1.
Woody Guthrie
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He frequently performed with the slogan This machine kills fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is This Land Is Your Land, many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States Communist groups, Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntingtons disease, a genetic neurological disorder. Guthrie was born in Okemah, a town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to 30 plots of land in Okfuskee County. He was actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a conservative Democratic candidate for office in the county, when Charles was making stump speeches, he would often be accompanied by his son. Charles Guthrie was involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson, Woody Guthrie wrote three songs about the event and said that his father, Charles, was later a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan. Guthries early family life was affected by fires, including one that caused the loss of his familys home in Okemah. His sister Clara later died in a fire when Guthrie was seven. Guthries mother, Nora, was afflicted with Huntingtons disease, although the family did not know this at the time and it leads to dementia as well as muscular degeneration. She was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, judging from the circumstances of her fathers death by drowning, researchers suspect that George Sherman suffered from the same hereditary disease. When Nora Guthrie was institutionalized, Woody Guthrie was 14 and his father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas, to repay his debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma, they relied on their eldest brother Roy for support, the 14-year-old Woody Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. According to one story, Guthrie befriended an African-American blues harmonica player named George, before long, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along with him. In another interview 14 years later, Guthrie claimed he learned how to play harmonica from a friend, John Woods. He seemed to have an affinity for music and easily learned to play by ear. He began to use his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or coins, Guthrie easily learned old ballads and traditional English & Scots songs from the parents of friends
2.
Bob Dylan
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Bob Dylan is an American songwriter, singer, painter, and writer. He has been influential in music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when his songs chronicled social unrest, early songs such as Blowin in the Wind and The Times They Are a-Changin became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. Leaving behind his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single Like a Rolling Stone, recorded in 1965, Dylans lyrics incorporate a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture, initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica, backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, since 1994, Dylan has published seven books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records and he has also received numerous awards including eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a citation for his profound impact on popular music and American culture. In May 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, in 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in St. Marys Hospital on May 24,1941, in Duluth, Minnesota and he has a younger brother, David. Dylans paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa, in the Russian Empire and his maternal grandparents, Ben and Florence Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902. Dylans father, Abram Zimmerman – an electric-appliance shop owner – and mother, Beatrice Beatty Stone, were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Robert was six, when his father had polio and the returned to his mothers hometown, Hibbing. In his early years he listened to the radio—first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later and he formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and their performance of Danny & the Juniors Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone. In 1959, his high school yearbook carried the caption Robert Zimmerman, the same year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping
3.
Joni Mitchell
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Roberta Joan Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian singer-songwriter and painter. Drawing from folk, pop, rock and jazz, Mitchells songs often reflect social and environmental ideals as well as her feelings about romance, confusion, disillusionment, Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatchewan and western Canada before busking in the streets and shoddy nightclubs of Toronto. In 1965, she moved to the United States and began touring, some of her original songs were covered by folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell, with songs like Big Yellow Taxi and Woodstock, helped define an era. Her 1971 recording Blue was rated the 30th best album made in Rolling Stones list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Mitchell switched labels and began moving toward jazz rhythms by way of lush pop textures on 1974s Court and Spark, her best-selling LP, featuring the radio hits Help Me, around 1975 her vocal range began to shift from mezzo-soprano to more of a wide-ranging contralto. She turned again toward pop, embraced electronic music, and engaged in political protest and she is the sole producer credited on most of her albums, including all her work in the 1970s. A blunt critic of the industry, she quit touring and released her 17th. With roots in art, Mitchell designed her own album covers. She describes herself as a painter derailed by circumstance, Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7,1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, the daughter of Myrtle Marguerite and William Andrew Anderson. Her mothers ancestors were Scottish and Irish, her father was from a Norwegian family and her father was a Royal Canadian Air Force flight lieutenant who instructed new pilots at RCAF Station Fort Macleod, where the Allied forces were gathering to learn to fly during World War II. During those years, she moved with her parents to various bases in western Canada, after the war, her father began working as a grocer, and his work took the family to Saskatchewan, to the towns of Maidstone and North Battleford. She later sang about her upbringing in Song for Sharon. In Maidstone they lived beside the track, where Mitchell waved at the only train that passed through each day. Many of the residents were First Nations people. Mitchell seemed athletic rather than academic, but still responded to her mothers love of literature and her fathers love of music, at age nine, Mitchell contracted polio in an epidemic, and was hospitalised for weeks. No longer athletic, she turned her thoughts to her creative talent, by nine, she was a smoker, she denies claims that smoking has affected her voice. At 11, she moved with her family to the city of Saskatoon and she responded badly to formal education, preferring a freethinking outlook, and was drawn to art, a pursuit often regarded as peripheral at the time
4.
Musician
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A musician is a person who plays a musical instrument or is musically talented. Anyone who composes, conducts, or performs music may also be referred to as a musician, Musicians can specialize in any musical style, and some musicians play in a variety of different styles. Examples of a musicians possible skills include performing, conducting, singing, composing, arranging, in the Middle Ages, instrumental musicians performed with soft ensembles inside and loud instruments outdoors. Many European musicians of this time catered to the Roman Catholic Church, providing arrangements structured around Gregorian chant structure, vocal pieces were in Latin—the language of church texts of the time—and typically were Church-polyphonic or made up of several simultaneous melodies. Giovanni Palestrina Giovanni Gabrieli Thomas Tallis Claudio Monteverdi Leonardo da Vinci The Baroque period introduced heavy use of counterpoint, vocal and instrumental “color” became more important compared to the Renaissance style of music, and emphasized much of the volume, texture and pace of each piece. George Frideric Handel Johann Sebastian Bach Antonio Vivaldi Classical music was created by musicians who lived during a time of a middle class. Many middle-class inhabitants of France at the time lived under long-time absolute monarchies, because of this, much of the music was performed in environments that were more constrained compared to the flourishing times of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. This age included the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution, a revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry and art, but the common perception of the world. Some major Romantic Period precepts survive, and still affect modern culture, in 20th-century music, composers and musicians rejected the emotion-dominated Romantic period, and strove to represent the world the way they perceived it. Musicians wrote to be. objective, while objects existed on their own terms, while past eras concentrated on spirituality, this new period placed emphasis on physicality and things that were concrete. The advent of recording and mass media in the 20th century caused a boom of all kinds of music—popular music, rock music, electronic music, folk music. Singer Composer Music artist Tour Manager Media related to Musicians at Wikimedia Commons
5.
Composer
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A composer is a person who creates or writes music, which can be vocal music, instrumental music or music which combines both instruments and voices. The core meaning of the term refers to individuals who have contributed to the tradition of Western classical music through creation of works expressed in written musical notation, many composers are also skilled performers, either as singers, instrumentalists, and/or conductors. Examples of composers who are well known for their ability as performers include J. S. Bach, Mozart. In many popular genres, such as rock and country. For a singer or instrumental performer, the process of deciding how to perform music that has previously composed and notated is termed interpretation. Different performers interpretations of the work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen. Composers and songwriters who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others, although a musical composition often has a single author, this is not always the case. A piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, in the 20th and 21st century, a culture eventually developed whereby faithfulness to the composers written intention came to be highly valued. This musical culture is almost certainly related to the esteem in which the leading classical composers are often held by performers. The movement might be considered a way of creating greater faithfulness to the original in works composed at a time that expected performers to improvise. In Classical music, the composer typically orchestrates her own compositions, in some cases, a pop songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written scores play in classical music. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music. In the development of European classical music, the function of composing music initially did not have greater importance than that of performing it. The preservation of individual compositions did not receive attention and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance. In as much as the role of the composer in western art music has seen continued solidification, for instance, in certain contexts the line between composer and performer, sound designer, arranger, producer, and other roles, can be quite blurred. The term composer is often used to refer to composers of music, such as those found in classical, jazz or other forms of art. In popular and folk music, the composer is usually called a songwriter and this is distinct from a 19th-century conception of instrumental composition, where the work was represented solely by a musical score to be interpreted by performers
6.
Lyrics
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Lyrics are words that make up a song usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist, the words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a libretto and their writer, as a librettist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit, some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of expression. Rappers can also create lyrics with a variation of rhyming words or words that create, Lyric derives via Latin lyricus from the Greek λυρικός, the adjectival form of lyre. It first appeared in English in the century in reference, to the Earl of Surreys translations of Petrarch. Stainer and Barrett used the word as a substantive, Lyric, poetry or blank verse intended to be set to music. By the 1930s, the present use of the plurale tantum lyrics had begun, the singular form lyric still appears, its present use, however, is to refer to a specific phrase within a songs lyrics. The differences between poem and song may become less meaningful where verse is set to music, to the point that any distinction becomes untenable and this is perhaps recognised in the way popular songs have lyrics. However, the verse may pre-date its tune, or the tune may be lost over time but the words survive, nursery rhymes may be songs, or doggerel, the term doesnt imply a distinction. The ghazal is a form that is considered primarily poetic. See also rapping, roots of hip hop music, analogously, verse drama might normally be judged as poetry, but not consisting of poems. In Baroque music, melodies and their lyrics where prose, rather than paired lines they consist of rhetorical sentences or paragraphs consisting of an opening gesture, an amplification, and a close, in German Vordersatz-Fortspinnung-Epilog. For example, When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, But when I became a man, I put away childish things. -1 Corinthians 13,11 In the lyrics of music a shifter is a word, often a pronoun, where reference varies according to who is speaking, when. For example, who is the my of My Generation, see Royalties Currently, there are many websites featuring song lyrics. This offering, however, is controversial, since some sites include copyrighted lyrics offered without the holders permission, music Publishers Association, which represents sheet music companies, launched a legal campaign against such websites in December 2005. The MPAs president, Lauren Keiser, said the free lyrics web sites are completely illegal, Lyrics licenses could be obtained worldwide through one of the two aggregators, LyricFind and Musixmatch. The first company to provide licensed lyrics was Yahoo, quickly followed by MetroLyrics and Lyrics. com
7.
