Pianist David Helfgott and director Scott Hicks turned Sergei Rachmaninoff into the hottest composer of the middle/late 1990s through the telling of Helfgott's life story in Hicks' Oscar-winning movie Shine. It is easy to forget, amid the hoopla surrounding Helfgott's eccentric recording of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, that Rachmaninoff... [+] Read More

His brass plaque in the Country Music Hall of Fame reads, "Jimmie Rodgers' name stands foremost in the country music field as the man who started it all." This is a fair assessment. The "Singing Brakeman" and the "Mississippi Blue Yodeler," whose six-year career was cut short by tuberculosis, became the first nationally known star of country... [+] Read More