1.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
2.
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
3.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
4.
Washboard (musical instrument)
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The washboard and frottoir are used as a percussion instrument, employing the ribbed metal surface of the cleaning device as a rhythm instrument. Often the washboard has additional traps, such as a block, a cowbell. Conversely, the frottoir dispenses with the frame and consists simply of the metal ribbing hung around the neck and it is played primarily with spoon handles or bottle openers in a combination of strumming, scratching, tapping and rolling. The frottoir or vest frottoir is played as a percussion instrument, often in a band with a drummer. In Zydeco bands, the frottoir is played with bottle openers. It tends to play counter-rhythms to the drummer, in a jug band, the washboard can also be stroked with a single whisk broom and functions as the drums for the band, playing only on the back-beat for most songs, a substitute for a snare drum. In a four-beat measure, the washboard will stroke on the 2-beat and its best sound is achieved using a single steel-wire snare-brush or whisk broom. There are three ways of deploying the washboard for use as an instrument. The first, mainly used by American players like Washboard Chaz of the Washboard Chaz Blues Trio, there is a Polish traditional jazz festival and music award named Złota Tarka. Washboards, called zatulas, are occasionally used in Ukrainian folk music. The washboard as a percussion instrument ultimately derives from the practice of hamboning as practiced in West Africa and this led to the development of Jug bands which used jugs, spoons, and washboards to provide the rhythm. Jug bands became popular in the 1920s, the frottoir, also called a Zydeco rub-board, is a mid-20th century invention designed specifically for Zydeco music. It is one of the few musical instruments invented entirely in the United States and it was designed in 1946 by Clifton Chenier and fashioned by Willie Landry, a friend and metalworker at the Texaco refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. Cliftons brother Cleveland Chenier famously played this newly designed rubboard using bottle openers, likewise, Willies son, Tee Don Landry, continues the traditional hand manufacturing of rubboards in his small shop in Sunset, Louisiana, between Lafayette and Opelousas. In 2010 Saint Blues Guitar Workshop launched an electric washboard percussion instrument called the Woogie Board, see also, Category, Washboard players In British Columbia, Canada, Tony McBride, known as Mad Fingers McBride, performs with a group called The Genuine Jug Band. Tony is referred to as The Canadian Washboard King and his percussion set-up was created by Douglas Fraser, of the same band. The washboard set-up was seen in Modern Drummer magazine, August 2014 edition, musician Steve Katz famously played washboard with the Even Dozen Jug Band. His playing can be heard on the group’s legendary self-titled Elektra recording from 1964, Katz reprised his washboard playing on Played a Little Fiddle, a 2007 recording featuring Steve Katz, Stefan Grossman and Danny Kalb
5.
Jug (instrument)
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The jug used as a musical instrument is an empty jug played with buzzed lips to produce a trombone-like tone. The characteristic sound of the jug is low and hoarse, below the pitch of the fiddle, harmonica. The jug does not touch the mouth, but serves as a resonating chamber to amplify. Changes in pitch are controlled by loosening or tightening the lips, an accomplished jug player might have a two-octave range. Some players augment this sound with vocalizations, didgeridoo style, in performance, the jug sound is enhanced if the player stands with his back to a wall, which will reflect the sound towards the audience. The stovepipe is played in much the manner, with the open-ended pipe being the resonating chamber. There is some similarity to the didgeridoo, but there is no contact between the stovepipe and the players lips, as a bass instrument, the jug is part of the bands rhythm section, but jug solos are common. Most jug bands use a single jug player, but there are recordings of bands that used jug sections of two or more players. Jugs will also produce sound at their main resonance frequency when air is blown across the top opening and this method is not used in bands, since it is relatively quiet and produces only a single pitch. It is typically used for making glass bottles whistle, a larger bottle produces a lower musical pitch while smaller ones produce higher pitches. The pitch of a bottle played in this way may be controlled by changing its volume by adding or emptying contents, loudness is a function of the speed of the air blown across the top. The jug as a musical instrument reached its height of popularity in the 1920s, the jug was also popular because it was cheap and easy to carry around. In addition to the most common ceramic jug, containers of different materials have been used for musical jugs, e. g. glass jugs and bottles, plastic bleach bottles, tin kerosene cans. Different materials produce different sounds, as do different sizes, a version of the jug, known as the botija, was played in early Cuban musical forms such as the son. In recent times, Fritz Richmond was a well-known and successful jug player, josh Smith of the Glade City Rounders is one of the most famous jug players touring and playing live. He is said to possibly be the best in the world by some jug band scholars, blown bottle Cegléd water jug How to Prepare and Play a Jug Jug Band Examples
6.
Tea chest bass
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The washtub bass, or gutbucket, is a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. The washtub bass was used in jug bands that were popular in some African American communities in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, British skiffle bands used a variant called a tea chest bass, variations on the basic design are found around the world, particularly in the choice of resonator. As a result, there are different names for the instrument including the gas-tank bass, barrel bass, box bass, bush bass, babatoni, tingotalango, tulòn, laundrophone. The hallmarks of the design are simplicity, very low cost and do-it-yourself construction. Ethnomusicologists trace the origins of the instrument to the ground harp - a version that uses a piece of bark or a skin stretched over a pit as a resonator. The washtub bass is used in a jug band, often accompanied by a washboard as a percussion instrument. Jug bands, first known as bands, were popular especially among African-Americans around 1900 in New Orleans. At about the time, European-Americans of Appalachia were using the instrument in old-timey folk music. A musical style known as gut-bucket blues came out of the jug band scene, according to Willie The Lion Smiths autobiography, the term gutbucket comes from Negro families who all owned their own pail, or bucket, and would get it filled with the makings for chitterlings. The term gutbucket came from playing a style of music. In English skiffle bands, Australian and New Zealand bush bands and South African kwela bands, before the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartneys band, The Quarrymen, featured a tea-chest bass, as did many young bands around 1956. A folk music revival in the U. S. in the early 1960s re-ignited interest in the washtub bass, bands included Mother McCrees Uptown Jug Champions which later became The Grateful Dead, and, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band featuring Fritz Richmond on bass. A tea chest bass is a variation of the bass that uses a tea chest as the resonator for an upright stringed bass. The instrument is made from a pole, traditionally a broomstick, one or more strings are stretched along the pole and plucked. In Europe, particularly England and Germany, the instrument is associated with skiffle bands, in Australia it was traditionally used to provide deep sounds for bush bands, though most such groups today use electric bass or double bass. It was commonly called a bush bass, Fritz Richmond has performed on numerous recordings from America and Japan. One of his washtub basses is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Donald Kachamba and Moya Aliya, one-string box players with the influential Malawi group Kachamba Brothers Band
7.
Kazoo
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The kazoo is a musical instrument that adds a buzzing timbral quality to a players voice when the player vocalizes into it. It is a type of mirliton, which is a membranophone, one of a class of instruments which modifies its players voice by way of a vibrating membrane, a kazoo player hums, rather than blows, into the instrument. The oscillating air pressure of the hum makes the kazoos membrane vibrate, the resulting sound varies in pitch and loudness with the players humming. Players can produce different sounds by singing specific syllables such as doo, similar hide-covered vibrating and voice-changing instruments have been used in Africa for hundreds of years, often for ceremonial purposes. A popular belief is that Alabama Vest, an African-American in Macon, however, there is no documentation to support that claim. The first documented appearance of a kazoo was that created by an American inventor, Warren Herbert Frost, the patent states, This instrument or toy, to which I propose to give the name kazoo. Frosts kazoo did not look like present-day submarine-shaped kazoos, the modern kazoo—also the first one made of metal—was patented by George D. Smith of Buffalo, New York, May 27,1902. These machines were used for many decades, by 1994, the company produced 1.5 million kazoos per year and was the only manufacturer of metal kazoos in North America. The factory, in nearly its original configuration, is now called The Kazoo Factory and it is still operating, and it is open to the public for tours. In 2010, The Kazoo Museum opened in Beaufort, South Carolina with exhibits on kazoo history, the kazoo is played professionally in jug bands and comedy music, and by amateurs everywhere. It is among the instruments developed in the United States. In North East England and South Wales, kazoos play an important role in jazz bands. During Carnival, players use kazoos in the Carnival of Cádiz in Spain, in the Original Dixieland Jass Band 1921 recording of Crazy Blues, what the casual listener might mistake for a trombone solo is actually a kazoo solo by drummer Tony Sbarbaro or Red McKenzie. The Mound City Blue Blowers had a number of hit records in the early 1920s featuring Dick Slevin on metal kazoo. The vocaphone, a kind of kazoo with a tone, was occasionally featured in Paul Whitemans Orchestra. Trombonist-vocalist Jack Fulton played it on Whitemans recording of Vilia and Frankie Trumbauers Medley of Isham Jones Dance Hits, the Mills Brothers vocal group originally started in vaudeville as a kazoo quartet, playing four-part harmony on kazoo with one brother accompanying them on guitar. The kazoo is rare in European classical music, leonard Bernstein included a segment for kazoo ensemble in the First Introit of his Mass. The brief passages have the kazoo chorus sliding up and down the scale as the cheering rises, jesse Fullers 1962 recording of his song San Francisco Bay Blues features a kazoo solo, as does Eric Claptons 1992 recording of the song on MTVs Unplugged television show and album
8.