Melody
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A melody, also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively and it may be considered the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or part need not be a foreground melody, melodies often consist of one or more musical phrases or motifs, and are usually repeated throughout a composition in various forms. Melodies may also be described by their melodic motion or the pitches or the intervals between pitches, pitch range, tension and release, continuity and coherence, cadence, the true goal of music—its proper enterprise—is melody. All the parts of harmony have as their purpose only beautiful melody. Therefore, the question of which is the significant, melody or harmony, is futile. Beyond doubt, the means is subordinate to the end, given the many and varied elements and styles of melody many extant explanations confine us to specific stylistic models, and they are too exclusive. Paul Narveson claimed in 1984 that more than three-quarters of melodic topics had not been explored thoroughly, melodies in the 20th century utilized a greater variety of pitch resources than ha been the custom in any other historical period of Western music. While the diatonic scale was used, the chromatic scale became widely employed. Composers also allotted a structural role to the dimensions that previously had been almost exclusively reserved for pitch. Kliewer states, The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality, texture, for example, Jazz musicians use the term lead or head to refer to the main melody, which is used as a starting point for improvisation. Rock music, melodic music, and other forms of popular music, indian classical music relies heavily on melody and rhythm, and not so much on harmony, as the music contains no chord changes. Balinese gamelan music often uses complicated variations and alterations of a melody played simultaneously. In western classical music, composers often introduce an initial melody, or theme, classical music often has several melodic layers, called polyphony, such as those in a fugue, a type of counterpoint. Often, melodies are constructed from motifs or short melodic fragments, richard Wagner popularized the concept of a leitmotif, a motif or melody associated with a certain idea, person or place. Appropriation Hocket Parsons code, a notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic motion—the motion of the pitch up. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed. p. 517–19, the Art of Melody, p. xix–xxx. A Textbook of Melody, A course in functional melodic analysis, a History Of Melody, Barrie and Rockliff, London
8.
Folk music
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
9.
Accompaniment
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Accompaniment is the musical parts which provide the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles of music, in homophonic music, the main accompaniment approach used in popular music, a clear vocal melody is supported by subordinate chords. In popular music and traditional music, the accompaniment parts typically provide the beat for the music, the accompaniment for a vocal melody or instrumental solo can be played by a single musician playing an instrument such as piano, pipe organ, or guitar. A solo singer can accompany herself by playing guitar or piano while she sings, and in rare cases. With choral music, the accompaniment to a vocal solo can be provided by other singers in the choir, accompaniment parts range from so simple that a beginner can play them to so complex that only an advanced player or singer can perform them. An accompanist is a musician who plays an accompaniment part, accompanists often play keyboard instruments (e. g. piano, pipe organ, synthesizer or, in folk music and traditional styles, a guitar. A number of classical pianists have found success as accompanists rather than soloists, arguably the best known example is Gerald Moore, the accompaniment instrumentalists and/or singers can be provided with a fully notated accompaniment part written or printed on sheet music. This is the norm in Classical music and in most large ensemble writing, chord-playing musicians can improvise chords, fill-in melodic lines and solos from the chord chart. It is rare for chords to be written out in music notation in pop. Some guitarists, bassists and other stringed instrumentalists read accompaniment parts using tabulature, drummers can play accompaniment by following the lead sheet, a sheet music part in music notation, or by playing by ear. In some cases, an arranger or composer may give a bassist a bass part that is written out in music notation. Comping Counter-melody Figure Figured bass Guitar picking Hauptstimme Strum The dictionary definition of accompaniment at Wiktionary
10.
Musical composition
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People who create new compositions are called composers in classical music. In popular music and traditional music, the creators of new songs are usually called songwriters, with songs, Composition is the act or practice of creating a song or other piece of music. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of an outline of the song, called the lead sheet. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, in some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play, sing and/or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music. Although a musical composition often uses musical notation and has a single author, a piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, since the 20th century, with computer programs that explain or notate how the singer or musician should create musical sounds. A more commonly known example of chance-based music is the sound of wind chimes jingling in a breeze, although in the 2000s, composition is considered to consist of the manipulation of each aspect of music, according to Jean-Benjamin de Laborde, Composition consists in two things only. The first is the ordering and disposing of several sounds. in such a manner that their succession pleases the ear and this is what the Ancients called melody. The second is the rendering audible of two or more simultaneous sounds in such a manner that their combination is pleasant and this is what we call harmony, and it alone merits the name of composition. In classical music, a piece of music exists in the form of a composition in musical notation or as a live acoustic event. Since the invention of recording, a classical piece or popular song may also exist as a recording. If music is composed before being performed, music can be performed from memory, by reading written musical notation, compositions comprise a huge variety of musical elements, which vary widely from between genres and cultures. Popular music genres after about 1960 make extensive use of electric and electronic instruments, such as electric guitar, electric and electronic instruments are used in contemporary classical music compositions and concerts, albeit to a lesser degree than in popular music. Music from the Baroque music era, for example, used only acoustic and mechanical such as strings, brass, woodwinds, timpani and keyboard instruments such as harpsichord. A 2000s-era pop band may use electric guitar played with electronic effects through a guitar amplifier, different musical styles permit singers or performers to use various amounts of musical improvisation during the performance of a composed song or piece. In free jazz, the performers may play without any sheet music, improvisation is the act of composing musical elements spontaneously during the performance, as opposed to having a composer write down the music beforehand. Improvisation was an important skill during the Baroque music era, instrumentalists and singers were expected to be able to improvise ornaments, during the classical period, solo instrumentalists were expected to be able to improvise virtuostic cadenzas during a concerto. During the Romantic music era, composers began writing out ornaments and cadenzas, in contemporary classical music, some composers began writing pieces which indicate that the performer should improvise during certain sections
11.
Popular music
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Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training and it stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or folk music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of music, although since the beginning of the recording industry. Traditional music forms such as blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States, although popular music sometimes is known as pop music, the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music songs and pieces typically have easily singable melodies, in the 2000s, with songs and pieces available as digital sound files, it has become easier for music to spread from one country or region to another. Some popular music forms have become global, while others have an appeal within the culture of their origin. Through the mixture of genres, new popular music forms are created to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of Africa, Indonesia and the Middle East show how Western pop music styles can blend with local traditions to create new hybrid styles. Sales of recordings or sheet music are one measure, middleton and Manuel note that this definition has problems because multiple listens or plays of the same song or piece are not counted. Manuel states that one criticism of music is that it is produced by large media conglomerates and passively consumed by the public. He claims that the listeners in the scenario would not have been able to make the choice of their favorite music, moreover, understandings of popular music have changed with time. A societys popular music reflects the ideals that are prevalent at the time it is performed or published, david Riesman states that the youth audiences of popular music fit into either a majority group or a subculture. The majority group listens to the commercially produced styles while the subcultures find a minority style to transmit their own values and this allows youth to choose what music they identify with, which gives them power as consumers to control the market of popular music. Form in popular music is most often sectional, the most common sections being verse, chorus or refrain, other common forms include thirty-two-bar form, chorus form *, and twelve-bar blues. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different music for each stanza of the lyrics, the verse and chorus are considered the primary elements. Each verse usually has the melody, but the lyrics change for most verses. The chorus usually has a phrase and a key lyrical line which is repeated
12.
AllMusic
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AllMusic is an online music guide service website. It was launched in 1991 by All Media Guide which later became All Media Network, AllMusic was launched in 1991 by Michael Erlewine of All Media Guide. The aim was to discographic information on every artist whos made a record since Enrico Caruso gave the industry its first big boost and its first reference book was published the following year. When first released onto the Internet, AMG predated the World Wide Web and was first available as a Gopher site, the AMG consumer web properties AllMusic. com, AllMovie. com and AllGame. com were sold by Rovi in July 2013 to All Media Network, LLC. All Media Network, LLC. was formed by the founders of SideReel. com. The following are contributors to AllMusic, as of this date, All Media Network also produced the AllMusic guide series that includes the AllMusic Guide to Rock, the All Music Guide to Jazz and the All Music Guide to the Blues. Vladimir Bogdanov is the president of the series, in August 2007, PC Magazine included AllMusic in its Top 100 Classic Websites list. All Media Network AllGame AllMovie SideReel All Music Guide to the Blues All Music Guide to Jazz Stephen Thomas Erlewine Official website
13.
