Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American rock guitarist and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music". Born in Seattle, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the U. S. trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965, he played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who in turn interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", "The Wind Cries Mary".
He achieved fame in the U. S. after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the U. S.. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27. Hendrix was inspired musically by American roll and electric blues, he favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, was instrumental in popularizing the undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units, such as fuzz tone, wah-wah, Uni-Vibe in mainstream rock, he was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously.
In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year, in 1968, Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year; the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time. Jimi Hendrix had a diverse heritage, his paternal grandmother, Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, was one-quarter Cherokee. Hendrix's paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, was born out of an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny, a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, or Illinois, one of the wealthiest men in the area at that time. After Hendrix and Moore relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, had a son they named James Allen Hendrix on June 10, 1919.
In 1941 after moving to Seattle, Al met Lucille Jeter at a dance. Lucille's father was Preston Jeter, whose mother was born in similar circumstances as Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix. Lucille's mother, née Clarice Lawson, had African Cherokee ancestors. Al, drafted by the U. S. Army to serve in World War II, left to begin his basic training three days after the wedding. Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on November 1942, in Seattle. In 1946, Johnny's parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix, in honor of Al and his late brother Leon Marshall. Stationed in Alabama at the time of Hendrix's birth, Al was denied the standard military furlough afforded servicemen for childbirth, he spent two months locked up without trial, while in the stockade received a telegram announcing his son's birth. During Al's three-year absence, Lucille struggled to raise their son; when Al was away, Hendrix was cared for by family members and friends Lucille's sister Delores Hall and her friend Dorothy Harding. Al received an honorable discharge from the U.
S. Army on September 1, 1945. Two months unable to find Lucille, Al went to the Berkeley, home of a family friend named Mrs. Champ, who had taken care of and had attempted to adopt Hendrix. After returning from service, Al reunited with Lucille, but his inability to find steady work left the family impoverished, they both struggled with alcohol, fought when intoxicated. The violence sometimes drove Hendrix to hide in a closet in their home, his relationship with his brother Leon was precarious. In ad
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals. The vibration occurs when a guitar player strums, fingerpicks, slaps or taps the strings; the pickup uses electromagnetic induction to create this signal, which being weak is fed into a guitar amplifier before being sent to the speaker, which converts it into audible sound. The electric signal can be electronically altered to change the timbre of the sound; the signal is modified using effects such as reverb, distortion and "overdrive". Invented in 1931, the electric guitar was adopted by jazz guitar players, who wanted to play single-note guitar solos in large big band ensembles. Early proponents of the electric guitar on record include Les Paul, Lonnie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, T-Bone Walker, Charlie Christian. During the 1950s and 1960s, the electric guitar became the most important instrument in popular music, it has evolved into an instrument, capable of a multitude of sounds and styles in genres ranging from pop and rock to country music and jazz.
It served as a major component in the development of electric blues and roll, rock music, heavy metal music and many other genres of music. Electric guitar design and construction varies in the shape of the body and the configuration of the neck and pickups. Guitars may have a fixed bridge or a spring-loaded hinged bridge, which lets players "bend" the pitch of notes or chords up or down, or perform vibrato effects; the sound of an electric guitar can be modified by new playing techniques such as string bending and hammering-on, using audio feedback, or slide guitar playing. There are several types of electric guitar, including: the solid-body guitar. In pop and rock music, the electric guitar is used in two roles: as a rhythm guitar, which plays the chord sequences or progressions, riffs, sets the beat. In a small group, such as a power trio, one guitarist switches between both roles. In large rock and metal bands, there is a rhythm guitarist and a lead guitarist. Many experiments at electrically amplifying the vibrations of a string instrument were made dating back to the early part of the 20th century.
Patents from the 1910s show telephone transmitters were adapted and placed inside violins and banjos to amplify the sound. Hobbyists in the 1920s used carbon button microphones attached to the bridge. With numerous people experimenting with electrical instruments in the 1920s and early 1930s, there are many claimants to have been the first to invent an electric guitar. Electric guitars were designed by acoustic guitar makers and instrument manufacturers; the demand for amplified guitars began during the big band era. The first electric guitars used in jazz were hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies with electromagnetic transducers. Early electric guitar manufacturers include Rickenbacker in 1932; the first electrically amplified stringed instrument to be marketed commercially was designed in 1931 by George Beauchamp, the general manager of the National Guitar Corporation, with Paul Barth, vice president. The maple body prototype for the one-piece cast aluminium "frying pan" was built by Harry Watson, factory superintendent of the National Guitar Corporation.
Commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation, in Los Angeles, a partnership of Beauchamp, Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Barth. In 1934, the company was renamed the Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company. In that year Beauchamp applied for a United States patent for an Electrical Stringed Musical Instrument and the patent was issued in 1937. By early-mid 1935, Electro String Instrument Corporation had achieved mainstream success with the A-22 "Frying Pan" steel guitar, set out to capture a new audience through its release of the Electro-Spanish Model B and the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts, the first full 25" scale electric guitar produced; the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts was revolutionary for its time, providing players a full 25" scale, with easy access to 17 frets free of the body. Unlike other lap-steel electrified instruments produced during the time, the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts was designed to play standing vertical, upright with a strap; the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts was the first instrument to feature a hand-operated vibrato as a standard appointment, a device called the "Vibrola," invented by Doc Kauffman.
It is estimated that fewer than 50 Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts were constructed between 1933 and 1937. The solid-body electric guitar is made without functionally resonating air spaces; the first solid-body Spanish standard guitar was offered by Vivi-Tone no than 1934. This model featured a guitar-shaped body of a single sheet
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience was an American-English rock band that formed in Westminster, London, in September 1966. Singer and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, drummer Mitch Mitchell, bassist Noel Redding comprised the group, active until June 1969. During this time, they became one of the most popular acts in rock. Starting in April 1970, Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox performed and recorded until Hendrix's death on September 18, 1970; this trio was sometimes billed as the "Jimi Hendrix Experience", but the title was never formalized. Influential in the popularization of hard rock and psychedelic rock, the Experience was best known for the skill and charisma of their frontman, Jimi Hendrix. All three of the band's studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland, were featured in the top 100 of the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at positions 15, 82 and 54 respectively. In 1992, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame.
Jimi Hendrix arrived in England on September 24, 1966, with his new manager and former Animals bassist, Chas Chandler, formed a backing band with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. Mitchell was a seasoned London drummer with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. Hendrix chose Redding because of his attitude towards his hairstyle. Redding played bass in the band; the name "The Jimi Hendrix Experience" was coined by their business manager Michael Jeffery. The first official appearance of "The Jimi Hendrix Experience" was at the Novelty in Évreux, France, on October 13, 1966. Six days the band played their first UK gig at a private showcase at the Scotch of St James. Though conceived as back-up band for Hendrix, the Experience, as a unit, gained fame and critical acclaim. Following the lead of Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was one of the first groups to popularize the "power trio" format, which limited a rock band's line-up to guitar and drums. Hendrix combined rhythm guitar styles, using fuzz and wah-wah pedals to modify his tone.
Mitchell sometimes utilized jazz-influenced grooves, while Redding played simple bass lines that helped to anchor the band's sound. Visually, they set the trend in psychedelic hairstyles, their early performances, such as at The Bag O'Nails in London, were attended by some of the biggest names in the English rock scene, including members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. The Who's Pete Townshend admitted, " changed the whole sound of electric guitar and turned the rock world upside down". Clapton agreed: "after Pete Townshend and I went to see him play, I thought, it, the game was up for all of us, we may as well pack it in." The group came to prominence in the US after the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, one of the first major rock music festivals. The band's performance ended with Hendrix famously setting his psychedelically painted Fender Stratocaster on fire. After the festival they toured with the Monkees, but left the tour two weeks reportedly due to lack of audience response.
With the Experience, Hendrix recorded several hit singles, such as "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", "The Wind Cries Mary", "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" and "All Along the Watchtower", three successful albums: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland. By April 1969, Hendrix's deteriorating relations with Redding were coming to a head, he felt his musical development was hampered by the trio format; the original group held together long enough to fulfill their existing engagements, culminating in the Denver Pop Festival on June 29, 1969. After hearing that Hendrix was planning to expand the Experience lineup without first consulting him, Redding quit the group and returned to England. Hendrix and Mitchell experimented with a larger ensemble. Sometimes referred to as Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, they performed at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969. By November the lineup split and Hendrix returned to the trio format with Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. After recording the Band of Gypsys album and an aborted performance in January 1970, Miles was fired.
