paintings by artists as black. Nathaniel Currier was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on March 27,1813 and his parents Nathaniel and Hannah Currier were distant cousins who lived a humble and spartan life. Nathaniel worked a series of odd jobs to support the family and, at fifteen, he started became a lifelong career when he apprenticed in the Boston lithography shop of William. In 1833 at age twenty, he moved to Philadelphia to do work for M. E. D. Brown, an engraver and printer. Curriers early lithographs were issued under the name of Stodart & Currier, the two men specialized in job printing and made a variety of print products, including music manuscripts. Currier became dissatisfied with the economic return of their business venture. He set up alone, working as N. Currier, Lithographer until 1856. In 1835, he created a lithograph that illustrated a fire sweeping through New York Citys business district, the print of the Merchants Exchange sold thousands of copies in four days. He quickly gained a reputation as an accomplished lithographer, in 1840, he produced Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat Lexington, which was so successful that he was given a weekly insert in the New York Sun. In this year, Curriers firm began to shift its focus from job printing to independent print publishing, the name Currier & Ives first appeared in 1857, when Currier invited the companys bookkeeper and accountant James Merritt Ives to become his partner. Ives was born on March 5,1824 in New York City and she was the sister-in-law of Nathaniels brother Charles Currier, and it was Charles who recommended Ives to his brother. Nathaniel Currier soon noticed Ivess dedication to his business, and his artistic knowledge, the younger man quickly became the general manager of the firm, handling the financial side of the business by modernizing the bookkeeping, reorganizing inventory, and streamlining the print process. Ives also helped Currier interview potential artists and craftsmen, in 1857, Currier made Ives a full partner. The firm Currier and Ives described itself as Publishers of Cheap, at least 7,500 lithographs were published in the firms 72 years of operation. Artists produced two to three new images every week for 64 years, producing more than a million prints by hand-colored lithography. For the original drawings, Currier & Ives employed or used the work of celebrated artists of the day including James E. Buttersworth, Charles R. Parsons, George Inness, Thomas Nast
3.
Bing Crosby
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Harry Lillis Bing Crosby, Jr. was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, from 1931 to 1954 Crosby was a leader in sales, radio ratings. His early career coincided with technical recording innovations such as the microphone and this allowed him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music, in 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of only 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, Crosby influenced the development of the postwar recording industry. He became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. In addition to his work with early tape recording, he helped to finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, Crosby died at the age of 74 on October 14,1977, from a sudden heart attack in Alcobendas, Spain. Crosby was born on May 2,1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in 1906, Crosbys family moved to Spokane, and in 1913, Crosbys father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house now sits on the campus of Crosbys alma mater Gonzaga University and he was the fourth of seven children, brothers Larry, Everett, Ted, and Bob, and two sisters, Catherine and Mary Rose. His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby, Sr. a bookkeeper, Crosbys mother was a second generation Irish-American. In 1910, seven-year-old Harry Crosby Jr. was forever renamed, the Sunday edition of the Spokesman-Review published a feature called The Bingville Bugle. Written by humorist Newton Newkirk, The Bingville Bugle was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter filled with gossipy tidbits, minstrel quips, creative spelling, and mock ads. A neighbor, 15-year-old Valentine Hobart, shared Crosbys enthusiasm for The Bugle, and noting Crosbys laugh, took a liking to him, eventually, the last vowel was dropped and the nickname stuck. Crosby later described Jolsons delivery as electric, Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended Gonzaga for three years, but did not earn a bachelors degree, as a freshman, he played on the universitys baseball team. The university granted him a doctorate in 1937. In 1923, Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of school students a few years younger than himself. Al Rinker, Miles Rinker, James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, the group performed on Spokane radio station KHQ, but disbanded after two years
4.