Rock music
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It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of genres such as electric blues and folk. Musically, rock has centered on the guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse-chorus form, like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of subgenres, including new wave, post-punk. From the 1990s alternative rock began to rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures and this trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, Hammond organ and synthesizers. The basic rock instrumentation was adapted from the blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group, Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock, because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm, as a result, it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality, according to Simon Frith rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the concept of art as artistic expression, original. The foundations of music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock and roll record. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
14.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions
15.
Henry Russell (musician)
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Henry Russell was an English pianist, baritone singer and composer, born into a distinguished Jewish family. Many of his songs championed social causes like abolition, temperance, Russell was born in Sheerness, Kent, a great-nephew of the British Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschel. He began his career as a singer in Elliston’s Children’s Opera company. While playing the organ at the Presbyterian church in Rochester, New York he discovered that music, played quickly. Old Hundredth, played very fast, became the music for Get Out of de Way, Russells song The Fine Old English Gentleman 1831 was made fun of ten years later by Charles Dickens in his identically titled song. In 1841, he returned to England and performed at the Hanover Square Rooms in London with instant success, many of his songs were written to lyrics by Charles Mackay, including Theres a Good Time Coming, Cheer, Boys, Cheer, and To The West. The Hutchinson Family Singers were fans of Russells work and performed several of his tunes, including The Maniac, after retirement he lived partly in France, partly in England. His first wife was Christian, his wife was Jewish. His portrait was painted by the British painter Walter Goodman and displayed in London at the Institute of Oil Painters in 1889, the Jewish Chronicle of 21 May that year describes the painting as depicting Russell hale and hearty with flowing beard. He died at 18 Howley Place, Maida Vale, on 8 December 1900, a detailed biography, A Life on the Ocean Wave, The Story of Henry Russell by Andrew Lamb, was published by Fullers Wood Press in 2007. Dictionary of National Biography,1901 supplement, the Music of Henry Russell Derek B. Scott sings Woodman, Spare That Tree. Free scores by Henry Russell in the Choral Public Domain Library Free scores by Henry Russell at the International Music Score Library Project Russell, Henry
16.
Aristide Bruant
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Aristide Bruant was a French cabaret singer, comedian, and nightclub owner. He is best known as the man in the red scarf and he has also been credited as the creator of the chanson réaliste musical genre. Born Louis Armand Aristide Bruand in the village of Courtenay, Loiret in France, Bruant left his home in 1866 at age fifteen, following his fathers death, to find employment. Making his way to the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, he hung out in the working-class bistros, although bourgeois by birth, he soon adopted the earthy language of his haunts, turning it into songs that told of the struggles of the poor. Bruant began performing at cafe-concerts and developed a singing and comedy act that led to his being signed to appear at the Le Chat Noir club, in 1885, Bruant opened his own Montmartre club, a place he called Le Mirliton. Although he hired other acts, Bruant put on a performance of his own. As the master of ceremonies for the acts, he used the comedy of the insult to poke fun at the clubs upper-crust guests who were out slumming in Montmartre. His vaudeville-inspired mix of song, satire and entertainment developed into the genre called chanson réaliste. Bruant died in Paris and was buried in the cimetière de Subligny, rue Bruant in Paris XIII arrondisement was named, not in Aristides honor, but after the architect Libéral Bruant whose church of the hospital Salpêtrière was built just north of the street. On Yakuza 3, Tokyo Kamurochos Bantam Irish pub is decorated with Toulouse-Lautrecs paintings of Bruant, in the poem Your Paris, Ted Hughes mentions that Sylvia Plath Called Aristide Bruant
17.
Hank Williams
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Hiram King Hank Williams, was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Born in Mount Olive, Butler County, Alabama, Williams moved to Georgiana, where he met Rufus Payne, Payne had a major influence on Williams later musical style, along with Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb. During this time, Williams informally changed his name to Hank and he moved to Montgomery, where he began his music career in 1937, when producers at radio station WSFA hired him to perform and host a 15-minute program. He formed as backup the Drifting Cowboys band, which was managed by his mother, Williams eventually married Audrey Sheppard, who was his manager for nearly a decade. After recording Never Again and Honky Tonkin with Sterling Records, he signed a contract with MGM Records, in 1947 he released Move It on Over, which became a hit, and also joined the Louisiana Hayride radio program. One year later, he released a cover of Lovesick Blues, after an initial rejection, Williams joined the Grand Ole Opry. He was unable to read or notate music to any significant degree, among the hits he wrote were Your Cheatin Heart, Hey, Good Lookin, and Im So Lonesome I Could Cry. Several years of pain, alcoholism, and prescription drug abuse severely damaged Williams health. He divorced Sheppard and was dismissed by the Grand Ole Opry because of his unreliability, Williams died on New Years Day of 1953 at the age of 29, from heart failure exacerbated by pills and alcohol. Despite his short life, Williams had a influence on 20th-century popular music. The songs he wrote and recorded have been covered by artists and have been hits in various genres. He has been inducted into multiple halls of fame, such as the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Williams was born in Butler County, Alabama, the son of Jessie Lillybelle Lillie and his parents married on November 12,1916. Hank Williams was of English ancestry, Elonzo Williams worked as an engineer for the railroads of the W. T. Smith lumber company. He was drafted during World War I, serving from July 1918 until June 1919 and he was severely injured after falling from a truck, breaking his collarbone and suffering a severe blow to the head. After his return, the familys first child, Irene, was born on August 8,1922, another son of theirs died shortly after birth. Their third child, Hiram, was born on September 17,1923, in Mount Olive. Since Elonzo Williams was a Mason, and his wife was a member of Order of the Eastern Star the child was named after Hiram I of Tyre, as a child, he was nicknamed Harm by his family and Herky or Poots by his friends
18.
Buddy Holly
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Buddy Holly was an American musician and singer-songwriter who was a central figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. Holly was born in Lubbock, Texas, to a family during the Great Depression, he learned to play guitar. His style was influenced by music, country music, and rhythm and blues acts. He made his first appearance on television in 1952. In 1955, after opening for Elvis Presley, Holly decided to pursue a career in music and he opened for Presley three times that year, his bands style shifted from country and western to entirely rock and roll. In October that year, when he opened for Bill Haley & His Comets, Holly was spotted by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall, Hollys recording sessions at Decca were produced by Owen Bradley. Petty became the manager and sent the demo to Brunswick Records, which released it as a single credited to The Crickets. In September 1957, as the band toured, Thatll Be the Day topped the US Best Sellers in Stores chart and its success was followed in October by another major hit, Peggy Sue. The album Chirping Crickets, released in November 1957, reached five on the UK Albums Chart. Holly made his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in January 1958 and soon after, toured Australia. In early 1959, Holly assembled a new band, consisting of country music star Waylon Jennings, famed session musician Tommy Allsup, and Carl Bunch. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered an airplane to travel to his show, in Moorhead. Soon after takeoff, the crashed, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper. During his short career, Holly wrote, recorded, and produced his own material and he is often regarded as the artist who defined the traditional rock-and-roll lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums. Holly was an influence on later popular music artists, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton. He was among the first artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him number 13 in its list of 100 Greatest Artists. Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7,1936, in Lubbock, Texas, at 3,30 pm, he was the child of Lawrence Odell L. O. Holley. His older siblings were Larry, Travis, and Patricia Lou, from early childhood, he was nicknamed Buddy
19.
Troubadour
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A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages. Since the word troubadour is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz, the troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread into Italy and Spain. Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe, the Minnesang in Germany, trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal, dante Alighieri in his De vulgari eloquentia defined the troubadour lyric as fictio rethorica musicaque poita, rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry, most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires, works can be grouped into three styles, the trobar leu, trobar ric, and trobar clus. The oldest mention of the word troubadour as trobadors is found in a 12th-century Occitan text by Cercamon. The English word troubadour is a rendition from a French word first recorded in 1575 in an historical context to mean langue doc poet at the court in the 12th and 13th century. The French word is borrowed itself from the Occitan word trobador and this recreated form is deduced from the Latin root tropus, meaning a trope and the various meanings of the Old Occitan related words. In turn, the Latin word derives ultimately from Greek τρόπος, meaning turn, B Intervocal Latin shifted regularly to in Occitan. The Latin suffix -ātor, -atōris explains the Occitan suffix, according to its declension and accentuation, Gallo-Romance *TROPĀTOR > Occitan trobaire, there is an alternative theory to explain the meaning of trobar as “to compose, to discuss, to invent. It has the support of some historians, specialists of literature, According to them, the Arabic word ṭaraba “song could partly be the etymon of the verb trobar. Another Arabic root had already been proposed before, Ḍ-R-B “strike and they entertain the possibility that the nearly homophonous Ḍ-R-B root may have contributed to the sense of the newly coined Romance verb trobar. In archaic and classical poetry, the word is only used in a mocking sense. Cercamon writes, Ist trobador, entre ver e mentir, Afollon drutz e molhers et espos, Peire dAlvernha also begins his famous mockery of contemporary authors cantarai daquest trobadors, after which he proceeds to explain why none of them is worth anything. When referring to themselves seriously, troubadours almost invariably use the word chantaire, the early study of the troubadours focused intensely on their origins. No academic consensus was achieved in the area. In his study, Lévi-Provençal is said to have found four Arabo-Hispanic verses nearly or completely recopied in Williams manuscript, trend admitted that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry from the Andalusian Muslims. Meg Bogin, American translator of the trobairitz, held this hypothesis, to such a strong and multi-faceted tradition of love literature and song nearby must be added the presence of the Toledo School of Translators starting in 1126
20.