Michael Jeffery called Mitchell about reforming the Experience. Both agreed to participate in a tour. Hendrix was reluctant to bring Redding back into the fold. In early February 1970, Jeffery set up an interview with Rolling Stone magazine to announce the return of the group, published on March 19, 1970 in Rolling Stone as "J. H.: The End of a Beginning Maybe". Redding waited for weeks to hear back about rehearsals for the upcoming tour, when he spoke with Mitchell's girlfriend, he learned that he had been replaced by Cox. Before the tour started, Hendrix called it "The Cry of Love Tour"; the group itself was referred to as "Jimi Hendrix" and sometimes the "Jimi Hendrix Experience". The trio toured and recorded in the US from April until August 1970. At the end of August, the European leg of the tour began, as a headliner at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. During a break in the tour, Hendrix died on September 18, 1970. In 1992, the Experience was inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame. Noel Redding was found dead in his home in Ireland on May 11, 2003.
While touring in the US, Mitch Mitchell was found dead on November 12, 2008 in his room at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Jimi Hendrix – lead vocals, guitars Mitch Mitchell – drums, backing vocals Noel Reddin
Chicago blues
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music indigenous to Chicago, Illinois. Chicago blues is an electric blues style of urban blues. Urban blues evolved from classic blues following the Great Migration, or the Great Northern Drive, both forced and voluntary at times, of African Americans from the southern United States to the industrial cities of the north, such as Chicago. Big Bill Broonzy and Muddy Waters directly joined that migration, like many others, avoiding the more harsh southern Jim Crow laws. Bruce Iglauer, founder of Alligator Records stated that, "Chicago blues is the music of the industrial city, has an industrial sense about it." Additionally, recognizing the shift in blues, Chicago blues singer and guitarist Kevin Moore expressed the blues transition stating, "You have to put some new life into it, new blood, new perspectives. You can't keep talking about mules, workin' on the levee." Chicago blues was influenced by Mississippi bluesmen who traveled to Chicago in the early 1940s.
The development of blues, up to Chicago blues, is arguably as follows: Country blues, to city blues, to urban blues. Chicago blues is based on the sound of the electric guitar and the harmonica, with the harmonica played through a PA system or guitar amplifier, both amplified and to the point of distortion, a rhythm section of drums and bass with piano depending on the song or performer. Urban blues started in Chicago and St. Louis, as music created by part-time musicians playing as street musicians, at rent parties, other events in the black community. For example, bottleneck guitarist Kokomo Arnold was a steelworker and had a moonshine business, far more profitable than his music. An early incubator for Chicago blues was the open-air market on Maxwell Street, one of the largest open-air markets in the nation. Residents of the black community would frequent it to sell just about anything, it was a natural location for blues musicians to perform, earn tips, jam with other musicians. The standard path for blues musicians was to start out as street musicians and at house parties and make their way to blues clubs.
The first blues clubs in Chicago were in predominantly black neighborhoods on the South Side, with a few in the smaller black neighborhoods on the West Side. New trends in technology, chaotic streets and bars adding drums to an electric mix, gave birth to a new club culture. One of the most famous was Ruby Lee Gatewood's Tavern, known by patrons as "The Gates". During the 1930s every big-name artist played there. What drove the blues to international influence was the promotion of record companies such as Paramount Records, RCA Victor, Columbia Records. Through such record companies Chicago blues became a commercial enterprise; the new style of music reached Europe and the United Kingdom. In the 1960s, young British musicians were influenced by Chicago blues resulting in the British blues movement. According to Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies, Chicago blues saw its best documentation during the 1970s thanks in part to Alligator Records and its owner Bruce Iglauer, described by Robert Christgau as a "folkie Leonard Chess.
Well-known Chicago blues players include singer/songwriters such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Earl Hooker, Slim Harpo and Koko Taylor. Hutto, Elmore James. Many blues artists recorded for Bluebird, if only while Arthur Crudup, Lil Green and Tommy McClennan spent their entire career with the label. Chess Records, run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, was the most famous of the Chicago record labels to feature or promote the blues. Musician and critic Cub Koda described Chess Records as "America's greatest blues label." It was active from 1950 -- 1969. Most solo artists did double duty as session musicians on the records of others. Checker Records was a subsidiary of Chess that recorded Chicago blues musicians such as Bo Diddley, J. B. Lenoir, Robert Lockwood Jr. and Sonny Boy Williamson II. Cobra Records was an independent record label that operated from 1956 to 1959; the label was important for launching the recording careers of Chicago blues artists Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Buddy Guy.