Cigar box guitar
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The cigar box guitar is a primitive chordophone that uses an empty cigar box as a resonator. The earliest had one or two strings, modern models typically have three or more, generally, the strings are connected to the end of a broomstick or a 1 x 3 inch wood slat and to the cigar box resonator. Cigars were packed in boxes, crates, and barrels as early as 1800, until then, cigars were shipped in larger crates containing 100 or more per case. After 1840, cigar manufacturers started using smaller, more portable boxes with 20–50 cigars per box, trace evidence of cigar box instruments exists from 1840 to the 1860s. The earliest known illustration of a cigar box instrument is an etching copyrighted in 1876 of two American Civil War soldiers at a campsite, one of whom is playing a cigar box fiddle. The etching was created by illustrator and artist Edwin Forbes, who, under the banner of Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, the etching was included in Forbess work Life Stories of the Great Army. In the etching, the fiddle clearly shows the brand Figaro on the cigar box. In addition to the etching, plans for a cigar box banjo were published by Daniel Carter Beard, co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America, in 1884 as part of Christmas Eve with Uncle Enos. The plans, retitled How to Build an Uncle Enos Banjo, were included in the 1890 edition of Beards American Boys Handy Book as supplementary material at the back of the book. These plans omitted the story but still showed a step-by-step description of a playable five-string fretless banjo made from a cigar box and it would seem that the earliest cigar box instruments would be crude and primitive, but this is not always the case. The 1886 fiddle was made for an 8-year-old boy and is certainly playable, the latter instrument was made for serious playing. Cigar box guitars and fiddles were also important in the rise of jug bands, as most of these performers were black Americans living in poverty, many could not afford a real instrument. Using these, along with the bass, jug, washboard. The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a resurgence of homemade musical instruments, times were hard in the American South, and sitting on the front porch singing away the blues was a popular pastime. Musical instruments were beyond the means of most people, but with an old cigar box, a piece of broom handle and a couple of wires from the screen door, a guitar was born. A modern revival of these instruments has been gathering momentum with an increase in the number of cigar box guitar builders and performers, a loose-knit group of underground musicians tour the East Coast of the United States each summer under the banner Masters of the Cigar Box Guitar Tour. These musicians include Doctor Oakroot, Johnny Lowebow, Tomi-O and many others, a growing number of primitive luthiers are adding cigar box guitars to their items for sale. The Top cigar box guitar builders of today are Shane Speal, Mike Snowden, the modern revival is sometimes due to interest in jug bands and the DIY culture, as a cigar box is inexpensive in comparison with other factors, such as strings and construction time
9.
Musical saw
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A musical saw, also called a singing saw, is a hand saw used as a musical instrument. Capable of continuous glissando, the sound creates an ethereal tone, the musical saw is classified as a friction idiophone with direct friction under the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification. The saw is generally played seated with the handle squeezed between the legs, and the far end held with one hand, some sawists play standing, either with the handle between the knees and the blade sticking out in front of them. The saw is usually played with the edge, or teeth, facing the body. Some saw players file down the teeth which makes no difference to the sound. Many—especially professional—saw players use a handle at the tip of the saw for easier bending, to sound a note, a sawist first bends the blade into an S-curve. The parts of the blade that are curved are damped from vibration, at the center of the S-curve a section of the blade remains relatively flat. This section, the spot, can vibrate across the width of the blade, producing a distinct pitch, the wider the section of blade. Sound is usually created by drawing a bow across the edge of the saw at the sweet spot. The sawist controls the pitch by adjusting the S-curve, making the sweet spot travel up the blade for a higher pitch, harmonics can be created by playing at varying distances on either side of the sweet spot. Sawists can add vibrato by shaking one of their legs or by wobbling the hand holds the tip of the blade. Once a sound is produced, it will sustain for quite a while, on occasion the musical saw is called for in orchestral music, but orchestral percussionists are seldom also sawists. If a note outside of the range is called for. Sawists often use standard wood-cutting saws, although special musical saws are also made, as compared with wood-cutting saws, the blades of musical saws are generally wider, for range, and longer, for finer control. They do not have set or sharpened teeth, and may have grain running parallel to the edge of the saw. Some musical saws are made with metal, to increase flexibility, while others are made thicker, for a richer tone, longer sustain. A typical musical saw is 5 inches wide at the end and 1 inch wide at the tip. Such a saw will generally produce about two octaves, regardless of length, a bass saw may be 6 inches at the handle and produce about two-and-a-half octaves
10.
Guitar
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The guitar is a musical instrument classified as a fretted string instrument with anywhere from four to 18 strings, usually having six. The sound is projected either acoustically, using a wooden or plastic and wood box, or through electrical amplifier. It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the fingers, the guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. There are three types of modern acoustic guitar, the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of a guitar is produced by the strings vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar. The term finger-picking can also refer to a tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass. The acoustic bass guitar is an instrument that is one octave below a regular guitar. Early amplified guitars employed a body, but a solid wood body was eventually found more suitable during the 1960s and 1970s. As with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars. The electric guitar has had a influence on popular culture. The guitar is used in a variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as an instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul. The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and, later, in the Americas. The modern word guitar, and its antecedents, has applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times. Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar, at least two instruments called guitars were in use in Spain by 1200, the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca. The guitarra morisca had a back, wide fingerboard. The guitarra Latina had a sound hole and a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers moresca or morisca and latina had been dropped, and it had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a sharply cut waist
11.
Banjo
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The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
12.
Beat music
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Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat is a pop and rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo-wop, skiffle, the exact origins of the terms beat music and Merseybeat are uncertain. The name Mersey Beat was used for a Liverpool music magazine founded in 1961 by Bill Harry, Harry claims to have coined the term based on a policemans beat and not that of the music. The band the Pacifics were renamed the Mersey Beats in February 1962 by Bob Wooler, MC at the Cavern Club, the equivalent scenes in Birmingham and London were described as Brum beat and the Tottenham Sound respectively. The most distinctive characteristic of the music was the beat, using the backbeat common to rock and roll and rhythm and blues. The 8/8 rhythm was flexible enough to be adopted for songs from a range of genres and this flexibility also meant that beat music could cope with a greater range of time-signatures and song shapes than rock & roll had been able to. Beat groups usually had simple guitar-dominated line-ups, with vocal harmonies, the most common instrumentation of beat groups featured lead, rhythm and bass guitars plus drums, as popularized by the Beatles, the Searchers, and others. Beat groups—even those with a separate lead singer—often sang both verses and choruses in harmony, resembling doo wop, with nonsense syllables in the backing vocals. In the late 1950s, a culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the declining skiffle scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls. Liverpool was perhaps uniquely placed within Britain to be the point of origin of a new form of music. It was also a port with links to America, which made for much greater access to American records and instruments like guitars. As a result, Beat bands were influenced by American groups of the era, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Outside of Liverpool many local scenes were influenced by rock and roll and more by the rhythm and blues. These included bands from Birmingham who were grouped with the beat movement, the most successful being the Spencer Davis Group. Similar blues influenced bands who broke out from local scenes to national prominence were the Animals from Newcastle, the term British Invasion was coined by T. V. reporter Walter Cronkite to describe the Beatles arrival in the United States and the outbreak of Beatlemania in 1964. Their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show soon after led to chart success, by 1967 beat music was beginning to sound out of date, particularly compared with the harder edged blues rock that was beginning to emerge. Most of the groups that had not already disbanded, like the Beatles, moved into different forms of music and pop music, including psychedelic rock
13.