Tin Pan Alley
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The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885, when a number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut, the origins of the name Tin Pan Alley are unclear. One account claims that it was a reference to the sound of many pianos. Others claim it arose from songwriters modifying their pianos to produce a percussive sound. After many years, the term came to refer to the U. S. music industry in general, various explanations have been advanced to account for the origins of the term Tin Pan Alley. This article has not been found, simon Napier-Bell quotes an account of the origin of the name which was published in a 1930 book about the music business. In this version, popular songwriter Harry von Tilzer was being interviewed about the area around 28th Street and Fifth Avenue, von Tilzer had modified his expensive Kindler & Collins piano by placing strips of paper down the strings to give the instrument a more percussive sound. The journalist told von Tilzer, Your Kindler & Collins sounds exactly like a tin can, ill call the article Tin Pan Alley. With time, this nickname was popularly embraced and came to describe the American music publishing industry in general, the term then spread to the United Kingdom, where Tin Pan Alley is also used to describe Denmark Street in Londons West End. In the 1920s the street known as Britains Tin Pan Alley because of its large number of music shops. In the mid-19th century, copyright control of melodies was not as strict, with stronger copyright protection laws late in the century, songwriters, composers, lyricists, and publishers started working together for their mutual financial benefit. Songwriters would literally bang on doors of Tin Pan Alley to get new material, the two most enterprising New York publishers were Willis Woodard and T. B. Harms, the first companies to specialize in popular songs rather than hymns or classical music. Naturally, these firms were located in the entertainment district, which, Witmark was the first publishing house to move to West 28th Street as the entertainment district gradually shifted uptown, and by the late 1890s most publishers had followed their lead. When a tune became a significant local hit, rights to it were purchased from the local publisher by one of the big New York firms. The song publishers who created Tin Pan Alley frequently had backgrounds as salesmen, the background of Isadore Witmark was selling water filters. Leo Feist had sold corsets, and Joe Stern and Edward B, marks had sold neckties and buttons respectively. The music houses in lower Manhattan were lively places, with a stream of songwriters, vaudeville and Broadway performers, musicians. Aspiring songwriters came to demonstrate tunes they hoped to sell, when tunes were purchased from unknowns with no previous hits, the name of someone with the firm was often added as co-composer, or all rights to the song were purchased outright for a flat fee
21.
Protest
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A protest is an expression of bearing witness on behalf of an express cause by words or actions with regard to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations. Various forms of self-expression and protest are sometimes restricted by policy, economic circumstances, religious orthodoxy, social structures. One state reaction to protests is the use of riot police, observers have noted an increased militarization of protest policing, with police deploying armored vehicles and snipers against the protesters. A protest can itself sometimes be the subject of a counter-protest, in such a case, counter-protesters demonstrate their support for the person, policy, action, etc. that is the subject of the original protest. In some cases, these protesters can violently clash, unaddressed protests may grow and widen into civil resistance, dissent, activism, riots, insurgency, revolts, and political and/or social revolution. 2013 through Feb.2014 Black Lives Matter 2016 South Korean protests 2017 Jallikattu protests Dakota Access Pipeline protests A protest can take many forms, the Dynamics of Collective Action project and the Global Nonviolent Action Database are two of the leading data collection efforts attempting to capture protest events. Reference to speeches, speakers, singing, preaching, often verified by indication of sound equipment of PA, ordinarily will include worship services, speeches, briefings. March, Reference to moving from one location to another, to be distinguished from rotating or walking in a circle with picket signs which by definition, but also no reference to sound systems or to marches, it may well be a vigil. Most vigils have banners, placards, or leaflets so that people passing by, despite silence from participants, picket, The modal activity is picketing, there may be references to picket line, to informational picketing, holding signs, carrying signs and walking around in a circle). Symbolic display, e. g. Menorah, Creche Scene, graffiti, cross burnings, signs, standing displays Attack by instigators Ethnic group victim of physical attack, boundary motivating attack is other groups identity, as in gay-bashing, lynching. Can also include verbal attack and/or threats, too, Riot, melee, mob violence, Large-scale, use of violence by instigators against persons, property, police, or buildings separately or in combination, lasting several hours. Strike, slow down and sick-ins employee work protest of any kind, Regular air strike through failure of negotiations, boycott, Organized refusal to buy or use a product or service, rent strikes. Press conference, If specifically named as such in report, could involve disclosure of information to educate the public or influence various decision-makers. Organization formation announcement or meeting announcement, meeting or press conference to announce the formation of a new organization, conflict, attack or clash, no instigator, This includes any boundary conflict in which no instigator can be identified, i. e. black/white conflicts, abortion/anti-abortion conflicts. Lawsuit, legal maneuver by social movement organization or group The Global Nonviolent Action database uses Gene Sharps classification of 198 methods of nonviolent action, there is considerable overlap with the Dynamics of Collective Action repertoire, although the GNA repertoire includes more specific tactics. Together, the two projects help define tactics available to protesters and document instances of their use, thomas Ratliff and Lori Hall have devised a typology of six broad activity categories of the protest activities described in the Dynamics of Collective Action project. Literal, symbolic, aesthetic and sensory - Artistic, dramaturgical, use of images, objects, graphic arts, musical performances, or vocal/auditory exhibitions
22.
Pete Seeger
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Peter Pete Seeger was an American folk singer and social activist. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era, in the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, and environmental causes. A prolific songwriter, his songs include Where Have All the Flowers Gone. If I Had a Hammer, and Turn, Turn. which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are sung throughout the world. Flowers was a hit recording for the Kingston Trio, Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French, if I Had a Hammer was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary and Trini Lopez while the Byrds had a number one hit with Turn. In the PBS American Masters episode Pete Seeger, The Power of Song, Seeger was born on May 3,1919, at the French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan. His Yankee-Protestant family, which Seeger called enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition, Petes father, the Harvard-trained composer and musicologist Charles Louis Seeger, Jr. was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to American parents. Petes mother, Constance de Clyver, raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music, was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the Juilliard School. In 1912, Charles Seeger was hired to establish the department at the University of California, Berkeley. Charles and Constance moved back east, making Charles parents estate in Patterson, New York, northeast of New York City, their base of operations. When baby Pete was eighteen months old they set out with him, upon their return, Constance taught violin and Charles taught composition at the New York Institute of Musical Art, whose president, family friend Frank Damrosch, was Constances adoptive uncle. Charles also taught part-time at the New School for Social Research, beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal governments Farm Resettlement program, the WPAs Federal Music Project, and the wartime Pan American Union. After World War II, he taught ethnomusicology at the University of California, Petes uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet, had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in World War I. All four of Petes half-siblings from his fathers second marriage – Margaret, Mike, Barbara, peggy Seeger, a well-known performer in her own right, married British folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Seeger was a founder of the New Lost City Ramblers, one of members, John Cohen. Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording songs for children. In 1935, Pete attended Camp Rising Sun, a leadership camp held every summer in upstate New York that influenced his lifes work. He visited it most recently in 2012, in 1943, Pete married Toshi-Aline Ōta, whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible
23.