It signaled the emergence of a distinctive West Side Sound. Cobra Records was started on Chicago's West Side in 1956 by Eli Toscano; when his previous record label, Abco Records, created in early 1956 alongside Record man Joe Brown, failed to generate much interest, Toscano approached Willie Dixon about working for Cobra. Dissatisfied with his arrangement with Chess Records, Dixon joined Cobra. There he served in many capacities, including talent scout, arranger and bassist, as well as guiding its artistic vision. Delmark was formed when Bob Koester moved his Delmar label from St. L
Robin Trower
Robin Leonard Trower is an English rock guitarist and vocalist who achieved success with Procol Harum during the 1960s, again as the bandleader of his own power trio known as Robin Trower. Robin Trower was born in Catford, but grew up in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. In 1962, he formed a group that became The Paramounts including Westcliff High School pupil Gary Brooker; the Paramounts disbanded in 1966 to pursue individual projects. During this time, Trower created. Trower joined Brooker's new band Procol Harum following the success of their debut single "A Whiter Shade of Pale" in 1967, remaining with them until 1971 and appearing on the group's first five albums. Before launching his eponymous band, he joined singer Frankie Miller, ex-Stone the Crows bassist/singer James Dewar, former Jethro Tull drummer Clive Bunker to form the short-lived combo Jude; this outfit soon split up. Trower retained Dewar as his bassist, who took on lead vocals as well, recruited drummer Reg Isidore to form the Robin Trower Band in 1973.
Trower's most famous album is Bridge of Sighs. This album, along with his first and third solo albums, was produced by his former Procol Harum bandmate, organist Matthew Fisher. Despite differences, Trower's early power trio work. Trower is an influential guitarist who has inspired other guitar legends such as Robert Fripp, who praised him for his bends and the quality of his sounds, took lessons from him. In the early 1980s, Trower teamed up with former Cream bassist Jack Bruce and his previous drummers Lordan and Isidore, for two albums, BLT and Truce. After those albums, he released another album with James Dewar on vocals titled Back It Up in 1983. Robin Trower was dropped from Chrysalis Records afterwards. Trower was a part of the Night of the Guitars II European tour in 1991, organised by Sting and The Police manager Miles Copeland; the tour featured Ronnie Montrose, Rick Derringer, Saga's Ian Crichton, Dave Sharman, Jan Akkerman and Laurie Wisefield. Thirteen albums Trower's album, Living Out of Time, featured the return of veteran bandmates Dave Bronze on bass, vocalist Davey Pattison and Pete Thompson on drums—the same line-up as the mid-1980s albums Passion and Take What You Need.
With the same bandmates, Trower gave a concert on his 60th birthday in Germany. The concert was recorded by the German television channel WDR, it was released on DVD and subsequently on CD throughout Europe and the US under the title Living Out of Time: Live. Trower toured the United States and Canada in the summer and autumn of 2006. In 2007, Trower released a third recording with Jack Bruce, Seven Moons, featuring Gary Husband on drums. A 2008 world tour began in Ft. Pierce, Florida on 16 January 2008. Joining Davey Pattison and Pete Thompson was Glenn Letsch playing bass. European dates began in April; the show of 29 March 2008 at the Royal Oak Music Theater in Royal Oak, Michigan was released as a double album on V12 Records. Trower has described James Brown as his "big hero" Brown's early work "where blues is crossing over into rock and roll". In 2016, he enjoyed a successful tour of the USA. On 20 March 2018, Robin Trower played a show at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in Annapolis, Maryland.
Ten minutes after playing back to back songs "Day of The Eagle" and "Bridge of Sighs", he announced on his microphone that he wasn't feeling well, handed his guitar to a stage crew, walked backstage and collapsed. He was transported by ambulance to the hospital for treatment. During a tour with Jethro Tull, Robin Trower arrived early for a sound check and found Martin Barre's Fender Stratocaster propped up against an amplifier. Trower picked up the guitar, plugged it in, with a shout which resounded around the auditorium he yelled, "This is it!". "I switched to Strat" he says. "Up to I had been playing Les Pauls." Since Trower has been an ongoing proponent of the Fender Stratocaster. He uses his custom-built Strat which comes in black, arctic white and midnight wine burst; the guitar is equipped with a 1950s reissue pick-up in the neck position, a 1960s reissue in the middle position, a Texas Special at the bridge. Other features included a custom C-shaped maple neck featuring a large headstock with a Bullet truss-rod system, locking machine heads and a maple fingerboard with narrow-spaced abalone dot position inlays and 21 frets.