British blues
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Many encountered blues for the first time through the skiffle craze of the second half of the 1950s, particularly the songs of Lead Belly covered by acts like Lonnie Donegan. As skiffle began to decline in the late 1950s, and British rock and roll began to dominate the charts, in 1957 Davies and Korner decided that their central interest was the blues and closed the skiffle club, reopening a month later as The London Blues and Barrelhouse Club. To this point British blues was acoustically played emulating Delta blues and country blues styles, Davies and Korner, having already split with Barber, now plugged in and began to play high powered electric blues that became the model for the subgenre, forming the band Blues Incorporated. Blues Incorporated became something of a house for British blues musicians in the later 1950s and early 1960s, with many joining. These included future Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Brian Jones, as well as Cream founders Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, beside Graham Bond and Long John Baldry. In addition to Chicago blues numbers, the Rolling Stones also covered songs by Chuck Berry and The Valentinos, with the latters Its All Over Now, giving them their first UK number one in 1964. Blues songs and influences continued to surface in the Rolling Stones music, bands to emerge from other major British cities included The Animals from Newcastle, The Moody Blues and Spencer Davis Group from Birmingham, and Them from Belfast. The British Mod subculture was centred on rhythm and blues and later soul music. As a result, a number of mod bands emerged to fill this gap and these included The Small Faces, The Creation, The Action and most successfully The Who. Many of these bands were able to enjoy cult and then success in the UK. Only the Who managed, after some difficulty, to produce a significant US following, particularly after their appearances at the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock. This sound became something of a combination for British blues guitarists. Clapton stated, I spent most of my teens and early twenties studying the blues - the geography of it, peter Green started what is called second great epoch of British blues, as he replaced Clapton in the Bluesbreakers after his departure to form Cream. The rise of electric blues, and its mainstream success. In the early 1960s, folk guitar pioneers Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and particularly Davy Graham, played blues, folk and jazz, developing a distinctive guitar style known as folk baroque. British acoustic blues continued to develop as part of the scene, with figures like Ian A. Anderson and his Country Blues Band. Most British acoustic blues players could achieve commercial success and, with a few exceptions. The result has been characterised as blues rock and arguably marked the beginnings of a separation of pop and rock music that was to be a feature of the record industry for several decades
14.
Rock music in the United Kingdom
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British rock describes a wide variety of forms of music made in the United Kingdom. The term is used in combination with other terms to describe a variety of hybrids or subgenres. Rock music has tended to be more orientated toward the market, putting an emphasis on innovation, virtuosity, performance. In the 1950s, Britain was well placed to receive American rock and roll music, trad Jazz became popular, and many of its musicians were influenced by related American styles, including Boogie Woogie and the Blues. At the same time British audiences were beginning to encounter American rock and roll, initially through films including Blackboard Jungle, American rock and roll acts such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Buddy Holly thereafter became major forces in the British charts. The initial response of the British music industry was to attempt to produce copies of American records, recorded with session musicians, British rock and rollers soon began to appear, including Wee Willie Harris and Tommy Steele. The bland or wholly imitative form of much British rock and roll in this meant that the American product remained dominant. However, in 1958 Britain produced its first authentic rock and roll song and star, British impresario Larry Parnes fashioned young singers to the new trend, giving them corny names such as Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and Vince Eager. At the same time, TV shows such as Six-Five Special and Oh Boy. both produced by Jack Good, promoted the careers of British rock and rollers like Marty Wilde and Adam Faith. Cliff Richard and his backing band The Drifters, who changed their name to The Shadows, were the most successful home grown rock. Other leading acts included Joe Brown, and Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, whose 1960 hit song Shakin All Over became a rock and roll standard. The producer Joe Meek was the first to produce sizeable rock hits in England, culminating with The Tornados instrumental Telstar, which went to number one in both the UK and USA. In late 1950s Britain a flourishing culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the declining scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls. These beat bands were influenced by American groups of the era, such as Buddy Holly. Among the most successful acts from Birmingham were The Spencer Davis Group and The Moody Blues, The Animals came from Newcastle. The first non-Liverpool, non-Brian Epstein-managed band to break through in the UK were Freddie and the Dreamers, a number of these moved through Blues-rock to different forms of rock music, with increasing emphasis on technical virtuosity and improvisational skills. As a result, British blues helped to form many of the subgenres of rock, including psychedelic rock, the Beatles themselves were less influenced by blues music than the music of later American genres such as soul and Motown
15.
British folk revival
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It is particularly associated with two movements, usually referred to as the first and second revivals, respectively in the late 19th to early 20th centuries and the mid-20th century. The first included increased interest in and study of traditional music, in Scotland the earliest printed collection of secular music was by publisher John Forbes in Aberdeen in 1662 as Songs and Fancies, to Thre, Foure, or Five Partes, both Apt for Voices and Viols. It was printed three times in the twenty years, and contained seventy-seven songs, of which twenty-five were of Scottish origin. Collected from memory, tradition and ancient authors and these were drawn on for the most influential collection, The Scots Musical Museum published in six volumes from 1787 to 1803 by James Johnson and Robert Burns, which also included new words by Burns. The Select Scottish Airs collected by George Thomson and published between 1799 and 1818 included contributions from Burns and Walter Scott. With the Industrial Revolution the process of social stratification was intensified, awareness that older forms of song were being abandoned prompted renewed interest in collecting folk songs during the 1830s and 40s, including the work of William B. Sandys Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, William Chappell, A Collection of National English Airs and Robert Bells Ancient Poems, Ballads, the first British revival concentrated on transcribing, and later recording, songs by remaining performers. Among the most influential of the revivals earliest figures were the Harvard professor Francis James Child, Sabine Baring-Gould, Frank Kidson, Lucy Broadwood, Kidson and Broadwood were important in the foundation of the Folk Song Society in 1898. Later, major figures in movement in England were Cecil Sharp and his assistant Maud Karpeles and the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth. Sharp produced the five volume Folk Songs from Somerset from 1904–9 and founded the English Folk Dance Society in 1911 and his lectures and other publications attempted to define a musical tradition that was rural in origin, oral in transmission and communal in nature. In Scotland collectors included the Reverend James Duncan and Gavin Greig, there was a strong nationalist element in the motivation for collecting folk song. As part of a mood of growing nationalism in the period before the First World War. One of the effects of the folk song revival was the creation of a distinctive English form of classical music. This connection between the English folk revival and the English Musical Renaissance movement has been emphasized in historical accounts of English art music throughout the 20th century. Vaughan Williams was also the editor of the English Hymnal and utilized many collected tunes, similarly other composers such as Gustav Holst and Frederick Delius wrote music that utilized sections, cadences or themes from English folk music. By the 1940s this particular tendency among composers had begun to subside, similarly, John McEwens Pibroch, Border Ballads and Solway Symphony incorporated traditional Scottish folk melodies. Folk-song collecting continued after World War I, but the nationalist impulse had subsided, in 1932 the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society. British folk song might have become an academic interest had it not been for a second wave of revival with a very different emphasis
16.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
17.
