1.
Fiddle
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Fiddle is another name for the bowed string musical instrument more often called a violin. It is also a term for the instrument used by players in all genres. Fiddle playing, or fiddling, refers to various styles of music, Fiddle is also a common term among musicians who play folk music on the violin. The fiddle is part of traditional styles of music which are aural traditions. There are few distinctions between violins and fiddles, though more primitively constructed and smaller violins are more likely to be considered fiddles. In order to produce a tone, compared to the deeper tones of gut or synthetic core strings. Among musical styles, fiddling tends to produce rhythms focused on dancing, with associated quick note changes, whereas classical music tends to contain more vibrato and it is less common for a classically trained violinist to play folk music, but today, many fiddlers have classical training. The medieval fiddle emerged in 10th-century Europe, deriving from the Byzantine lira, lira spread widely westward to Europe, in the 11th and 12th centuries European writers use the terms fiddle and lira interchangeably when referring to bowed instruments. During the Renaissance the gambas were important and elegant instruments, they eventually lost ground to the viola da braccio family. The etymology of fiddle is uncertain, the Germanic fiddle may derive from the same early Romance word as does violin, the name seems however to be related to Icelandic Fiðla and also Old English fiðele. A native Germanic ancestor of fiddle may even be the ancestor of the early Romance form of violin, historically, fiddle also referred to a predecessor of todays violin. Like the violin, it tended to have four strings, another family of instruments that contributed to the development of the modern fiddle are the viols, which are held between the legs and played vertically, and have fretted fingerboards. Violins, on the hand, are commonly grouped in sections. The difference was likely compounded by the different sounds expected of violin music, historically, the majority of fiddle music was dance music, while violin music had either grown out of dance music or was something else entirely. Violin music came to value a smoothness that fiddling, with its dance-driven clear beat, in situations that required greater volume, a fiddler could push their instrument harder than could a violinist. In the very late 20th century, a few artists have attempted a reconstruction of the Scottish tradition of violin and big fiddle. Notable recorded examples include Iain Fraser and Christine Hanson, Amelia Kaminski and Christine Hansons Bonnie Lasses and Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas Fire and Grace. In Hungary, a three stringed viola variant with a bridge, called the kontra or háromhúros brácsa makes up part of a traditional rhythm section in Hungarian folk music
2.
Mandolin
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A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family and is usually plucked with a plectrum or pick. It commonly has four courses of doubled metal strings tuned in unison, although five, the courses are normally tuned in a succession of perfect fifths. It is the member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello. There are many styles of mandolin, but three are common, the Neapolitan or round-backed mandolin, the mandolin and the flat-backed mandolin. The round-back has a bottom, constructed of strips of wood. The carved-top or arch-top mandolin has a shallower, arched back. The flat-backed mandolin uses thin sheets of wood for the body, each style of instrument has its own sound quality and is associated with particular forms of music. Neapolitan mandolins feature prominently in European classical music and traditional music, carved-top instruments are common in American folk music and bluegrass music. Flat-backed instruments are used in Irish, British and Brazilian folk music. Some modern Brazilian instruments feature a fifth course tuned a fifth lower than the standard fourth course. There has also been a type and an instrument with sixteen-strings. Much of mandolin development revolved around the soundboard, pre-mandolin instruments were quiet instruments, strung with as many as six courses of gut strings, and were plucked with the fingers or with a quill. However, modern instruments are louder—using four courses of metal strings, the modern soundboard is designed to withstand the pressure of metal strings that would break earlier instruments. The soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections, there is usually one or more sound holes in the soundboard, either round, oval, or shaped like a calligraphic f. A round or oval sound hole may be covered or bordered with decorative rosettes or purfling, Mandolins evolved from the lute family in Italy during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the deep bowled mandolin, produced particularly in Naples, became common in the 19th century. Dating to around c.13,000 BC, a painting in the Trois Frères cave in France depicts what some believe is a musical bow. From the musical bow, families of stringed instruments developed, since each string played a note, adding strings added new notes, creating bow harps, harps. In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords, another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute
3.