Anatole Le Braz
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Anatole le Braz, the Bard of Brittany, was a Breton poet, folklore collector and translator. He was highly regarded amongst both European and American scholars, and known for his warmth and charm, Le Braz was born in Saint-Servais, Côtes-dArmor, and raised amongst woodcutters and charcoal burners, speaking the Breton language, his parents did not speak French. He spent his holidays in Trégor, which inspired his later work and he began school aged 10 at Saint-Brieuc and progressed swiftly to a degree at the Sorbonne, where he studied for seven years. He then returned to Brittany, where for 14 years he taught at the Lycée at Quimper and gradually translated old Breton songs into modern French and he often entertained local peasants and fishermen in the old manor house where he lived, recording their songs and tales. His book, Chansons de la Bretagne was awarded a prize by the Académie française, in 1898, he became president of the Union régionaliste bretonne formed in Morlaix following the Breton festivals. In 1899 he joined the Association des bleus de Bretagne and he was made lecturer and then professor in the Faculty of Arts at Rennes University between 1901 and 1924. Le Braz was sent on foreign missions by the French Government twenty times. He made several visits to the US, Canada and Switzerland, notably lecturing at Harvard University in 1906, during his 1915 visit he married Henrietta S. Porter of Annapolis, who died in 1919. In 1921 he married Mabel Davison of Manhattan, sister of the famed banker Henry P. Davison, American novelist John Nichols is his great-grandson. Le Braz died at Menton on the French Riviera, mourners included the French prime minister, Aristide Briand. A number of memorials to Le Braz exist in Brittany, a large statue of him with a peasant storyteller was created in Saint-Brieuc, and a memorial stele in Tréguier, both designed by Armel Beaufils. A number of composers have set Le Brazs poems to music and they include, Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, Les Yeux de ma mie, La Chanson de la Bretagne. Contains, Berceuse darmorique, Dans la grandhune, Nuit détoiles, Le Chant des nuages, Le Chant dahès, La Chanson du vent qui vente, maurice Duhamel, Gwer-ziou ha soniou breiz-izel. Airs et variantes mélodiques des chants et chansons populaires de la Basse Bretagne, swan Hennessy, Berceuse d’Armorique = no.2 of Trois Chansons celtiques, Op.72, La Chanson du vent de mer = no.2 of Deux Mélodies, Op.73. René Lenormand, Sône = no.4 of Mélodies tristes, félicien de Ménil, La Chanson de Bretagne. Légende lyrique en 3 actes et 5 tableaux avec un prologue et un épilogue daprès Anatole Le Braz, charles Tournemire, Le Sang de la sirène. Légende musicale en 4 parties de Marcel Brennure, daprès Anatole Le Braz, Le Chant de ma mère, La Chanson de la Bretagne, poetry,1892 Tryphina Keranglaz, poem,1892 La Légende de la mort en Basse-Bretagne,1893. Les Saints bretons daprès la tradition populaire en Cornouaille, 1893-1894, vieilles histoires du pays breton,1897 Le Gardien du feu, novel,1900
24.
George M. Cohan
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George Michael Cohan, known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents, beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards Over There, Give My Regards to Broadway, The Yankee Doodle Boy, as a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s, known in the decade before World War I as the man who owned Broadway, he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Academy Award-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy, a statue of Cohan in Times Square in New York City commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre. Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Josephs Roman Catholic Church indicated that he was born on July 3, but Cohan and his family always insisted that George had been born on the Fourth of July. Georges parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance, Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans. In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Pecks Bad Boy and then joined the family act and he and his sister made their Broadway debut in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his years, Cohan later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, Cohan originated his famous speech, My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you. The family generally gave a performance at the hall there each summer. Cohans memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, as Cohan matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, in 1934, he told a reporter, Ive knocked around everywhere, but theres no place like North Brookfield. Cohan began writing original skits and songs for the act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governors Son and his first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes Give My Regards to Broadway and The Yankee Doodle Boy
25.
American folk music revival
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The American folk-music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had, in times, contributed to the development of country and western, jazz. The folk revival in New York City was rooted in the resurgent interest in dancing and folk dancing there in the 1940s. The Weavers had a big hit in 1950 with the single of Lead Bellys Goodnight and this was number one on the Billboard charts for thirteen weeks. On its flip side was Tzena, Tzena, Tzena, an Israeli dance song that reached number two on the charts. This was followed by a string of Weaver hit singles sold millions, including So Long Its Been Good to Know You. The Weavers career ended abruptly when they were dropped from Deccas catalog because Pete Seeger had been listed in the publication Red Channels as a probable subversive, radio stations refused to play their records and concert venues canceled their engagements. Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, two singers of the 1950s who sang folk material but crossed over into the mainstream were Odetta and Harry Belafonte, both of whom sang Lead Belly and Josh White material. Odetta, who had trained as a singer, performed traditional blues, spirituals. Belafonte had hits with Jamaican calypso material as well as the folk song-like sentimental ballad Scarlet Ribbons, the Kingston Trio avoided overtly political or protest songs and cultivated a clean-cut, collegiate persona. They were discovered while playing at a club called the Cracked Pot by Frank Werber. Their first hit was a rendition of an old-time folk murder ballad, Tom Dooley. This went gold in 1958 and sold more than three million copies, the success of the album and the single earned the Kingston Trio a Grammy award for Best Country & Western Performance at the awards inaugural ceremony in 1959. At the time, no folk-music category existed in the Grammys scheme, the Kingston Trios popularity would be followed by that of Joan Baez, whose debut album Joan Baez, reached the top ten in late 1960 and remained on the Billboard charts for over two years. She did not try to imitate the style of her source material, however. Her popularity would place Baez on the cover of Time Magazine in November 1962, Baez, unlike the Kingston Trio, was openly political, and as the civil rights movement gathered steam, aligned herself with Pete Seeger, Guthrie and others. Harry Belafonte was also present on occasion, along with Odetta, whom Martin Luther King introduced as the queen of folk music. Also on hand were the SNCC Freedom Singers, the personnel of which went on to form Sweet Honey in the Rock, young singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, had been signed and recorded for Columbia by producer John Hammond in 1961
26.
Paul Simon
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Paul Frederic Simon is an American musician, singer-songwriter and actor. Simons fame, influence, and commercial success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote nearly all of the songs, including three that reached No.1 on the U. S. singles charts, The Sound of Silence, Mrs. Robinson. In 1986, he released Graceland, an inspired by South African township music. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman with the poet Derek Walcott. On June 3,2016, Simon released his 13th solo album, titled Stranger to Stranger, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Album Chart and the UK charts. Simon has earned sixteen Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, in 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the 100 People Who Shaped the World by Time magazine. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine named Simon as one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists, in 2015, he was named as one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters by Rolling Stone. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congresss Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007, in 1986, Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music, where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees. Simon was born on October 13,1941, in Newark, New Jersey and his father, Louis, was a college professor, double bass player, and dance bandleader who performed under the name Lee Sims. His mother, Belle, was a school teacher. In 1945, his family moved to the Kew Gardens Hills section of Flushing, Queens, the musician Donald Fagen has described Simons childhood as that of a certain kind of New York Jew, almost a stereotype, really, to whom music and baseball are very important. I think it has to do with the parents, Simon, upon hearing Fagens description, said it isnt far from the truth. Simon says about his childhood, I was a ballplayer, Id go on my bike, and Id hustle kids in stickball. He adds that his father was a New York Yankees fan and he didnt play with me as much as I played with my kids. He was at work until late at night, Simons musical career began after meeting Art Garfunkel when they were both 11. They performed in a production of Alice in Wonderland for their sixth-grade graduation and their idols were the Everly Brothers, whom they imitated in their use of close two-part harmony. Simon also developed an interest in jazz, folk, and blues, especially in the music of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly
27.
Lead Belly
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Huddie William Ledbetter /ˈhjuːdi/ was an American folk and blues musician notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced. He is best known as Lead Belly, though many releases list him as Leadbelly, he himself wrote it as Lead Belly, which is also the spelling on his tombstone and the spelling used by the Lead Belly Foundation. Lead Belly usually played a guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin. In some of his recordings he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot. Lead Bellys songs covered a range, including gospel music, blues about women, liquor, prison life, and racism, and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, Lead Belly was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Lead Belly was born Huddie William Ledbetter on the Jeter Plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana, the 1900 United States Census lists Hudy Ledbetter as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the 1910 and 1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888. The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with supplied by wife. However, in April 1942, when Ledbetter filled out his World War II draft registration, he gave his date as January 23,1889. His grave marker bears the date given on his draft registration, Ledbetter was the younger of two children born to Wesley Ledbetter and Sallie Brown. The pronunciation of his name is purported to be HYEW-dee or HUGH-dee and he can be heard pronouncing his name as HUH-dee on the track Boll Weevil, from the Smithsonian Folkways album Lead Belly Sings for Children. His parents had cohabited for several years, but they married on February 26,1888. When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, by 1903, Huddie was already a musicianer, a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed for nearby Shreveport audiences in St. Pauls Bottoms, the 1910 census of Harrison County, Texas, shows Hudy Ledbetter living next door to his parents with his first wife, Aletha Lethe Henderson. Aletha is registered as age 19 and married one year, others say she was 15 when they married in 1908. It was in Texas that Ledbetter received his first instrument, an accordion from his uncle Terrell, by his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter left home to make his living as a guitarist and occasional laborer. Influenced by the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, Ledbetter wrote the song The Titanic, his first composed on the twelve-string guitar, which later became his signature instrument. Initially played when performing with Blind Lemon Jefferson in and around Dallas, Texas, Johnson had in fact been denied passage on a ship for being black, but it was not the Titanic
28.
Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)
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James Charles Jimmie Rodgers was an American country singer in the early 20th century, known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling. Among the first country music superstars and pioneers, Rodgers was also known as The Singing Brakeman, The Blue Yodeler, and The Father of Country Music. In the 1900 Census for Daleville, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, Jimmies mother, Eliza Rodgers, was listed as already having had seven children, Jimmie was next to the youngest at that time, and was probably born sixth of the total of seven children. He eventually returned home to live with his father, Aaron Rodgers, a foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Rodgers affinity for entertaining came at an age, and the lure of the road was irresistible to him. By age 13, he had organized and begun traveling shows. His father found Rodgers his first job working on the railroad as a water boy, here he was further taught to pick and strum by rail workers and hobos. As a water boy, he would have exposed to the work chants of the African American railroad workers known as gandy dancers. In 1924 at age 27, Rodgers contracted tuberculosis, the disease temporarily ended his railroad career, but at the same time gave him the chance to get back to the entertainment industry. He organized a traveling show and performed across the Southeastern United States until, once again. He returned to work as a brakeman in Miami, Florida. He relocated to Tucson, Arizona, and was employed as a switchman by the Southern Pacific Railroad and he kept the job for less than a year, and the Rodgers family settled back in Meridian in early 1927. Rodgers decided to travel to Asheville, North Carolina, later that same year, on April 18,1927, at 9,30 pm, Jimmie, and Otis Kuykendall, performed for the first time on WWNC, Ashevilles first radio station. A few months later, Rodgers recruited a group from Bristol, Tennessee, called the Tenneva Ramblers, in late July 1927, Rodgers bandmates learned that Ralph Peer, a representative of the Victor Talking Machine Company, was coming to Bristol to hold an audition for local musicians. Rodgers and the group arrived in Bristol on August 3,1927, Peer agreed to record them the next day. As the band discussed how they would be billed on the record, an argument ensued, the broke up. However, in an interview, Claude Grant of the Tenneva Ramblers gave a totally different reason for the bands breakup. Rodgers had taken some guitars on consignment and he sold them but did not pay back the music stores which supplied the guitars
29.
Blind Lemon Jefferson
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Lemon Henry Blind Lemon Jefferson was an American blues and gospel singer, songwriter, and musician. He was one of the most popular singers of the 1920s and has been called the Father of the Texas Blues. Jeffersons performances were distinctive because of his voice and the originality of his guitar playing. His recordings sold well, but he was not an influence on younger blues singers of his generation. Later blues and rock and roll musicians, however, did attempt to both his songs and his musical style. Jefferson was born blind, near Coutchman, Texas and he was the youngest of seven children born to Alex and Clarissa Jefferson, who were sharecroppers. Disputes regarding the date of his birth derive from contradictory census records, by 1900, the family was farming southeast of Streetman, Texas, and his birth date is indicated as September 1893 in the 1900 census. The 1910 census, taken in May, before his birthday, further confirms his year of birth as 1893 and indicated that the family was farming northwest of Wortham, near his birthplace. In his 1917 draft registration, Jefferson gave his date as October 26,1894, further stating that he then lived in Dallas, Texas. In the 1920 census, he is recorded as having returned to Freestone County and was living with his half-brother, Kit Banks, Jefferson began playing the guitar in his early teens and soon after he began performing at picnics and parties. He became a musician, playing in East Texas towns in front of barbershops. Jefferson was one of the earliest and most prominent figures in the blues movement developing in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas. It is likely that he moved to Deep Ellum on a permanent basis by 1917. Jefferson taught Walker the basics of playing guitar in exchange for Walkers occasional services as a guide. By the early 1920s, Jefferson was earning money for his musical performances to support a wife and, possibly. However, firm evidence of his marriage and children is unavailable, the first self-accompanied solo performer of a self-composed blues song was Lee Morse, whose Mail Man Blues was recorded on October 7,1924. Jeffersons music is uninhibited and represented the sounds of everyday life, from a honky-tonk to a country picnic, to street corner blues. Jefferson did what few had ever done before him – he became a solo guitarist
30.
T-Bone Walker
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In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 67 on its list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Walker was born in Linden, Texas, of African-American and Cherokee descent and his parents, Movelia Jimerson and Rance Walker, were both musicians. His stepfather, Marco Washington, taught him to play the guitar, ukulele, banjo, violin, mandolin, Walker began his career as a teenager in Dallas in the 1920s. His mother and stepfather were musicians, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, Walker left school at the age of 10, and by 15 he was a professional performer on the blues circuit. Initially, he was Jeffersons protégé and would guide him around town for his gigs, in 1929, Walker made his recording debut with Columbia Records, billed as Oak Cliff T-Bone, releasing the single Wichita Falls Blues backed with Trinity River Blues. Oak Cliff is the community in which he lived at the time, the pianist Douglas Fernell played accompaniment on the record. Walker married Vida Lee in 1935, the couple had three children, by the age of 25, Walker was working in clubs on Central Avenue, in Los Angeles, sometimes as the featured singer and as guitarist with Les Hites orchestra. In 1940 he recorded with Hite for the Varsity label, in 1942, Charlie Glenn, the owner of the Rhumboogie Café, brought T-Bone Walker to Chicago for long-time stints in his club. In 1944 and 1945, Walker recorded for the Rhumboogie label, much of his output was recorded from 1946 to 1948 for Black & White Records, including his most famous song, Call It Stormy Monday. Other notable songs he recorded during this period were Bobby Sox Blues, throughout his career Walker worked with top-notch musicians, including the trumpeter Teddy Buckner, the pianist Lloyd Glenn, the bassist Billy Hadnott, and the tenor saxophonist Jack McVea. He recorded from 1950 to 1954 for Imperial Records, Walkers only record in the next five years was T-Bone Blues, recorded during three widely separated sessions in 1955,1956 and 1959 and released by Atlantic Records in 1960. However, several acclaimed albums followed, such as I Want a Little Girl. Walker recorded in his last years, from 1968 to 1975, for Robin Hemingways music publishing company, Walkers career began to wind down after he suffered a stroke in 1974. He died of pneumonia following another stroke in March 1975. Walker was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, chuck Berry named Walker and Louis Jordan as his main influences. B. B. King cited hearing Walkers recording of Stormy Monday as his inspiration for getting an electric guitar, Walker was admired by Jimi Hendrix, who imitated Walkers trick of playing the guitar with his teeth. Stormy Monday was a live number of the Allman Brothers Band. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, T-Bone Walker discography, forum, and marketplace at Discogs T-Bone Walker at the Internet Movie Database T-Bone Walker at Find a Grave
31.
Blind Willie McTell
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Blind Willie McTell was a Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also a slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the voices of Delta bluesmen such as Charley Patton. McTell performed in musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music. McTell was born in Thomson, Georgia and he learned to play the guitar in his early teens. He soon became a performer in several Georgia cities, including Atlanta and Augusta. He never produced a hit record, but he had a prolific recording career with different labels. In 1940, he was recorded by the folklorist John A. Lomax and he was active in the 1940s and 1950s, playing on the streets of Atlanta, often with his longtime associate Curley Weaver. His last recordings originated during a session recorded by an Atlanta record store owner in 1956. McTell died three years later, having suffered for years from diabetes and alcoholism, despite his lack of commercial success, he was one of the few blues musicians of his generation who continued to actively play and record during the 1940s and 1950s. He did not live to see the American folk music revival, other artists influenced by McTell include Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Ralph McTell, Chris Smither, Jack White, and the White Stripes. He was born William Samuel McTier in Thomson, Georgia, most sources give the date of his birth as 1898, but researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1903, on the basis of his entry in the 1910 census. McTell was born blind in one eye and lost his vision by late childhood. His family background was rich in music, both of his parents and an uncle played the guitar and he was related to the bluesman and gospel pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey. McTells father left the family when Willie was young, after his mother died, in the 1920s, he left his hometown and became an itinerant musician, or songster. He began his career in 1927 for Victor Records in Atlanta. McTell married Ruth Kate Williams, now known as Kate McTell
32.
Lightnin' Hopkins
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Samuel John Lightnin Hopkins was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist, and occasional pianist, from Centerville, Texas. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 71 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, the musicologist Robert Mack McCormick opined that Hopkins is the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act. Hopkins was born in Centerville, Texas, and as a child, was immersed in the sounds of the blues and he developed a deep appreciation for this music at the age of 8, when he met Blind Lemon Jefferson at a church picnic in Buffalo, Texas. That day, Hopkins felt the blues was in him and he went on to learn from his older cousin, the country blues singer Alger Texas Alexander. Hopkins began accompanying Jefferson on guitar at informal church gatherings, Jefferson reputedly never let anyone play with him except young Hopkins, and Hopkins learned much from Jefferson at these gatherings. In the mid-1930s, Hopkins was sent to Houston County Prison Farm, in the late 1930s, he moved to Houston with Alexander in an unsuccessful attempt to break into the music scene there. By the early 1940s, he was back in Centerville, working as a farm hand, Hopkins took a second shot at Houston in 1946. While singing on Dowling St. in Houstons Third Ward, he was discovered by Lola Anne Cullum from the Los Angeles–based Aladdin Records and she convinced Hopkins to travel to Los Angeles, where he accompanied the pianist Wilson Smith. The duo recorded twelve tracks in their first sessions in 1946, an Aladdin executive decided the pair needed more dynamism in their names and dubbed Hopkins Lightnin and Wilson Thunder. Hopkins recorded more sides for Aladdin in 1947 and he returned to Houston and began recording for Gold Star Records. In the late 1940s and 1950s he rarely performed outside Texas, only traveling to the Midwest and East for recording sessions. It has been estimated that he recorded between eight hundred and a thousand songs in his career and he performed regularly at nightclubs in and around Houston, particularly on Dowling St. where he had been discovered by Aladdin. He recorded the hit records T-Model Blues and Tim Moores Farm at SugarHill Recording Studios in Houston, by the mid- to late 1950s, his prodigious output of high-quality recordings had gained him a following among African Americans and blues aficionados. In 1959, the blues researcher Mack McCormick contacted Hopkins, hoping to bring him to the attention of a broader musical audience engaged in the folk revival, mcCormack presented Hopkins to integrated audiences first in Houston and then in California. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall on October 14,1960, alongside Joan Baez and Pete Seeger, in 1960, he signed with Tradition Records. The recordings which followed included his song Mojo Hand in 1960, in 1968, Hopkins recorded the album Free Form Patterns, backed by the rhythm section of the psychedelic rock band 13th Floor Elevators. He toured extensively in the United States and played a six-city tour of Japan in 1978, Hopkins was Houstons poet-in-residence for 35 years. He recorded more albums than any other bluesman, Hopkins died of esophageal cancer in Houston on January 30,1982, at the age of 69
33.