Jug band
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A jug band is a band employing a jug player and a mix of conventional and homemade instruments. These homemade instruments are ordinary objects adapted to or modified for making sound, like the bass, washboard, spoons, bones, stovepipe. Banjos were sometimes made from a guitar neck and a metal pie plate. The jug sound is made by taking a jug and buzzing the lips into its mouth from about an inch away, as with brass instruments, changes in pitch are controlled by altering lip tension, and an accomplished jug player could have a two-octave range. The stovepipe is played in much the manner, with the pipe rather than the jug serving as the resonating chamber. There is some similarity to the didgeridoo, but there is no contact between the stovepipe and the players lips, some jug and stovepipe players utilize throat vocalization along with lip buzzing, as with the didgeridoo. The swooping sounds of the jug fill a musical role halfway between the trombone and sousaphone or tuba in Dixieland bands, playing mid- and lower-range harmonies in rhythm, early jug bands were typically made up of African-American vaudeville and medicine show musicians. Beginning in the urban South, they played a mixture of blues, ragtime, the history of jug bands is related to the development of the blues. The informal and energetic music of the jug bands also contributed to the development of rock, Jug bands from Louisville, Kentucky, were the first to record. The violinist Clifford Hayess Old Southern Jug Band recorded as early as 1923, whistler & His Jug Band, often making use of a slide whistle, first recorded in 1924 for Gennett Records. Earl McDonalds Original Louisville Jug Band and Dixieland Jug Blowers were also among the first to record, the vaudeville-blues singer Sara Martin and The Blue Yodeler, Jimmie Rodgers, both employed these bands for their recordings. Louisville bands often used whiskey jugs and were more jazz-oriented, a melding of string band, Jug bands made street performances, played at parties, and began entertaining on riverboats on the Ohio River around 1900 and first appeared at the Kentucky Derby in 1903. Jug bands from the Memphis area were firmly rooted in country blues, hokum. The Memphis Jug Band and Gus Cannons Jug Stompers featured harmonica played by Will Slade and Noah Lewis, other bans from the Memphis area were Jack Kelly and His South Memphis Jug Band, Jed Davenport and Dewey Corleys Beale Street Jug Band, and Noah Lewiss Jug Band. Ma Raineys tub-jug band featured the first recordings of the slide guitarist Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Minnie cut a few sides each backed up by their own jug bands, Memphis Minnie also sang and played with the Memphis Jug Band. Memphis jug band music is associated with Memphis blues. The Cincinnati Jug Band recorded for Paramount Records in 1929, with Stovepipe No.1 on the stovepipe, the Seven Gallon Jug Band, including Clarence Williams on jug and Willie The Lion Smith on piano, recorded for Columbia Records in 1929. The Birmingham Jug Band, including Jaybird Coleman and Big Joe Williams, daddy Stovepipe and Mississippi Sarah recorded for Vocalion Records in 1931
18.
American folk music
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The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the family or folk group for generations. Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is. all the music that fits between the cracks. Roots music is a category of music including bluegrass, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun. It is considered roots music because it served as the basis of music developed in the United States, including rock and roll, rhythm and blues. Most songs of the Colonial Fletch and Revolutionary period originated in England, Scotland and Ireland and were brought over by early settlers, barbara Allen remains a popular traditional ballad originating in England and Scotland, which immigrants introduced to the United States. The murder ballad Pretty Polly is an American version of an earlier British song, African American folk music in the area has roots in slavery and emancipation. Sacred music, both a Capella and instrumentally accompanied, is at the heart of the tradition, early spirituals framed Christian beliefs within native practices and were heavily influenced by the music and rhythms of Africa. Spirituals are prominent, and often use a call and response pattern, Gospel developed after the Civil War. It relied on text for much of its direction. Gospel is a noise, sometimes accompanied by instrumentation and almost always punctuated by hand clapping, toe tapping. Sea shanties functioned to lighten the burden of routine tasks and provide a rhythm that helped workers perform as a team, cowboys songs are typically ballads that cowboys sang in the West and Southwest. The familiar Streets of Laredo derives from an Irish folk song of the late 18th century called The Unfortunate Rake, while Streets of Laredo uses the same melody as The Unfortunate Rake, St. James Infirmary Blues adapts the story to a different tune. This illustrates how folk songs can change in the retelling and appear in a variety of versions, the Ballad of John Henry is about an African-American folk hero said to have worked as a steel-driving man. Many roots musicians do not consider themselves folk musicians, the main difference between the American folk music revival and American roots music is that roots music seems to cover a broader range, including blues and country. Roots music developed its most expressive and varied forms in the first three decades of the 20th century, by the 1950s, forms of roots music had led to pop-oriented forms. In recent years roots music has been the focus of popular programs such as Garrison Keillors public radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. American traditional music is also called roots music, Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music
19.
Lonnie Donegan
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Anthony James Donegan MBE, known as Lonnie Donegan, was a Scottish skiffle singer, songwriter and musician, referred to as the King of Skiffle, who influenced 1960s British pop musicians. The British Hit Singles & Albums lists him as Britains most successful and he had 31 UK Top 30 single hits,24 being successive and three at number one. He was the first British male singer with two US Top 10 hits, Donegan received an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement award in 1997 and in 2000 he was made an MBE. Lonnie Donegan was born Anthony James Donegan in Bridgeton, Glasgow, Scotland and he was the son of an Irish mother and a Scots father, a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra. In 1933, he moved with his family to East Ham in East London, Donegan was evacuated to Cheshire to escape the Blitz in the Second World War and attended college in Altrincham. He had two daughters by his first wife, Maureen Tyler, a son and a daughter by his wife, Jill Westlake. He had had problems since the 1970s and had several heart attacks. As a child growing up in the early 1940s Donegan listened mostly to swing jazz and vocal acts, country & western and blues records, particularly by Frank Crumit and Josh White, attracted his interest and he bought his first guitar at 14 in 1945. He learned songs such as Frankie and Johnny, Puttin On the Style, by the end of the 1940s he was playing guitar around London and visiting small jazz clubs. Donegan first played in a band after Chris Barber heard that he was a good banjo player and, on a train. Donegan had never played the banjo but he bought one for the audition, a posting to Vienna brought him into contact with American troops, and access to US records and the American Forces Network radio station. In 1952 he formed the Tony Donegan Jazzband, which played around London, on 28 June 1952 at the Royal Festival Hall they opened for the blues musician Lonnie Johnson. Donegan had adopted his first name as a tribute and he used the name at a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 2 June 1952. In 1953 cornetist Ken Colyer was imprisoned in New Orleans for a visa problem and he returned to Britain and joined Chris Barbers band. That changed name to Ken Colyers Jazzmen and made its first public appearance on 11 April 1953 in Copenhagen, the following day, Chris Albertson recorded Ken Colyers Jazzmen and the Monty Sunshine Trio – Sunshine, Barber, and Donegan – for Storyville Records. These were Donegans first commercial recordings, while in Ken Colyers Jazzmen with Chris Barber, Donegan sang and played guitar and banjo in their Dixieland set. In 1954 Colyer left, and the band became Chris Barbers Jazz Band, with a washboard, tea-chest bass and a cheap Spanish guitar, Donegan played folk and blues songs by artists such as Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. This proved popular and in July 1954 he recorded a fast version of Leadbellys Rock Island Line, featuring a washboard but not a tea-chest bass and it was a hit in 1956, but, because it was a band recording, Donegan made no money beyond his session fee
20.
Ken Colyer
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Kenneth Colyer was an English jazz trumpeter and cornetist, devoted to New Orleans jazz. His band was known for skiffle interludes. He was born in Great Yarmouth but grew up in Soho, London, when his elder brother Bill went off to serve in World War II he left his jazz records behind, which influenced Ken Colyer. He joined the Merchant Navy at 17, travelled around the world and heard famous jazz musicians in New York and Montreal. In the UK, Colyer played with bands and joined, in 1949. The band played at the Royal Festival Hall on 14 July 1951 in the presence of HRH Princess Elizabeth, parts of that group merged with other musicians including Keith Christie and Ian Christie to form the Christie Brothers Stompers. Colyer rejoined the Merchant Navy, jumped ship in Mobile, Alabama, and travelled to New Orleans and he was offered the job of lead trumpeter on a tour, but was caught by the authorities, detained and deported. Colyer was invited to take the lead for the Chris Barber Band and so formed the first line-up of Ken Colyers Jazzmen, Chris Barber, Monty Sunshine, Ron Bowden, Lonnie Donegan. They made their first recordings on Storyville in 1953, Colyer and the others parted company in 1954, each claiming in later years to have fired the other. The next, brief, band in the mid-1950s featured Bernard Acker Bilk on clarinet, then followed Colyers band with what is seen today as its classic line-up, Mac Duncan, Ian Wheeler, Johnny Bastable, Ron Ward and Colin Bowden, later joined by Ray Foxley. This band played together until the early 1960s when the new front-line featured, at times, Sammy Rimington and Tony Pyke, Graham Stewart and Geoff Cole, Bill Cole. In January 1963, the British music magazine NME reported that the biggest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain had taken place at Alexandra Palace. The event included George Melly, Diz Disley, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Alex Welsh, Monty Sunshine, Bob Wallis, Bruce Turner, Mick Mulligan and Colyer. In 1972, after a bout with cancer, Colyer took his doctors advice to stop leading a band. The band continued to work under the leadership of banjoist Johnny Bastable, as his Chosen Six, Colyer continued with a solo career into the 1980s. Around that time he was associated with Chris Blounts New Orleans Jazz Band. He moved to the south of France in his last years, lake Records was started by re-issuing Colyer albums and the current catalogue contains most of his best recordings. A biography, Goin Home, was compiled by Mike Pointon and it won an accolade from the House of Commons Jazz Society in May 2011
21.