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
4.
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
5.
Santa Paula, California
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Santa Paula is a city in Ventura County, California, United States. Situated amidst the orchards of the fertile Santa Clara River Valley, Santa Paula was one of the early centers of Californias petroleum industry. The Union Oil Company Building, the headquarters of the Union Oil Company of California in 1890. The population was 29,321 at the 2010 census, up from 28,598 at the 2000 census, the area of what today is Santa Paula was originally inhabited by the Chumash, a Native American people. Fray Juan Crespi, a Franciscan missionary travelling with the expedition, had named the valley Cañada de Santa Clara. He noted that the party traveled about 9 to 10 miles that day and camped near a native village. The site of the expeditions arrival has been designated California Historical Landmark No.727, Santa Paula is located on the 1843 Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy Mexican land grant. In 1872 Nathan Weston Blanchard purchased 2,700 acres and laid out the townsite, considered the founder of the community, he planted seedling orange trees in 1874. Several small oil companies owned by Wallace Hardison, Lyman Stewart and Thomas R. Bard were combined, in April 1911, Gaston Méliès moved his Star Film Company from San Antonio, Texas to a site just north of Santa Paula. While the field peaked in production in the 1950s, Occidental Petroleum continues to extract oil through its Vintage Production subsidiary, a 500-acre master-planned community of 1,500 homes is expected to expand the town significantly when it begins construction in 2016. The town has been devastated twice by floods and was affected by a truck explosion that resulted in an industrial disaster. The first, known as the Great Flood of 1862, began on December 24,1861 and it rained for almost four weeks, reaching a total of 35 inches at Los Angeles. The second was caused by the failure and near collapse of the St. Francis Dam. The dam was holding a reservoir of 12.4 billion gallons of water that with the dam collapsed, began surging down San Francisquito Canyon. The town was first hit by the waters at approximately 3,00 a. m, though hundreds of homes and structures were destroyed, the loss of life would have been greater if it were not for two motorcycle police officers that noisily warned as many people as possible. A sculpture called The Watchers in downtown Santa Paula depicts this act of heroism, a vacuum truck exploded at the Santa Clara Waste Water plant in the early morning hours of November 18,2014. The driver was transporting waste from a temporary storage drum to a processing center when he stopped to take a meal break. The tires of the first fire truck on the scene and the boots of three firefighters sparked small explosions when they drove and walked over the substance as they went to help the injured workers
6.
George Strait
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George Harvey Strait is an American country music singer, songwriter, actor, and music producer. He is known as the King of Country and is considered one of the most influential, Straits success began when his first single Unwound was a hit in 1981. During the 1980s, seven of his albums reached number one on the country charts. In the 2000s, Strait was named Artist of the Decade by the Academy of Country Music, was elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and won his first Grammy award for the album Troubadour. Strait was named CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1989,1990 and 2013 and he has been nominated for more CMA and ACM awards and has more wins in both categories than any other artist. In 2009, he broke Conway Twittys previous record for the most number-one hits on Billboards Hot Country Songs chart when his 45 number one singles surpassed Twittys 40, Strait is also known for his touring career when he designed a 360- degree configuration and introduced festival style tours. For example, the Strait Tours earned $99 million in three years and his concert at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX in June 2014 drew 104,793 people, marking a new record for largest indoor concert in North America. Strait was successful innovating country music and in aspects of being a part of popular music. Strait has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the music artists of all time. His certifications from the RIAA include 13 multi-platinum,33 platinum and his best-selling album is Pure Country, which sold 6 million. His highest certified album is Strait Out of the Box, which sold 2 million copies, according to the RIAA, Strait is the 12th best-selling album recording artist in the United States overall. George Harvey Strait was born on May 18,1952, in Poteet, Texas, to John Byron Strait, Sr. and Doris Jean Couser. He grew up in nearby Pearsall, in Frio County, where his father was a high school mathematics teacher. The family worked at the ranch on the weekends and in the summers, when George was in the fourth grade, his father and mother were divorced, and his mother moved away with his sister, Pency. George and his brother John, Jr. or Buddy, were raised by their father, Strait began his musical interest while attending Pearsall High School, where he played in a rock and roll garage band. The Beatles were popular when Strait was in high school, the Beatles were big, Strait confirmed. I listened to them a lot and that bunch of groups that were popular then. His musical preference soon turned to country with singers Hank Thompson, Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Strait did not tune to the country music radio often as a youth, usually listening to the news and the farmers report
7.