Son House
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Eddie James Son House, Jr. was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing. After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also as a church pastor and he quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell, locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Pattons associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was an influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax, work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, in 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also issued as albums. In addition to his influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, he was an inspiration to John Hammond, Alan Wilson, Bonnie Raitt. His father, Eddie House, Sr. was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a member but also a drinker, he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing and he also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds. When Houses parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, when he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would speak of his hatred of blues. At fifteen, probably living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons. At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin and this was a significant step for House, he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to run her fathers farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, I left her hanging on the gatepost, around the same time, probably 1922, Houses mother died. In later years, he was angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, She wasnt nothin
34.
Robert Johnson
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Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, Johnsons shadowy and poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. One Faustian myth says that he sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads of Mississippi highways to achieve success. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, after the reissue of his recordings in 1961, on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers, his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style and he is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence, the blues and rock musician Eric Clapton has called Johnson the most important blues singer that ever lived. Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first induction ceremony, in 1986, as an influence on rock. In 2010, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone magazines 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8,1911, to Julia Major Dodds and Noah Johnson. Julia was married to Charles Dodds, a prosperous landowner and furniture maker. Charles Dodds had been forced by a mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert but after two years sent the boy to Memphis to live with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer, about 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the Mississippi Delta area around Tunica and Robinsonville, Mississippi. Julias new husband, known as Dusty Willis, was 24 years her junior, Robert was remembered by some residents as Little Robert Dusty, but he was registered at Tunicas Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas, with Will, Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927. The quality of his signature on his marriage suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. A school friend, Willie Coffee, who was interviewed and filmed in later life, recalled that as a youth Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp. Coffee recalled that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis. After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father and she died in childbirth shortly after. Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert Mack McCormick that this was a punishment for Roberts decision to sing secular songs. McCormick believed that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the life of a husband
35.
Ronnie Gilbert
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Ruth Alice Ronnie Gilbert was an American folk singer, songwriter, actress and political activist. She was one of the members of the music quartet the Weavers, as a contralto with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays. Gilbert was born in Brooklyn, New York City and considered herself a native New Yorker her whole life and her parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her mother, Sarah, came from Warsaw, Poland and was a dressmaker and trade unionist, Gilbert came to Washington, D. C. during World War II. She encountered Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax and Woody Guthrie and she went to Anacostia High School. She was almost expelled because of her resistance to participating in a minstrel show and she performed in the early 1940s with the Priority Ramblers before founding the Weavers with Pete Seeger. Gilberts singing was characterized as a crystalline, bold contralto, the Weavers were an influential folk-singing group that was blacklisted in the early 1950s, during a period of widespread anti-communist feeling, because of the groups left-wing sympathies. She also participated in the Parisian protests of 1968 after traveling to country to work with British theatrical director Peter Brook. In the 1970s, Gilbert earned an MA in clinical psychology, various well-known younger singers have honored Gilbert for the example she set for them, and the influence she had on their careers, particularly Holly Near. Near and Gilbert joined Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger for the 1984 quartet album HARP, in 1992, she accompanied the Vancouver Mens Chorus on the song Music in My Mothers House from their album Signature. In 1991, Gilbert recorded Lincoln and Liberty and When Johnny Comes Marching Home for the compilation album and she continued to tour and appear in plays, folk festivals, and music festivals well into her 80s. She continued her protest work, participating in such as Women in Black to protest Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in addition to United States policies in the middle-east. In 2006, the Weavers received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys, Gilbert and Hellerman accepted the award. Pete Seeger was unable to attend the ceremony, and Hays had died in 1981, Gilbert was married to Martin Weg from 1950 until 1959, and the couple have one daughter, Lisa. In 2004, Gilbert married her partner of almost two decades and her manager, Donna Korones, when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom temporarily legalized gay marriage in San Francisco, Gilbert moved to Caspar, California, in 2006. Gilbert died on June 6,2015, at a facility in Mill Valley, California, from natural causes. Official website Ronnie Gilbert at the Internet Movie Database
36.
Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
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Deportee is a protest song with lyrics by Woody Guthrie detailing the January 28,1948 crash of a plane near Los Gatos Canyon,20 miles west of Coalinga in Fresno County, California, United States. The crash occurred in Los Gatos Canyon and not in the town of Los Gatos itself, Guthrie was inspired to write the song by what he considered the racist mistreatment of the passengers before and after the accident. The crash resulted in the deaths of 32 people,4 Americans and 28 migrant farm workers who were being deported from California back to Mexico. For example, none of the names were printed in the January 29,1948, New York Times report, only those of the flight crew. However, The Fresno Bee covered the tragedy extensively and listed all of the names of the deportees. Guthrie, whose image was that of a folk singer. In the poem, Guthrie assigned symbolic names to the dead, Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, adiós, mis amigos, a decade later, Guthries poem was set to music and given a haunting melody by a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman. Shortly after, folk singer and friend of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, began performing the song at concerts and it has been suggested by the Three Rocks Research website that, in fact, Deportee betrays Woody Guthries lack of understanding regarding the Bracero Program. However, it could be argued that Guthries song is less about the Bracero Program itself and more a comment on the attitude of American society, at the time, government policies paid farmers to destroy their crops in order to keep farm production and prices high. Guthrie felt that it was wrong to render food inedible by poisoning it in a world where people lived. Deportee has been described by journalist Joe Klein as the last great song he would write, a memorial to the nameless migrants all scattered like dry leaves in Los Gatos Canyon. The song has been covered many times, often under a variety of titles, including Deportees, Ballad of the Deportees, Deportee Song, Plane Crash at Los Gatos. The song has been recorded by artists, including, Dave Guard and the Whiskey Hill Singers on Dave Guard. The Kingston Trio on Time To Think, Cisco Houston on Cisco Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie. Judy Collins on Judy Collins #3, and the live album A Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Odetta on album Odetta Sings of Many Things. Julie Felix on her first album Julie Felix, the Brothers Four on Sing of Our Times The Byrds on the Ballad of Easy Rider. Joan Baez on Blessed Are. and live on Bowery Songs, the Bergerfolk on The Bergerfolk Sing For Joy, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Barbara Dane on I Hate the Capitalist System, Arlo Guthrie on Arlo Guthrie and with Pete Seeger on Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Together in Concert
37.
Josh White
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Joshua Daniel Josh White was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names Pinewood Tom and Tippy Barton in the 1930s, White grew up in the South during the 1920s and 1930s. He became a prominent race records artist, with an output of recordings in genres including Piedmont blues, country blues, gospel music. In 1931, White moved to New York, and within a decade his fame had spread widely. His repertoire expanded to include blues, jazz, traditional folk songs, and political protest songs, and he was in demand as an actor on radio, Broadway. White became the closest black friend and confidant of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, from 1947 through the mid-1960s, White was caught up in the anti-communist Red Scare, and as a consequence his career was damaged. However Whites musical style would go on to several generations of musical artists. White was born on February 2,1914, in the section of Greenville, South Carolina, one of the four children of Reverend Dennis. His father told him that he was named after the Biblical character Joshua of the Old Testament and his mother introduced him to music when he was five years old, at which age he began singing in his churchs choir. Arnold would then send Whites mother two dollars a week, Arnold soon realized that he could profit from this gifted boy, who quickly learned to dance, sing, and play the tambourine. In order to appear sympathetic to the onlookers tossing coins, the old men kept White shoeless, at night he slept in cotton fields or in horse stables, often on an empty stomach, while his employer slept in a black hotel. While guiding Taggart in 1927, White arrived in Chicago, Illinois, mayo Williams, a producer for Paramount Records, recognized Whites talents and began using him as a session guitarist. He was still shoeless and sleeping in horse stables, with all his payments for recordings going to Taggart, for a few months after Taggart released him from servitude, White shared a room with Blind Blake at Williamss home before finding his own room in a boarding house. Finally, he was being paid for his recordings and for the first time in his life was able to buy clothes and shoes. For the next two years, White continued an active recording schedule in Chicago, until he had saved money to return to Greenville. Late in 1930, ARC Records, basec in New York, after several months of searching, they found him recovering from a broken leg at his mothers home in Greenville. They persuaded her to sign a contract for her underage son, promising that they would record only religious songs. White then moved to New York City and recorded songs for ARC, billed as Joshua White
38.