British Invasion
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Pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Hermans Hermits, and the Animals were at the forefront of the invasion. The rebellious tone and image of US rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s, some observers have noted that US teenagers were growing tired of singles-oriented pop acts like Fabian. The Mods and Rockers, two gangs in mid-1960s Britain, also had an impact in British Invasion music. Bands with a Mod aesthetic became the most popular, but bands able to both were also successful. In October 1963, the first newspaper articles about the frenzy in England surrounding the group the Beatles appeared nationally in the US. The Beatles November 4 Royal Variety Performance in front of the Queen Mother sparked music industry, during November a number of major American print outlets and two network television evening programs published and broadcast stories on the phenomenon that became known as Beatlemania. On December 17 James had Miss Albert introduce I Want to Hold Your Hand live on the air, wWDCs phones lit up, and Washington, D. C. area record stores were flooded with requests for a record they did not have in stock. James sent the record to disc jockeys around the country sparking similar reaction. On December 26 Capitol Records released the three weeks ahead of schedule. The release of the record during a time when teenagers were on vacation helped spread Beatlemania in the US, on December 29 The Baltimore Sun, reflecting the dismissive view of most adults, editorialized, America had better take thought as to how it will deal with the invasion. Indeed a restrained Beatles go home might be just the thing, in the next year alone, the Beatles would have 30 different listings on the Hot 100. On January 3,1964, The Jack Paar Program ran Beatles concert footage licensed from the BBC as a joke, while this piece was largely forgotten, Beatles producer George Martin has said it aroused the kids curiosity. I Want to Hold Your Hand ascended to one on the January 25,1964, edition of Cash Box magazine. Two days later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Nielsen Ratings estimated that 45 percent of US television viewers that night saw their appearance, according to Michael Ross, It is somewhat ironic that the biggest moment in the history of popular music was first experienced in the US as a television event. The Ed Sullivan Show had for some time been a comfortable hearth-and-slippers experience, not many of the 73 million viewers watching in February 1964 would fully understand what impact the band they were watching would have. The Beatles soon incited contrasting reactions and, in the process, generated more novelty records than anyone - at least 200 during their 1964-1965 takeover and many more later. Among the many reactions, favoring the hysteria, British girl group The Carefrees We Love You Beatles and, on Tuff Records, disapproving the pandemonium, American group the Four Preps A Letter to the Beatles and American comedian Allan Shermans Pop Hates the Beatles
22.
Gus Cannon
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Gustavus Gus Cannon was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands in the 1920s and 1930s. There is uncertainty about his year, his tombstone gives the date as 1874. Born on a plantation in Red Banks, Mississippi, Cannon moved a hundred miles to Clarksdale and his musical skills came without training, he taught himself to play a banjo that he made from a frying pan and a raccoon skin. He ran away home at the age of fifteen and began his career entertaining at sawmills and levee. While in Clarksdale, Cannon was influenced by two musicians, Jim Turner and Alec Lee. Turners fiddle playing in W. C, handys band so impressed Cannon that he decided to learn to play the fiddle himself. Lee, a guitarist, taught Cannon his first folk blues, Po Boy, Long Ways from Home, and showed him how to use a blade as a slide. Cannon left Clarksdale around 1907 and soon settled near Memphis, Tennessee and he began playing in Memphis with Jim Jackson. He met the harmonica player Noah Lewis, who introduced him to a guitar player. Lewis and Thompson later were members of Cannons Jug Stompers, the three of them formed a band to play at parties and dances. In 1914 Cannon began touring in medicine shows and he supported his family through various jobs, including sharecropping, ditch digging, and yard work, but supplemented his income with music. Cannon began recording, as Banjo Joe, for Paramount Records in 1927, at that session he was backed by Blind Blake. After the success of the Memphis Jug Bands first records, he assembled a jug band, Cannons Jug Stompers, featuring Lewis. The group was first recorded at the Memphis Auditorium for Victor Records in January 1928, hosea Woods joined the Jug Stompers in the late 1920s, playing guitar, banjo and kazoo and providing some vocals. Cannons Jug Stompers recording of Big Railroad Blues is available on the compilation album The Music Never Stopped, although their last recordings were made in 1930, Cannons Jug Stompers were one of Beale Streets most popular jug bands through the 1930s. A few songs Cannon recorded with the Jug Stompers are Minglewood Blues, Pig Ankle Strut, Wolf River Blues, Viola Lee Blues, White House Station, by the end of the 1930s, Cannon had effectively retired, although he occasionally performed as a solo musician. Cannon made a few recordings for Folkways Records in 1956, in the wake of becoming a hit composer, he recorded an album for Stax Records in 1963, with fellow Memphis musicians Will Shade on jug and Milton Roby on washboard. Cannon performed traditional songs, including Kill It, Salty Dog, Going Around, The Mountain, Cannon appeared in the film Hallelujah
23.
New Orleans
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New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city was 343,829 as of the 2010 U. S. Census, the New Orleans metropolitan area had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,452,502. The city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723, as it was established by French colonists and it is well known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music, and its celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is referred to as the most unique in the United States. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River, the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north, before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was the most populous parish in Louisiana. As of 2015, it ranks third in population, trailing neighboring Jefferson Parish, La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded May 7,1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time and his title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, during the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a campaign against the British from the city in 1779. New Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French oversight, nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, the most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, and Italians, Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city. The Haitian Revolution ended in 1804 and established the republic in the Western Hemisphere. It had occurred several years in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue
24.
Washtub bass
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The washtub bass, or gutbucket, is a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. The washtub bass was used in jug bands that were popular in some African American communities in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, British skiffle bands used a variant called a tea chest bass, variations on the basic design are found around the world, particularly in the choice of resonator. As a result, there are different names for the instrument including the gas-tank bass, barrel bass, box bass, bush bass, babatoni, tingotalango, tulòn, laundrophone. The hallmarks of the design are simplicity, very low cost and do-it-yourself construction. Ethnomusicologists trace the origins of the instrument to the ground harp - a version that uses a piece of bark or a skin stretched over a pit as a resonator. The washtub bass is used in a jug band, often accompanied by a washboard as a percussion instrument. Jug bands, first known as bands, were popular especially among African-Americans around 1900 in New Orleans. At about the time, European-Americans of Appalachia were using the instrument in old-timey folk music. A musical style known as gut-bucket blues came out of the jug band scene, according to Willie The Lion Smiths autobiography, the term gutbucket comes from Negro families who all owned their own pail, or bucket, and would get it filled with the makings for chitterlings. The term gutbucket came from playing a style of music. In English skiffle bands, Australian and New Zealand bush bands and South African kwela bands, before the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartneys band, The Quarrymen, featured a tea-chest bass, as did many young bands around 1956. A folk music revival in the U. S. in the early 1960s re-ignited interest in the washtub bass, bands included Mother McCrees Uptown Jug Champions which later became The Grateful Dead, and, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band featuring Fritz Richmond on bass. A tea chest bass is a variation of the bass that uses a tea chest as the resonator for an upright stringed bass. The instrument is made from a pole, traditionally a broomstick, one or more strings are stretched along the pole and plucked. In Europe, particularly England and Germany, the instrument is associated with skiffle bands, in Australia it was traditionally used to provide deep sounds for bush bands, though most such groups today use electric bass or double bass. It was commonly called a bush bass, Fritz Richmond has performed on numerous recordings from America and Japan. One of his washtub basses is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Donald Kachamba and Moya Aliya, one-string box players with the influential Malawi group Kachamba Brothers Band
25.