Dolly Parton
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After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Dolly Parton made her album debut in 1967, with her album Hello, Im Dolly. However, in the new millennium, Parton achieved commercial success again and has released albums on independent labels since 2000, including albums on her own label, Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 RIAA certified Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach No.1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, all-inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, and digital downloads during her career have topped 100 million worldwide. Parton has received 46 Grammy nominations, in 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She has composed over 3,000 songs, notably I Will Always Love You, Jolene, Coat of Many Colors and she is also one of the few to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. As an actress, she starred in such as 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone. Parton was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children of Robert Lee Parton, a farmer and construction worker, Partons middle name comes from her maternal great-great grandmother, Rebecca Whitted. She has described her family as being dirt poor, Partons father paid the doctor who helped deliver her with a bag of oatmeal. She outlined her familys poverty in her early songs Coat of Many Colors and they lived in a rustic, one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, just north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains, a predominantly Pentecostal area. Music played an important role in her early life and she was brought up in the Church of God, the church her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six, at seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight years old, her uncle bought her first real guitar, Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, the day after she graduated from high school in 1964, she moved to Nashville. Her songs were recorded by other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells. She signed with Monument Records in 1965, at 19, where she was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the one that charted, Happy, Happy Birthday Baby. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, after her composition, Put It Off Until Tomorrow, as recorded by Bill Phillips, went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country
8.
Reba McEntire
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Reba Nell McEntire is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer. She began her career in the industry as a high school student singing in the Kiowa High School band, on local radio shows with her siblings. While a sophomore in college, she performed the National Anthem at the National Rodeo in Oklahoma City and caught the attention of country artist Red Steagall who brought her to Nashville and she signed a contract with Mercury Records a year later in 1975. She released her first solo album in 1977 and released five studio albums under the label until 1983. The album brought her success, bringing her a series of successful albums. She has sometimes referred to as The Queen of Country. And she is one of the artists of all time. In the early 1990s, McEntire branched into film starting with 1990s Tremors, Reba Nell McEntire was born March 28,1955, in McAlester, Oklahoma, to Jacqueline and Clark Vincent McEntire. She was named for her maternal grandmother Reba Estelle Smith, Reba Smith was the daughter of Byron Williams B. W. Her father, and her grandfather, John Wesley McEntire, were both champion steer ropers and her father was a World Champion Steer Roper three times, John McEntire was the son of Clark Stephen McEntire and Helen Florida McEntire. Her mother had wanted to be a country-music artist but eventually decided to become a schoolteacher. Reba reportedly taught herself how to play the guitar, Reba played guitar in the group and wrote all the songs. The group sang at rodeos and recorded The Ballad of John McEntire together, released on the indie label Boss, the song pressed one thousand copies. In 1974, McEntire attended Southeastern Oklahoma State University planning to be a school teacher. While not attending school, she continued to sing locally. That same year she was hired to perform the anthem at the National Rodeo in Oklahoma City. Country artist Red Steagall, who was performing that day, was impressed by her vocal ability and agreed to help her launch a country-music career in Nashville. After recording a tape, she signed a recording contract with Mercury Records in 1975
9.