Jerry Lee Lewis
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Jerry Lee Lewis is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and pianist, often known by his nickname, The Killer. He has been described as rock & rolls first great wild man, a pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis. Crazy Arms sold 300,000 copies in the South, and he followed this with Great Balls of Fire, Breathless and High School Confidential. However, Lewiss rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to his 13-year-old first cousin once removed when he was 23 years old and he had minimal success in the charts following the scandal, and his popularity quickly eroded. His live performance fees plummeted from $10,000 per night to $250, in the meantime he was determined to gain back some of his popularity. In the early 1960s, he did not have much success, with few exceptions. His live performances at this time were increasingly wild and energetic and his 1964 live album Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is regarded by music journalists and fans as one of the wildest and greatest live rock albums ever. In 1968 Lewis made a transition into country music and had hits with such as Another Place. His No.1 country hits included To Make Love Sweeter for You, There Must Be More to Love Than This, Would You Take Another Chance on Me and Me and Bobby McGee. Lewiss successes continued throughout the decade and he embraced his rock and roll past with songs such as a cover of the Big Boppers Chantilly Lace, in the 21st century Lewis continues to tour around the world and still releases new albums. His album Last Man Standing is his best selling to date and this was followed by Mean Old Man, which has received some of the best sales of Lewiss career. Lewis has a dozen gold records in rock and country. He won several Grammy awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, Lewis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He was also a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, in 1989, his life was chronicled in the movie Great Balls of Fire, starring Dennis Quaid. In 2003, Rolling Stone listed his box set All Killer, No Filler, in 2004, they ranked him number 24 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Lewis is the last surviving member of Sun Records Million Dollar Quartet and the Class of 55 album and his parents mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano. Lewis was influenced by an older cousin, Carl McVoy, the radio, and the sounds from Haneys Big House. On the live album By Request, More of the Greatest Live Show on Earth and he was also influenced by the Great American Songbook and popular country singers like Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams
5.
Roy Orbison
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Roy Kelton Orbison, nicknamed the Big O, was an American singer-songwriter and musician, known for his distinctive, impassioned voice, complex compositions and dark emotional ballads. The combination led many critics to describe his music as operatic, between 1960 and 1964,22 of his songs placed on the Billboard Top 40, including Only the Lonely, Crying, and Oh, Pretty Woman. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly and country and he was signed by Sun Records in 1956, but his greatest success came with Monument Records in the early 1960s. His career stagnated in the 1970s, but was revived by several versions of his songs. In 1988, he was a member of the Traveling Wilburys supergroup, along with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and he recorded his last solo album, Mystery Girl, the same year but died of a heart attack shortly thereafter. While most male rock and roll performers in the 1950s and 1960s projected a defiant masculinity, many of Orbisons songs instead conveyed a quiet, almost desperate and his voice ranged from baritone to tenor, and music scholars have suggested that he had a three- or four-octave range. During performances, he was known for standing still and solitary, and for wearing black clothes and dark sunglasses, which lent an air of mystery to his persona. His honors include inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in the year. Rolling Stone placed him at number 37 on their list of the Greatest Artists of All Time, in 2002, Billboard magazine listed Orbison at number 74 in the Top 600 recording artists. Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas, the son of Orbie Lee Orbison, an oil well driller and car mechanic, and Nadine Vesta Shults. Both of his parents were unemployed during the Great Depression and, searching for work, moved the family to Fort Worth, Texas and he attended Denver Avenue Elementary School until a polio scare prompted the family to return to Vernon. Later, they moved to Wink, Texas, Orbison later described life in Wink as football, oil fields, oil, grease and sand and expressed relief that he was able to leave the desolate town. All the Orbison children were afflicted with poor eyesight, Roy used thick corrective lenses from an early age and he was not confident about his appearance and began dyeing his nearly-white hair black when he was still young. He was quiet and self-effacing, remarkably polite and obliging — a product, biographer Alan Clayson wrote and he was readily available to sing, however, and often became the focus of attention when he did. He considered his voice memorable, if not great, on Roys sixth birthday, his father gave him a guitar. He later recalled that by the age of seven, I was finished, you know, for anything else and his major musical influence as a youth was country music. He was particularly moved by Lefty Frizzells singing, with its slurred syllables and he also enjoyed Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers. One of the first musicians he heard in person was Ernest Tubb, in West Texas, he was exposed to many forms of music, sepia, Tex-Mex, the orchestral arrangements of Mantovani and cajun
6.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
7.