The Strats he plays live are an exact model of his signature guitar, unmodified. For his first two albums, his guitar was tuned in Standard Tuning EADGBE. Starting from the third album, he detuned the strings a semitone to an Eb Tuning, it is reported that during live performances, his guitar is tuned a full step down to a DGCFAD tuning. Trower uses between three 100-watt Marshall heads with four to six cabinets on stage. While he uses two JCM 800s and a JCM 900, he links 100-watt Marshall Plexi heads. In studio sessions, Trower uses a mix of amplifiers, such as a Fender Blues Junior and Cornell Plexi Amplifers models to acquire different tonality. Trower has been using Marshall Vintage Modern 2466 heads live, he has been using Fulltone pedals and effects. He favours the OCD, Distortion Pro, Fat Boost, CLYDE Deluxe Wah, Deja Vibe 2, Soul-Bender, a BOSS Chromatic Tuner, he runs his Deja Vibe into his distortion pedal to get his
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the mid to late 1960s. Termed "progressive pop", the style was an outgrowth of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of "art", the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which involved creating music for listening, not dancing. Prog is based on fusions of styles and genres, involving a continuous move between formalism and eclecticism. Due to its historical reception, prog's scope is sometimes limited to a stereotype of long solos, overlong albums, fantasy lyrics, grandiose stage sets and costumes, an obsessive dedication to technical skill. While the genre is cited for its merging of high culture and low culture, few artists incorporated literal classical themes in their work to any great degree, only a handful of groups purposely emulated or referenced classical music.
The genre coincided with the mid 1960s economic boom that allowed record labels to allocate more creative control to their artists, as well as the new journalistic division between "pop" and "rock" that lent generic significance to both terms. Prog faded soon after. Conventional wisdom holds that the rise of punk rock caused this, but several more factors contributed to the decline. Music critics, who labelled the concepts as "pretentious" and the sounds as "pompous" and "overblown", tended to be hostile towards the genre or to ignore it. After the late 1970s, progressive rock fragmented in numerous forms; some bands achieved commercial success well into the 1980s or crossed into symphonic pop, arena rock, or new wave. Early groups who exhibited progressive features are retroactively described as "proto-prog"; the Canterbury scene, originating in the late 1960s, denoted a subset of prog bands who emphasised the use of wind instruments, complex chord changes and long improvisations. Rock in Opposition, from the late 1970s, was more avant-garde, when combined with the Canterbury style, created avant-prog.
In the 1980s, a new subgenre, neo-progressive rock, enjoyed some commercial success, although it was accused of being derivative and lacking in innovation. Post-progressive draws upon newer developments in popular music and the avant-garde since the mid 1970s; the term "progressive rock" is synonymous with "art rock", "classical rock" and "symphonic rock". "art rock" has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. The first is progressive rock as it is understood, while the second usage refers to groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach. Similarities between the two terms are that they both describe a British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. However, art rock is more to have experimental or avant-garde influences. "Prog" was devised in the 1990s as a shorthand term, but became a transferable adjective suggesting a wider palette than that drawn on by the most popular 1970s bands.
Progressive rock is varied and is based on fusions of styles and genres, tapping into broader cultural resonances that connect to avant-garde art, classical music and folk music and the moving image. Although a unidirectional English "progressive" style emerged in the late 1960s, by 1967, progressive rock had come to constitute a diversity of loosely associated style codes; when the "progressive" label arrived, the music was dubbed "progressive pop" before it was called "progressive rock", with the term "progressive" referring to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formula. A number of additional factors contributed to the acquired "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic. Critics of the genre limit its scope to a stereotype of long solos, overlong albums, fantasy lyrics, grandiose stage sets and costumes, an obsessive dedication to technical skill. While progressive rock is cited for its merging of high culture and low culture, few artists incorporated literal classical themes in their work to any great degree, only a handful of groups purposely emulated or referenced classical music.