Barbra Streisand
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Barbara Joan Barbra Streisand is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and filmmaker. She is among a group of entertainers who have been honored with an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. Streisand is one of the music artists of all time, with more than 68.5 million albums in the United States. She starred in the critically acclaimed Funny Girl, for which she won the Academy Award, with the release of Yentl in 1983, Streisand became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. The film won an Oscar for Best Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical, Streisand received the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the first woman to win that award. The RIAA and Billboard recognize Streisand as holding the record for the most top 10 albums of any recording artist. According to Billboard, Streisand holds the record for the female with the most number one albums, Billboard also recognizes Streisand as the greatest female of all time on its Billboard 200 chart and one of the greatest artists of all time on its Hot 100 chart. Barbara Joan Streisand was born on April 24,1942, in Brooklyn, New York and her mother had been a soprano singer in her youth and considered a career in music, but later became a school secretary. Her father was a school teacher at the same school. Streisands family was Jewish, her grandparents emigrated from Galicia and her maternal grandparents from the Russian Empire. Her father earned a degree from City College of New York in 1928 and was considered athletic. As a student, he spent his summers outdoors, once working as a lifeguard, hed try anything, his sister Molly said. He married Ida in 1930, two years after graduating, and became a respected educator with a focus on helping underprivileged. In August 1943, a few months after Streisands first birthday, her father died suddenly at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, the family fell into near-poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper. As an adult, Streisand remembered those early years as always feeling like an outcast, explaining and her mother tried to pay their bills but could not give her daughter the attention she craved, When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food, Streisand says. Streisand recalls that her mother had a voice and sang semi-professionally on occasion. During a visit to the Catskills when Streisand was thirteen, she told Rosie ODonnell, she and that session was the first time Streisand ever asserted herself as an artist, which also became her first moment of inspiration as an artist. She has a brother, Sheldon, and a half-sister
10.
Mark Knopfler
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Mark Freuder Knopfler, OBE is a British singer, songwriter, guitarist, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, lead singer and songwriter for the rock band Dire Straits, since Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, Knopfler has recorded and produced eight solo albums and, as with his previous band, produced many hit songs. He has composed and produced film scores for nine films, including Local Hero, Cal, The Princess Bride, Wag the Dog and Altamira. In addition to his work with Dire Straits and as a solo artist and composer, Knopfler has recorded and performed with prominent musicians. He has produced albums for Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Knopfler is a fingerstyle guitarist and was ranked 27th on Rolling Stones list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Knopfler and Dire Straits have sold in excess of 120 million records to date, Mark Freuder Knopfler was born on 12 August 1949 in Glasgow, Scotland, to an English mother, Louisa Mary, and a Hungarian-Jewish father, Erwin Knopfler. His mother was a teacher and his father was an architect, Knopfler later described his father as a Marxist agnostic. The Knopflers originally lived in the Glasgow area and Mark Knopflers younger brother David was also born there, the family re-settled in Knopflers mothers home town of Blyth, Northumberland, in North East England when he was seven years old. Mark had attended Bearsden Primary school in Scotland for two years, but both brothers attended Gosforth Grammar School, originally inspired by his uncle Kingsleys harmonica and boogie-woogie piano playing, Mark soon became familiar with many different styles of music. During the 1960s, he formed and joined bands and listened to singers like Elvis Presley and guitarists Chet Atkins, Scotty Moore, B. B King, Django Reinhardt, Hank Marvin. At 16, he made a television appearance as part of a harmony duo. In 1968, after studying journalism for a year at Harlow College, two years later, he decided to further his studies, and went on to graduate with a degree in English at the University of Leeds. In April 1970, while living in Leeds, Knopfler recorded a demo disk of a song he had written. The recording included Knopfler, Steve Phillips, Dave Johnson, Johnson, Granger, and vocalist Mick Dewhirst played with Knopfler in a band called Silverheels. On graduation in 1973, Knopfler moved to London and joined a High Wycombe-based band called Brewers Droop, appearing on the album The Booze Brothers. One night, while spending time with friends, the only guitar available was an old acoustic with a badly warped neck that had been strung with extra-light strings to make it playable, even so, he found it impossible to play unless he finger-picked it. He said in an interview, That was where I found my voice on guitar. After a brief stint with Brewers Droop, Knopfler took a job as a lecturer at Loughton College in Essex — a position he held for three years, throughout this time, he continued performing with local pub bands, including the Café Racers
11.