Steel-string acoustic guitar
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The steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar that descends from the classical guitar, but is strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound. It is often referred to simply as a guitar, though the nylon-strung classical guitar is also sometimes called an acoustic guitar. The most common type is called a flat top guitar, to distinguish it from the more specialized archtop guitar. The standard tuning for a guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E, although many players, particularly fingerpickers, use alternate tunings, such as open G, open D. There are many variations in construction and materials used in steel-string guitars, different combinations of woods and construction elements affect the timbre or tone of the guitar. Many players and luthiers are convinced that a well-made guitars tone improves over time, acoustic guitars are commonly constructed in several different body types. The proportion and overall size of two parts helps determine the overall tonal balance and native sound of a particular body style – the larger the body. The 00, also called the Double-Oh or the Grand Concert and it has the thinnest soundbox and the smallest overall size of the major styles, making it very comfortable to play but also one of the quietest. Its smaller size makes it suitable for younger or smaller-framed players and these guitars are commonly called parlor steels as they are well-suited to smaller rooms. Martins 00-xxx series and Taylors x12 series are common examples, the Grand Auditorium guitar, sometimes called the 000 or the Triple-Oh, is very similar in design to the Grand Concert, but slightly wider and deeper. Many 000-style guitars also have a back panel to increase the volume of space in the soundbox without making the soundbox deeper at the edges. Eric Claptons signature Martin guitar, for example, is of this style, Martins 000-xxx series and Taylors x14 series are well-known examples of the Grand Auditorium style. The Dreadnought style was designed by Martin Guitars to produce a deeper sound than classic-style guitars and this body styles combination of a small profile with a deep sound has made it immensely popular, and it has since been copied by virtually every major steel-string luthier. Martins D series guitars, such as the highly-prized D-28, are examples of the Dreadnought. This comes at the expense of being oversized, with a very deep sounding box, the foremost example of this style is the Gibson J-200, but like the Dreadnought, most guitar manufacturers have at least one jumbo model. Any of these body type can optionally incorporate a cutaway, a cutaway guitar has a redesigned upper bout that removes a section of the soundbox on the underside of the neck, hence the name cutaway. This allows for access to the frets that are located on top of the soundbox past the heel of the neck. The tradeoff is reduced soundbox volume, and often a change in bracing, the 12-string guitar replaces each single string with a course of two strings
26.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
27.
Ma Rainey
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Ma Rainey was one of the earliest African American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. She was billed as the Mother of the Blues and she began performing as a young teenager and became known as Ma Rainey after her marriage to Will Rainey, in 1904. They toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and later formed their own group, Rainey and Rainey and her first recording was made in 1923. In the next five years, she made over 100 recordings, including Bo-Weevil Blues, Moonshine Blues, See See Rider Blues, Black Bottom, Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a moaning style of singing. Her powerful voice was never captured on her records, because she recorded exclusively for Paramount. However, her other qualities are present and most evident in her early recordings Bo-Weevil Blues, Rainey recorded with Louis Armstrong, and she toured and recorded with the Georgia Jazz Band. She continued to tour until 1935, when she retired and went to live in her hometown, Pridgett claimed to have been born on April 26,1886, in Columbus, Georgia. However, the 1900 census indicates she was born in September 1882 in Alabama and she was the second of five children of Thomas and Ella Pridgett, from Alabama. She had at least two brothers and a sister, Malissa, with whom Gertrude was later confused by some writers and she began her career as a performer at a talent show in Columbus, Georgia, when she was about 12 to 14 years old. A member of the First African Baptist Church, she began performing in minstrel shows. She later claimed that she was first exposed to music around 1902. In 1910, she was described as Mrs. Gertrude Rainey and she continued with the Rabbits Foot Company after it was taken over by a new owner, F. S. Wolcott, in 1912. Beginning in 1914, the Raineys were billed as Rainey and Rainey, wintering in New Orleans, she met numerous musicians, including Joe King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Pops Foster. As the popularity of blues music increased, she became well known, around this time, she met Bessie Smith, a young blues singer who was also making a name for herself. A story later developed that Rainey kidnapped Smith, forced her join the Rabbits Foot Minstrels, and taught her to sing the blues, from the late 1910s, there was an increasing demand for recordings by black musicians. In 1920, Mamie Smith was the first black woman to be recorded, in 1923, Rainey was discovered by Paramount Records producer J. Mayo Williams. She signed a contract with Paramount, and in December she made her first eight recordings in Chicago, including Bad Luck Blues, Bo-Weevil Blues. She made more than 100 other recordings over the five years
28.
British jazz
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British jazz is a form of music derived from American jazz. It reached Britain through recordings and performers who visited the country while it was a new genre. Jazz began to be played by British musicians from the 1930s and on a basis in the 1940s. From the 1960s British jazz began to more individual characteristics and absorb a variety of influences, including British blues, as well as European. A number of British musicians have gained international reputations, although form of music has remained a minority interest within the UK itself. Jazz in Britain is usually said to have begun with the British tour of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919 and that stated, British popular music aficionados in the 1920s generally preferred the terms hot or straight dance music to the term jazz. Instead those who objected to it did so more because they deemed it riotous or unnerving, one of the earliest popular jazz dance bands was that of Fred Elizalde, who broadcast on the BBC from 1926 to 1929. During the 1930s most British jazz musicians made their living in bands of various kinds. Jazz became more important, and more separate as its own genre, louis Armstrong played residencies in London and Glasgow in 1932, followed in subsequent years by the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Coleman Hawkins. But local jazz culture was limited to London where, jazz was played after hours in a couple of restaurants that encouraged musicians to come in, carter himself worked in London for the BBC in 1936. World War II led to an increase in bands to entertain the troops, the period also saw an increased interest in American musicians who also toured in military bands. The future leading alto-saxophonist Art Pepper was among the visiting American musicians at this time and this all increased an interest in jazz which continued after the war. In 1948 a group of musicians including John Dankworth and Ronnie Scott, focused on the Club Eleven in London. Significant instrumentalists in this movement were trumpeter-pianist Denis Rose, pianist Tommy Pollard, saxophonist Don Rendell. Trad jazz, a variant, briefly entered the pop charts later, British born players too, including George Shearing, active on the London scene since before the war, and Victor Feldman also chose to move across the Atlantic to develop their careers. Several new jazz clubs were established in London in the 1950s, a domestic musicians union ban on visiting American jazz musicians, initiated in the mid-thirties was gradually relaxed from the mid-fifties onwards. A key musician, pianist Stan Tracey, developed his skills, in the 1960s and 1970s British jazz began to have more varied influences, from Africa and the Caribbean. The influx of musicians from the Caribbean brought to the UK shores excellent musicians such as the Jamaican saxophonist Joe Harriott, firmly established as an outstanding bebop soloist before his arrival in the UK he went on to claim a leading spot in British jazz
29.