Writer Emily Robinson says that the narrowed definition of "progressive rock" was a measure against the term's loose application in the late 1960s, when it was "applied to everyone from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones". Debate over the genre's criterion continued to the 2010s on Internet forums dedicated to prog. According to musicologists Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell, Bill Martin and Edward Macan authored major books about prog rock while "effectively accept the characterization of progressive rock offered by its critics.... They each do so unconsciously." Academic John S. Cotner contests Macan's view that progressive rock cannot exist without the continuous and overt assimilation of classical music into rock. Author Kevin Holm-Hudson ag
Rory Gallagher
William Rory Gallagher was an Irish blues and rock multi-instrumentalist and producer. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, brought up in Cork, Gallagher recorded solo albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s, after forming the band Taste during the late 1960s, his albums have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Gallagher received a liver transplant in 1995, but died of complications that year in London at the age of 47. Gallagher was born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal in 1948, his father Daniel was employed by the Irish Electricity Supply Board, who were constructing Cathaleen's Fall hydroelectric power station on the Erne River above the town. The family moved to Derry City, where his younger brother Dónal was born in 1949, his mother and the two boys moved to Cork, where the brothers were raised. Rory attended North Monastery School. Daniel Gallagher had played the accordion and sang with the Tír Chonaill Céilí Band while in Donegal; the Theatre in Ballyshannon where Monica once acted is now called the Rory Gallagher Theatre.
Both sons were musically encouraged to pursue music by their parents. At age nine, Gallagher received his first guitar from them, he built on his burgeoning ability on ukulele in teaching himself to play the guitar and perform at minor functions. After winning a cash prize in a talent contest when he was twelve, he bought his first guitar. Gallagher began performing in his adolescence with both his acoustic guitar, an electric guitar. However, it was a 1961 Fender Stratocaster, which he purchased three years for £100, that became his primary instrument and was most associated with him during his career. Gallagher was attracted to skiffle after hearing Lonnie Donegan on the radio. Donegan covered blues and folk performers from the United States, he relied on radio programs and television. The BBC would play some blues numbers, he found some song books for guitar, where he found the names of the actual composers of blues pieces. While still in school, playing songs by Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, he discovered his greatest influence in Muddy Waters.
He began experimenting with folk and rock music. Unable to find or afford record albums, Gallagher stayed up late to hear Radio Luxembourg and AFN where the radio brought him his only exposure to the actual songwriters and musicians whose music moved him most. Influences he discovered, cited as he progressed, included Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly. Gallagher struck out after just an acoustic sound. Singing and using a brace for his harmonica, Gallagher taught himself to play slide guitar. Further, throughout the next few years of his musical development, Gallagher began learning to play alto saxophone, mandolin and the coral sitar with varying degrees of proficiency. By his mid-teens, he began experimenting with different blues styles. Gallagher began playing after school with Irish showbands. In 1963, he joined one named a sextet playing the popular hit songs of the day; the band toured Ireland and the United Kingdom, earning the money for the payments that were due on his Stratocaster guitar.
Gallagher began to influence the band's repertoire, beginning its transition from mainstream pop music, skirting along some of Chuck Berry's songs and by 1965, he had moulded Fontana into "The Impact", with a change in their line-up into an R&B group that played gigs in Ireland and Spain until disbanding in London. Gallagher left with drummer to perform as a trio in Hamburg, Germany. In 1966, Gallagher returned to Ireland and, experimenting with other musicians back home in Cork, decided to form his own band. Having completed a musical apprenticeship in the showbands, influenced by the increasing popularity of beat groups during the early 1960s, Gallagher formed "The Taste", renamed "Taste", a blues rock and R&B power trio, in 1966; the band was composed of Gallagher and two Cork musicians, Eric Kitteringham and Norman Damery. However, by 1968, they were replaced with two musicians from Belfast, featuring Gallagher on guitar and vocals, drummer John Wilson, bassist Richard McCracken. Performing extensively in the UK, the group played at the Marquee Club, supporting both Cream at their Royal Albert Hall farewell concert, the blues supergroup Blind Faith on a tour of North America.
Managed by Eddie Kennedy, the trio released the albums Taste and On The Boards, two live recordings, Live Taste and Live at the Isle of Wight. The latter appeared long after the band's break-up shortly after their appearance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. After the break-up of Taste, Gallagher toured under his own name, hiring former Deep Joy bass player Gerry McAvoy to play on Gallagher's self-titled debut album, Rory Gallagher, it was the beginning of a twenty-year musical relationship between McAvoy. The 1970s were Gallagher's most prolific period, he produced ten albums in that decade, including two live albums, Live in Europe and Irish Tour'74. November 1971 saw the release of the album Deuce. In the same year he was voted Melody Maker's International Top Guitarist of the Year, ahead of Eric Clapton. However, despite a number of his albums from this period reaching the UK Albums Chart, Gallagher did not attain major star status. Gallagher played and recorded what he said was "in me all the time, not just something I turn on...".
Though he sold over thirty million albums worldwide, it was his marathon live performances that w