Emmylou Harris
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Emmylou Harris is an American singer and songwriter. She has released many albums and singles over the course of her career. Her work and recordings include work as a solo artist, a bandleader, an interpreter of other works, a singer-songwriter. Harris is from a military family. Her father, Walter Harris, was a Marine Corps officer and her father was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia and she married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Instead, Hillman recommended her to Parsons, who was looking for a female vocalist to collaborate with on his first solo album, Harris toured as a member of Parsonss band, the Fallen Angels, in 1973, and the pair shone during vocal harmonies and duets. Later that year, Parsons and Harris worked on a studio album, Parsons died in his motel room near what is now Joshua Tree National Park on September 19,1973, from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol. Parsonss Grievous Angel was released posthumously in 1974, and three tracks from his sessions with Harris were included on another posthumous Parsons album, Sleepless Nights. One more album of recorded material from that period was packaged as Live 1973, Warner Brothers A&R representative Mary Martin introduced Harris to Canadian producer Brian Ahern, who produced her major label debut album, Pieces of the Sky, released in 1975 on Reprise Records. It also featured Bluebird Wine, a composition by a young Texas songwriter, Rodney Crowell, two singles were released, Too Far Gone, which initially charted at No. 73, and Harriss first big hit, If I Could Only Win Your Love, a duet with Herb Pedersen, executives of Warner Bros. Records told Harris they would agree to record her if she would get a hot band. Harris did so, enlisting guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin, Burton was a renowned guitarist, starting in Ricky Nelsons band in the 1950s, and Hardin had been a member of the Crickets. Other Hot Band members were drummer John Ware, pedal steel guitarist Hank DeVito, singer-songwriter Crowell was enlisted as a rhythm guitarist and duet partner. Harriss first tour schedule originally dovetailed around Presleys, owing to Burton, the Hot Band lived up to its name, with most of the members moving on with fresh talent replacing them as they continued on to solo careers of their own. Elite Hotel, released in December 1975, established that the created by Pieces of the Sky was well-founded. Unusual for country albums at the time, which revolved around a hit single. Elite Hotel was a No.1 country album and also did well as a crossover success with the rock audience
12.
Robert Plant
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Robert Anthony Plant, CBE is an English singer, songwriter, and musician, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band Led Zeppelin. A powerful and wide range has given him a successful solo career spanning over 30 years. Plant is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock and roll, he has influenced fellow rock singer-songwriters such as Freddie Mercury, Axl Rose, in 2006, Heavy Metal magazine Hit Parader named Plant the Greatest Metal Vocalist of All Time. In 2009, Plant was voted the greatest voice in rock in a poll conducted by Planet Rock, in 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 15 on their list of the 100 best singers of all time. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers ranked Plant the greatest of all lead singers, Robert Anthony Plant was born in the Black Country town of West Bromwich, Staffordshire to Robert C. Plant, a civil engineer who worked in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and Annie Celia Plant. He grew up in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, Plant gained an interest in singing and rock and roll music at an early age. When I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try, there was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten-year-old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old, and I always wanted to be a curtain, a bit similar to that. I suppose I was quite interested in my collection and Romano-British history. I was a grammar school boy and I could hear this kind of calling through the airwaves. He abandoned training as an accountant after only two weeks to attend college in an effort to gain more GCE passes and to become part of the English Midlands blues scene. I left home at 16, he said, and I started my real education musically, moving from group to group, furthering my knowledge of the blues, Plants early blues influences included Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, Jerry Miller, and Sleepy John Estes. Plant had various jobs while pursuing his career, one of which was working for the major British construction company Wimpey in Birmingham in 1967 laying tarmac on roads. He also worked at Woolworths in Halesowen town for a period of time. He cut three singles on CBS Records and sang with a variety of bands, including the Crawling King Snakes. They both went on to play in the Band of Joy, merging blues with newer psychedelic trends, a version of Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane was sung by Plant in front of Page, leading Page to the end of his search. As recalled by Plant and Page, Plant, I was appearing at this college when Peter and Jimmy turned up and asked me if Id like to join the Yardbirds