Malvina Reynolds
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Malvina Reynolds was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songwriting, particularly the songs Little Boxes and Morningtown Ride. Malvina Milder was born in San Francisco to David and Abagail Milder, Jewish and socialist immigrants and she married William Reynolds, a carpenter and labor organizer, in 1934. They had one child, Nancy Reynolds Schimmel, in 1935, Malvina earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned a doctorate there, finishing her dissertation in 1938. Though she played violin in a band in her twenties. She was in her forties when she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger. She returned to school at UC Berkeley, where she studied music theory, Reynolds was also a noted composer of childrens songs, including Magic Penny and Morningtown Ride, a top-5 UK single recorded by The Seekers. Four collections of Reynolds music are available on compact disc, the Smithsonian Folkways label released Another County Heard From and Ear to the Ground, and the Omni Recording Corporation in Australia issued Malvina Reynolds and Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth. A film biography, Love It Like a Fool, was made a few years before she died in 1978, Reynolds most famous song, Little Boxes, has enjoyed renewed popularity by being featured in Showtimes TV series Weeds. Little Boxes was inspired visually by the houses of Daly City, Nancy Reynolds Schimmel, daughter of Malvina Reynolds, explained, My mother and father were driving South from San Francisco through Daly City when my mom got the idea for the song. She asked my dad to take the wheel, and she wrote it on the way to the gathering in La Honda where she was going to sing for the Friends Committee on Legislation. When Time Magazine wanted a photo of her pointing to the very place, in her later years, Malvina Reynolds contributed songs and material to PBS Sesame Street, on which she made occasional appearances as a character named Kate. In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed, one of the cards featured Reynoldss name, biography at Sisters Choice Memories of her mother, by Malvina Reynolds daughter Smithsonian Folkways- Malvina Reynolds Malvina Reynolds, Song Lyrics and Poems Complete discography
39.
Earl Robinson
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Earl Hawley Robinson was a folk music singer-songwriter and composer from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is remembered for his music, including the songs Joe Hill, Black and White, and the cantata Ballad for Americans and he was a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s. In addition, he wrote popular songs and music for Hollywood films. The jazz clarinettist Perry Robinson is his son and he studied violin, viola and piano as a child, and studied composition at the University of Washington, receiving a BM and teaching certificate in 1933. In 1934 he moved to New York City where he studied with Hanns Eisler, in the 1940s he worked on film scores in Hollywood until he was blacklisted for being a Communist. Unable to work in Hollywood, he moved back to New York, robinsons musical influences included Paul Robeson, Lead Belly, and American folk music. He composed Ballad for Americans which became a song for Robeson. It was also recorded by Bing Crosby and he wrote the music for and sang in the short documentary film Muscle Beach, directed by Joseph Strick and Irving Lerner. Other songs written by Robinson include The House I Live In, Joe Hill, in 1942, Robinson wrote the music for a cantata on the life and death of Abraham Lincoln entitled The Lonesome Train. The 2009 performance was in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Lincolns birth, Robinson co-wrote the folk musical Sandhog with blacklisted screenwriter Waldo Salt. Columbia and the River, a story by Theodore Dreiser about the workers, known as sandhogs. The musical debuted at the Phoenix Theater in New York on November 23,1954, Robinson also wrote Black and White, with David I. His late works included a concerto for banjo, as well as a piano concerto entitled The New Human. His cantata based on the preamble to the constitution of the United Nations was premiered in New York with the Elisabeth Irwin High School Chorus and he was killed at the age of 81 in a car accident in his hometown of Seattle in 1991. Mari Jo Buhle Encyclopedia of the American Left, Oxford University Press Don Michael Randel Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, Earl Robinson, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, grovemusic. com. Denisoff Great Day Coming, Folk Music and the American Left, Baltimore, Maryland Robinson, Ballad of an American, The Autobiography of Earl Robinson. Allmusic Guide Entry Earl Robinson at Folkways Records Earl Robinson at the Internet Movie Database
40.
John Jacob Niles
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John Jacob Niles was an American composer, singer, and collector of traditional ballads. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Niles learned music theory from his mother, and began writing down folk music as a teenager. After serving in the U. S. Army Air Service during World War I, in which he was injured, he studied music in France, first in Lyon, then in Paris at the Schola Cantorum, also meeting Gertrude Stein. Returning to the United States in 1920, he continued his studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music working there with Ralph Lyford and he sang opera in Chicago and folk songs on early radio. In 1925, he moved to New York City and held jobs in the entertainment industry. In the 1930s, he toured Europe and the United States with contralto Marion Kerby and he performed at the White House in 1938, and on occasion at the Newport Folk Festival during the 1950s. In the 1920s, Niles began publishing music, on other occasions, he transcribed songs he heard sung by African Americans and by fellow soldiers in World War I. Niles was also a noted songwriter. His songs, many of which are based on sources, include Venezuela. Henry Millers Plexus includes a tribute to Niless recording of this song. Niles composed Go Way From My Window when he was a mere 16 years old, marlene Dietrich recorded it and sang it on stage. Bob Dylan quoted its first line in his song It Aint Me Babe, later in life, Niles published compositions in a more classical style, including works for choir and art songs for voice and piano. The latter include his last work, a setting of poems by Thomas Merton, starting in 1938, he recorded a number of his compositions and transcribed songs, performing the material in an intense, dramatic manner. He employed a very high falsetto to portray female characters. In 1936, he married Rena Lipetz and they settled on the Boot Hill farm in Clark County, Kentucky, where they spent the rest of their lives. Niles died in Lexington, Kentucky on March 1,1980 at age 87 and he is buried at the nearby St. Huberts Episcopal Church. The John Jacob Niles Center for American Music at the University of Kentucky is named after him,2 No Direction Home - contains a video clip of Go Way From My Window. Mister Lonely, Directed by Harmony Korine in 2008 - contains The Maid Freed from the Gallows, New York, New York, Somerset Publishers. Kentucky by Design, The Decorative Arts and American Culture, ISBN 978-0-8131-5567-8 John Jacob Niles, American Folk Singer authorized website with comprehensive discography and streaming audio
41.
Doc Watson
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Arthel Lane Doc Watson was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Watsons flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music were highly regarded. He performed with his son, guitarist Merle Watson, for over 15 years until Merles death in 1985 in an accident on the family farm, Watson was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina. A fan in the crowd shouted Call him Doc, presumably in reference to the literary character Sherlock Holmess sidekick Doctor Watson. An eye infection caused Doc Watson to lose his vision before his first birthday and he attended North Carolinas school for the visually impaired, The Governor Morehead School, in Raleigh, North Carolina. In a 1989 radio interview with Terry Gross on the Fresh Air show on National Public Radio, Watson explains how he got his first guitar. His father told him if he and his brother David chopped down all the small dead chestnut trees along the edge of their field. Watson bought a $10 Stella guitar from Sears Roebuck with his earnings, later in that same interview, Watson explained that his first high-quality guitar was a Martin D-18. Watsons earliest influences were country roots musicians and groups such as the Carter Family, the first song he learned to play on the guitar was When Roses Bloom in Dixieland, first recorded by the Carter Family in 1930. Watson stated in an interview with American Songwriter that, Jimmie Rodgers was the first man that I started to claim as my favorite, by the time Watson reached adulthood, he had become a proficient acoustic and electric guitar player. In 1953, Watson joined the Johnson City, Tennessee-based Jack Williams country, the band seldom had a fiddle player, but was often asked to play at square dances. Following the example of country guitarists Grady Martin and Hank Garland and he later transferred the technique to acoustic guitar, and playing fiddle tunes became part of his signature sound. During his time with Jack Williams, Doc also supported his family as a piano tuner, in 1960, as the American folk music revival grew, Watson took the advice of folk musicologist Ralph Rinzler and began playing acoustic guitar and banjo exclusively. That move ignited Watsons career when he played on his first recording, also of pivotal importance for his career was his February 11,1961 appearance at P. S. He subsequently began to tour as a performer and appeared at universities. Watson would eventually get his big break and rave reviews for his performance at the renowned Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Watson recorded his first solo album in 1964 and began performing with his son Merle, the same year. As popular as ever, Doc and Merle began playing as a trio with T. Michael Coleman on bass guitar in 1974, in 1985, Merle died in a tractor accident on his family farm. Two years later Merle Fest was inaugurated in remembrance of him, Watson played guitar in both flatpicking and fingerpicking style, but is best known for his flatpick work
42.
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
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