Brian Wilson
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Brian Douglas Wilson is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer best known for being the multi-tasking leader and co-founder of the rock band the Beach Boys. After signing with Capitol Records in 1962, Wilson wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen Top 40 hits for the group, in the mid-1960s, Wilson composed, arranged and produced Pet Sounds, considered one of the greatest albums ever made. The intended follow-up to Pet Sounds, Smile, was canceled for various reasons, as he suffered repeated nervous breakdowns, Wilsons contributions to the Beach Boys diminished, and his erratic behavior led to tensions with the band. He remains a member of the Beach Boys corporation, Brother Records Incorporated, Wilsons work with the Beach Boys helped raise pop music to the level of high art. Wilson effectively set a precedent that allowed bands and artists to enter a recording studio and his songs became inextricably tied with the zeitgeist of the early 1960s, and he helped develop the sound of the wistful Flower Power era that proceeded. In later years, Wilson was regarded as a godfather to an era of musicians who were inspired by his melodic sensibilities, chamber pop orchestrations. His honors include being inducted into the 1988 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and winning Grammy Awards for Brian Wilson Presents Smile and The Smile Sessions. In lists published by Rolling Stone, Wilson ranked 52 for the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2008 and 12 for the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015. In 2012, music publication NME ranked Wilson number 8 in its 50 Greatest Producers Ever list and he is an occasional actor and voice actor, having appeared in television shows, films, and other artists music videos. His life was portrayed in the 2014 biopic Love & Mercy, Brian Douglas Wilson was born on June 20,1942, at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood, California, the son of Audree Neva and Murry Wilson. He was the eldest of three boys, his brothers were Dennis and Carl. He has English, Swedish, Dutch, German, and Irish ancestry, when Brian was two, the family moved from Inglewood to 3701 West 119th Street in nearby Hawthorne, California. Murry Wilson said, He was very clever and quick, I just fell in love with him. At about age two, Brian heard George Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue, which had an emotional impact on him. A few years later, he was discovered to have diminished hearing in his right ear. The exact cause of hearing loss is unclear, though theories range from him simply being born partially deaf to a blow to the head from his father, or a neighborhood bully. While Brians father Murry was ostensibly a reasonable provider, he was often abusive, a minor musician and songwriter, he also encouraged his children in this field in numerous ways. At an early age, Brian was given six weeks of lessons on a toy accordion and, at seven and eight, at Hawthorne High School, Brian was on the football team as a quarterback, played baseball and was a cross-country runner in his senior year
8.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
9.
Doo-wop
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Built upon vocal harmony, doo-wop was one of the most mainstream, pop-oriented R&B styles of the time. Doo-wop features vocal harmony, nonsense syllables, a simple beat, sometimes little or no instrumentation. The first record to use the syllables doo-wop was the 1955 hit When You Dance by The Turbans, the term doo-wop first appeared in print in 1961. During the late 1950s many Italian-American groups contributed a significant part in the doo-wop scene, the peak of doo-wop was in 1961. Doo-wops influence continued in soul, pop, and rock groups of the 1960s, at various times in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the genre has seen revivals. Doo-wop was a precursor to many of the African-American musical styles seen today, an evolution of jazz and blues, doo-wop also influenced many of the major rock and roll groups that defined the later decades of the 20th century. Doo-wop is iconic for its beats and using the off-beat to keep time. Doo-wop laid the foundation for musical innovations, for example. These were generally slow songs in swing time with simple instrumentation, the subject of the lyrics was generally love and relationships. This characteristic harmonic layout was combined with the AABA chorus form typical for Tin Pan Alley pop, a second stream of doo-wop oriented itself to the harmonic, formal and melodic means of jump blues. From the outset, singers gathered on street corners, and in subways, for instance, Count Every Star by The Ravens, includes vocalizations imitating the doomph, doomph plucking of a double bass. This art dates to The Mills Brothers, who first came to fame in the 1930s with their mimicking of instrumental music, radio, gramophone, and cinema inspired imitation in many U. S. cities. The late 1940s and early 1950s brought the bird groups, The Swallows. A number of names are also drawn from cars. The Orioles helped develop the sound with their hits Its Too Soon to Know. The term doo-wop first appeared in print in 1961 in the Chicago Defender, the phrase was attributed to radio disc jockey Gus Gossert but Gossert suggested doo-wop was already in use to categorize the music in California. The first record to use the syllables doo-wop in the refrain was the 1955 hit When You Dance by The Turbans, previously, the scat backing vocal doo-wop is heard in The Clovers 1953 release Good Lovin and in the chorus of Carlyle Dundee & The Dundees 1954 song Never. After some time, the term doo-wop finally caught on as both a description and category for R&B vocal group harmony, the definition expanded backward to include rhythm and blues groups from the mid-1950s, then cascaded even further back to include groups from the 1940s
10.
The Beatles
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The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them. They acquired the nickname the Fab Four as Beatlemania grew in Britain the next year, from 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road, after their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed successful musical careers of varying lengths. McCartney and Starr, the members, remain musically active. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in November 2001. The Beatles are the band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act, according to the RIAA, the Beatles are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazines list of the all-time most successful Hot 100 artists, as of 2016 and they have received ten Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and they were also collectively included in Time magazines compilation of the twentieth centurys 100 most influential people. In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a local group was already using the other name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he, in February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, after a month of Harrisons persistence, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennons Quarry Bank friends had left the group, the three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. They used the name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver Beatles, allan Williams, the Beatles unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg, but lacking a full-time drummer they auditioned and hired Pete Best in mid-August 1960