Swing music
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Swing music, or simply swing, is a form of American music that dominated in the 1930s and 1940s. The name swing came from the swing feel where the emphasis is on the off–beat or weaker pulse in the music, Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, the verb to swing is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Notable musicians of the era include Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Woody Herman. Swing has roots in the late 1920s as larger ensembles began using written arrangements, a typical song played in swing style would feature a strong, anchoring rhythm section in support of more loosely tied wind and brass. The most common style consisted of having a soloist take center stage, Swing music began to decline in popularity during World War II because of several factors. By the late 1940s, swing had morphed into traditional pop music, or evolved into new styles such as jump blues, Swing music saw a revival in the late 1950s and 1960s with pop vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald. Swing blended with other genres to create new styles, in country music, artists such as Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and Bob Wills introduced many elements of swing along with blues to create a genre called western swing. Gypsy swing is an outgrowth of Venuti and Langs jazz violin swing, in the 1970s, and 1980s, fans of big band music attended swing music performances at supper clubs. In the late-1980s a trendier, more urban-styled swing-beat emerged called new jack swing, in the late 1990s and into the 2000s there was a swing revival, led by Squirrel Nut Zippers, Brian Setzer, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Lavay Smith. In Canada, some of the early 2000s records by The JW-Jones Blues Band included swing revival elements, the 1920s saw parallel trends in jazz and popular music that would later converge into the swing style. New Orleans style jazz was based on a meter and contrapuntal improvisation led by a trumpet or cornet, typically followed by a clarinet. The rhythm section consisted of a tuba and drums, and sometimes a banjo, by the early 1920s guitars and pianos sometimes substituted for the banjo and a string bass sometimes substituted for the tuba. Further innovations in small ensemble playing led to development of the Chicago style identified with Louis Armstrong, a stint with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra familiarized him with arranged ensemble playing that differed from the New Orleans style, in which saxophones became the dominant sound among the reeds. Armstrong brought those back to his smaller ensembles, the soloist played over an ensemble relegated to a supporting role in the background. The string bass also lent itself to playing in a 4/4 rhythm rather than the 2/4 rhythm dictated by the tuba. The new format gave the soloist the opportunity to play with more rhythmic freedom, but playing with swing remained the province of the soloist, not the ensemble. The late 1920s saw increasingly sophisticated arrangements used by bigger ensembles, some arrangements used call-response between horn sections to build the melody
30.
Trad jazz
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A Dixieland revival began in the United States on the West Coast in the late 1930s as a backlash to the Chicago style, which was close to swing. Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band, and trombonist Turk Murphy, adopted the repertoire of Joe King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, handy, bands included banjo and tuba in the rhythm sections. Early King Oliver pieces exemplify this style of hot jazz, however, as individual performers began stepping to the front as soloists, other influential stylists who are still revered in traditional jazz circles today include Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke, Wingy Manone and Muggsy Spanier. Many artists of the big band era, including Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa, by 1958 his band included three saxophones. During the 1950s and well into the 1960s the Three Bs Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, more light-hearted versions were offered by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, the Temperance Seven and the New Vaudeville Band. Dixieland stylings can be here and there on records by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Small Faces. During the 1950s a number of amateur bands had strong local followings. These bands included the Merseysippi Jazz Band, still active, which toured overseas, Second City Jazzband, Steel City Stompers, Clyde Valley Stompers, and the Saints Jazzband
31.
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
32.
Decca Records
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Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U. S. label was established in late 1934 by Lewis along with American Deccas first president Jack Kapp and later American Decca president Milton Rackmil. In 1937, as a result of anticipating Nazi aggression leading to World War II, Lewis sold American Decca, the British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre. Both wings are now part of the Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi, the US Decca label was the foundation company that evolved into UMG. The name Decca was coined by Wilfred S. Samuel by merging the word Mecca with the initial D of their logo Dulcet or their trademark Dulcephone, Samuel, a linguist, chose Decca as a brand name as it was easy to pronounce in most languages. The name dates back to a gramophone called the Decca Dulcephone patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel. That company was renamed the Decca Gramophone Co. Ltd. Within years, Decca Records Ltd. was the second largest record label in the world, Decca bought the UK branch of Brunswick Records and continued to run it under that name. In the 1950s the American Decca studios were located in the Pythian Temple in New York City, in classical music, Decca had a long way to go from its modest beginnings to catch up with the established HMV and Columbia labels. The pre-war classical repertoire on Decca was not extensive, but was select, heinrich Schlusnus made important pre-war lieder recordings for Decca. John Culshaw, who joined Decca in 1946 in a junior post and he revolutionised recording – of opera, in particular. Hitherto, the practice had been to put microphones in front of the performers, Culshaw was determined to make recordings that would be a theatre of the mind, making the listeners experience at home not second best to being in the opera house, but a wholly different experience. To that end he got the singers to move about in the studio as they would onstage, used sound effects and different acoustics. His skill, coupled with Decca engineering, took Decca into the first flight of recording companies and his pioneering recording of Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by Georg Solti was a huge artistic and commercial success. In the wake of Deccas lead, artists such as Herbert von Karajan, Joan Sutherland, however, Culshaw was, strictly speaking, not the first to do this. Far from being a mere rendering of the score, the 3-LP album set used sound effects to recreate the production as if the listener were watching a stage performance of the work. Until 1947, American Decca issued British Decca classical music recordings, afterwards, British Decca took over distribution through its new American subsidiary London Records. American Decca actively re-entered the classical music field in 1950 with distribution deals from Deutsche Grammophon, American Decca began issuing its own classical music recordings in 1956 when Israel Horowitz joined Decca to head its classical music operations
33.
John Henry (folklore)
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John Henry is an African American folk hero. He is said to have worked as a steel-driving man—a man tasked with hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel. The story of John Henry is told in a folk song, which exists in many versions, and has been the subject of numerous stories, plays, books. Various locations, including Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia, Lewis Tunnel in Virginia, the historical accuracy of many of the aspects of the John Henry legend is subject to debate. Several locations have been put forth for the tunnel on which John Henry died, Johnson, a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, investigated the legend of John Henry in the late 1920s. He concluded that John Henry was a person who worked on and died at the Chesapeake. The tunnel was built near Talcott, West Virginia, from 1870 to 1872, although most of these men had heard of but not seen the famous contest between John Henry and the steam drill, Johnson ultimately was able to find a man who said he had seen it. Talcott holds a festival named for Henry, and a statue. Nelson speculates that Henry, like many African Americans might have come to Virginia to work on the clean-up of the battlefields after the Civil War. Arrested and tried for burglary, he was among the many convicts released by the warden to work as leased labor on the C&O Railway. Nelson asserts that a steam drill race at the Big Bend Tunnel would have been impossible because railroad records do not indicate a steam drill being used there. Prison records for John William Henry stopped in 1873, suggesting that he was kept on the books until it was clear that he was not coming back and had died. There is another tradition that John Henrys famous race took place not in West Virginia, Professor Johnson in the late 1920s received letters saying that John Henry worked on the A. G. S. Based on documentation that corresponds with the account of C. C, spencer, who claimed in the 1920s to have witnessed the contest, Garst speculates that John Henry may have been a man named Henry who was born a slave to P. A. L. Dabney, the father of the engineer of that railroad. Garst and Nelson have debated the merits of their divergent research conclusions, other claims have been made over the years that place Henry and his contest in Kentucky or Jamaica. The tale of John Henry has been used as a symbol in many movements, including labor movements. Some songs, and some early folk historian research, conflate the songs about John Henry with those of John Hardy, the well-known narrative ballad of John Henry is usually sung in an upbeat tempo
34.
Music recording sales certification
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Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies. The threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory, almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories, which are named after precious materials. The number of sales or shipments required for these awards depends upon the population of the territory in which the recording is released, typically, they are awarded only to international releases and are awarded individually for each country in which the album is sold. Different sales levels, some perhaps 10 times lower than others, the original gold record awards were presented to artists by their own record companies to publicize their sales achievements. The first of these was awarded by RCA Victor to Glenn Miller and His Orchestra in February 1942, another example of a company award is the gold record awarded to Elvis Presley in 1956 for one million units sold of his single Dont Be Cruel. The first gold record for an LP was awarded by RCA Victor to Harry Belafonte in 1957 for the album Calypso and these sales were restricted to U. S. -based record companies and did not include exports to other countries. For albums in 1968, this would mean shipping approximately 250,000 units, the platinum certification was introduced in 1976 for the sale of one million units, album or single, with the gold certification redefined to mean sales of 500,000 units, album or single. No album was certified platinum prior to this year, for instance, the recording by Van Cliburn of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto from 1958 would eventually be awarded a platinum citation, but this would not happen until two decades after its release. In 1999, the certification was introduced for sales of ten million units. On 14 March 1958, the RIAA certified its first gold record, soundtrack was certified as the first gold album four months later. In 1976, RIAA introduced the platinum certification, first awarded to Johnnie Taylors single, Disco Lady, as music sales increased with the introduction of compact discs, the RIAA created the Multi-Platinum award in 1984. Diamond awards, honoring those artists whose sales of singles or albums reached 10,000,000 copies, were introduced in 1999 and this became much less common once the majority of retail sales became paid digital downloads and digital streaming. In most countries certifications no longer apply solely to physical media, in June 2006, the RIAA also certified the ringtone downloads of songs. Streaming from on-demand services such as Rhapsody and Spotify has been included into existing digital certification in the U. S since 2013, in the U. S. and Germany video streaming services like YouTube, VEVO, and Yahoo. Music also began to be counted towards the certification, in both cases using the formula of 100 streams being equivalent to one download, other countries, such as Denmark and Spain, maintain separate awards for digital download singles and streaming. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry was founded in 1996, and grants the IFPI Platinum Europe Award for album sales over one million within Europe, multi-platinum Europe Awards are presented for sales in subsequent multiples of one million. Eligibility is unaffected by time, and is not restricted to European-based artists, IMPALA sales awards were launched in 2005 as the first sales awards recognising that success on a pan-European basis begins well before sales reach one million. The award levels are Silver, Double Silver, Gold, Double Gold, Diamond, Platinum, below are certification thresholds for the United States and United Kingdom
35.
Working class
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The working class are the people employed for wages, especially in manual-labour occupations and in skilled, industrial work. Working-class occupations include blue-collar jobs, some jobs, and most service-work jobs. As with many terms describing social class, working class is defined and used in different ways. The most general definition, used by Marxists and socialists, is that the class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labor-power. When used non-academically in the United States, however, it refers to a section of society dependent on physical labor. For certain types of science, as well as scientific or journalistic political analysis, for example. Working-class occupations are then categorized into four groups, Unskilled laborers, artisans, outworkers, a common alternative, sometimes used in sociology, is to define class by income levels. The cut-off between working class and middle class here might mean the line where a population has discretionary income, some researchers have suggested that working-class status should be defined subjectively as self-identification with the working-class group. This subjective approach allows people, rather than researchers, to define their own social class, in feudal Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the class, a group made up of different professions, trades. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of the social unit. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in other pre-industrial societies, the social position of these laboring classes was viewed as ordained by natural law and common religious belief. This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during the German Peasants War, wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics. In The Making of the English Working Class, E. P, starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class. Since then, four major states have turned towards semi-market-based governance. Other states of this sort have either collapsed, or never achieved significant levels of industrialization or large working classes, since 1960, large-scale proletarianisation and enclosure of commons has occurred in the third world, generating new working classes. Additionally, countries such as India have been slowly undergoing social change, karl Marx defined the working class or proletariat as individuals who sell their labour power for wages and who do not own the means of production. He argued that they were responsible for creating the wealth of a society and he asserted that the working class physically build bridges, craft furniture, grow food, and nurse children, but do not own land, or factories
36.
Six-Five Special
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The Six-Five Special was a British television programme launched in February 1957 when both television and rock and roll were in their infancy in Britain. It was the BBCs first attempt at a rock and roll programme and it was called Six-Five Special because of the time it was broadcast – it went out live at five past six on Saturday evening. It began immediately after the abolition of the Toddlers Truce, which had seen television close between 6 and 7 pm so children could be put to bed, jack Good was the original producer. Josephine Douglas and disc jockey Pete Murray were its presenters, with Murray using the catchphrase Time to jive on the old six five and its resident band was Don Lang and his Frantic Five. BBC executives originally wanted a magazine format, however, Good wanted a show with music, the original sets were dispensed with and the empty studio space filled with the milling audience and performers. Television at that time was completely live as recording technology was limited, the running order was sketched out on Friday morning, and then only one complete run-through happened immediately before transmission on Saturday evening. The show was scheduled to last just six weeks but, as a result of its popularity. The BBC interfered with Goods vision of the show by including educational and information elements, the relationship between Good and the BBC became strained, and he resigned in early 1958. Good joined the ITV company ABC to create Oh Boy. the show hed wanted to make and it featured non-stop music and lost the public-service-inspired elements as part of its more frenzied pace, trouncing Six-Five Special in the ratings. The BBC, never keen on the show, took this as vindication and it was to be half a decade before Top of the Pops restored BBC coverage of contemporary popular music in general and pop in particular. Comedy performers included Trevor Peacock, who was also a writer for the show, Spike Milligan. Boxer Freddie Mills was also a regular until 29 March 1958, american Bandstand, US show from same era Juke Box Jury Ready Steady Go. The Tube Later with Jools Holland Six Five Special at Whirligig TV, retrieved October 2008 Six-Five Special Clips at YouTube Britain in a Box,5 March 2008 Six-Five Special at the Internet Movie Database
37.
The Quarrymen
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The Quarrymen are a British skiffle/rock and roll group, formed by John Lennon in Liverpool in 1956, which eventually evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Originally consisting of Lennon and several schoolfriends, the Quarrymen took their name from a line in the song of Quarry Bank High School. Lennon started a group that was very briefly called the Blackjacks. Some accounts credit Lennon with choosing the new name, other accounts credit his close friend Pete Shotton with suggesting the name, the Quarrymen played at parties, school dances, cinemas and amateur skiffle contests before Paul McCartney joined the band in October 1957. George Harrison joined the band in early 1958 at McCartneys recommendation, both McCartney and Harrison attended the Liverpool Institute. The group made a recording of themselves in 1958, performing Buddy Hollys Thatll Be the Day and In Spite of All the Danger. The group moved away from skiffle and towards rock and roll and this left only a trio of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison, who performed under several other names, including Johnny and the Moondogs and Japage 3 before returning to the Quarrymen name in 1959. In 1960, the changed its name to the Beatles. The band decided to continue playing, and since 1998 have performed in countries throughout the world. As of 2016, three members are still actively performing as the Quarrymen. In the mid-1950s, there was a revival in the United Kingdom of the musical form skiffle that had originated in the United States and had been popular in the US in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. In addition to its popularity among British teenagers as music to listen to, One of the primary attractions was that it did not require great musical skills or expensive instruments to be played. Early British skiffle was played by jazz musicians, with the most successful British proponent of the genre in the 1950s being Lonnie Donegan. The Quarrymens initial repertoire included songs that Donegan had recorded. They practised at Lennons aunts house at 251 Menlove Avenue where Lennon lived and they learned how to play Rock Island Line, Jump Down Turn Around, Alabamy Bound and Cumberland Gap, and later learned how to play Thats All Right and Mean Woman Blues. Lennon and Griffiths decided to form a group in November 1956. This initial line-up consisted of Lennon and Griffiths on guitars, and school friends Pete Shotton and Bill Smith on washboard and tea chest bass, the group, initially called the Blackjacks, quickly changed their name to the Quarrymen. Both Lennon and Shotton have been credited with coining the name Quarrymen after a line in their schools song, Quarrymen, the choice of name was tongue-in-cheek as Lennon regarded the reference in the school song to straining each muscle and sinew as risible
38.
John Lennon
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John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE was an English singer and songwriter who co-founded the Beatles, the most commercially successful and musically influential band in the history of popular music. He and fellow member Paul McCartney formed a songwriting partnership. Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the craze as a teenager, his first band, the Quarrymen, first became the Silver Beatles. After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he added Ono as one of his middle names, Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release, Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. By 2012, Lennons solo album sales in the United States exceeded 14 million and, as writer, co-writer, or performer, he is responsible for 25 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth and, in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all time. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and in 1994 as a solo artist. Lennon was born in war-time England, on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman of Irish descent and his parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John Jack Lennon, and then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, after her sister, Mimi Smith, twice complained to Liverpools Social Services, Julia handed the care of Lennon over to her. In July 1946 Lennons father visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, Julia followed them—with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins—and after a heated argument his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her, according to author Mark Lewisohn, Lennons parents agreed that Julia should take him and give him a home as Alf left again. A witness who was there that day, Billy Hall, has said the scene often portrayed with a young John Lennon having to make a decision between his parents never happened. It would be 20 years before he had contact with his father again, Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence he lived at Mendips,251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton with his aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, who had no children of their own. His aunt purchased volumes of stories for him, and his uncle. In September 1980, Lennon commented about his family and his rebellious nature, Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society, but I cannot be what I am not. I was the one who all the other boys parents—including Pauls father—would say, the parents instinctively recognised I was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their children, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friends home, partly out of envy that I didnt have this so-called home
