Showing 201 - 225 of 466
Artist: The Klezmorim
Klezmorim was one of the first of the revivalist bands to play klezmer, the traditional dance music of the Eastern European Jews. During the twelve years that the group was together, Klezmorim brought a good-humored, theatrical approach to their fusion of traditional Eastern European Jewish music, jazz, improvisation, street music and worldbeat.... [+] Read More
Artist: Roger Dean
Roger Dean is a true renaissance man. Initially focusing on silversmithing and furniture design, he evolved into one of rock's most respected artists. Best-known for the album covers that he designed for Yes and Asia, Dean has published three books of his artwork. Views, which reached the top slot on The New York Times best-seller list in 1975,... [+] Read More
Artist: Cornell Hurd
Cornell Hurd fronts the large Austin, TX, music collective known as the Cornell Hurd Band, which operates like a revue and offers a rousing, highly proficient blend of trad country, swing, and rockabilly. The group has played a longtime, weekly gig in south Austin and rarely (if ever) tours. Hurd writes humorous, often biting country tunes with... [+] Read More
Artist: Carmol Taylor
Carmol Taylor was best known as a honky-tonk songwriter, but he was also a talented performer. He was born in Brilliant, Alabama and began playing professionally in his early teens. When he was about 15, Taylor teamed up with Billy Sherrill to form Carmol Taylor and the Country Pals. The group stayed together for over 20 years, and between 1954... [+] Read More
Artist: Charles Wilson
Charles Wilson was raised in Chicago, and started singing early; as a teenager he sang in Chicago area nightclubs but was too young to have a beer. Despite having R&B/blues singer Little Milton ("We're Gonna Make It") for an uncle, his "big break" didn't come until he got the opportunity to go on the road with Bobby Rush. He later opened for... [+] Read More
Artist: Topp Twins
Lynda and Jools Topp, identical twins with an eerie twin kinship and irresistible propensity for finishing each other's sentences, are as different from each other as they are from the stereotypical country & western, lesbian, political, theatrical humorists. More physically solid, Lynda has the magnificent yodel. Jools, sparer in size and in... [+] Read More
Artist: Jon Auer
Jon Auer is co-founder of one of the most critically acclaimed power pop bands of the '90s, the Posies, formed in Bellingham, WA, with Ken Stringfellow. The two created a demo tape in Auer's parents' basement and sent it to PopLlama Records in Seattle; the tape was well received and they released it as their first album, Failure. They signed... [+] Read More
Artist: Irving Azoff
Nicknamed the "poison dwarf," a comment on both his size and demeanor, former artist manager and label head Irving Azoff rose to the top of the music industry in the '80s, becoming head of MCA records and rescuing the company from bankruptcy in the process. A one time protege of David Geffen, Azoff began his career by setting up Front Line... [+] Read More
Artist: Doug Bennett
In 1977, lead singer and British Columbia-native Doug Bennett started his first truly successful band, Doug & the Slugs. Other members were drummer Wally Watson, bassist Steve Bosley, and guitarists Rick Baker and John Burton. The odd name, the Slugs, must not have put off many people, since the group played to decent-sized crowds around... [+] Read More
Artist: Jimmy Butts
If the bass is supposed to represent the bottom end in the musical scheme, then Jimmy Butts could be said to have a name that is more than just appropriate. The size of the body part with which the bassist's surname shares a slang incarnation may have expanded due to Butts' early membership in a group called Dr. Sausage & His Five Pork Chops;... [+] Read More
Artist: Mahlon Clark
Woodwinds expert Mahlon Clark was among the legion of players profoundly influenced by clarinetist Benny Goodman and the great popularity of swing music in the '30s and '40s. By the middle of the former decade Clark was already proficient on three instruments--piano, guitar and clarinet. He was gigging professionally at the age of 16 with the... [+] Read More
Artist: Rupert Cole
While many jazz musicians from the British West Indies immigrated to England, beginning in the early '30s, this prolific recording artist did things differently. Rupert Cole, who would eventually be able to build a medium-sized raft simply out of the Louis Armstrong sides he appeared on, went to New York City instead. His departure from Barbados... [+] Read More
Artist: Joe Comfort
The name Joe Comfort represents an important example of a musician's surname summarizing what is expected of them as an instrumentalist. It would be grand to say this man's name is thus synonymous with great jazz bass players, but unfortunately this artist has much less name recognition with jazz fans than some of the players that inspired him,... [+] Read More
Artist: Art Drelinger
If asked to come up with a frequently heard jazz horn player named Art, logical choices might be Art Farmer, Art Pepper or Artie Shaw. A case could be made that Art Drelinger rivals all three, size of his discography foremost, yet the concept of the public hearing him might have to be understood as on a subliminal level. Drelinger's career... [+] Read More
Artist: Rudy Van Gelder
Rudy Van Gelder is, quite simply, the greatest recording engineer in jazz history. He was responsible for just about every session on the Blue Note label from 1953 to 1967 (among thousands of others), encompassing some of jazz's most groundbreaking and enduring classics. The signature of a Van Gelder recording lies in the rich, natural tone of... [+] Read More
Artist: Sir Roland Hanna
A talented pianist with a style diverse enough to fit into swing, bop, and more adventurous settings, Roland Hanna was one of the last in an impressive line of great pianists who emerged in Detroit after World War II (including Hank Jones, Barry Harris, and Tommy Flanagan). After serving in the Army and studying music at Eastman and Juilliard,... [+] Read More
Artist: Dan Lowe
Dan Lowe spent a big part of his musical career working as a guitarist with a number of bands through a good-sized list of singles and albums on labels like Mercury, Elektra, and Gaiety. He also spent time as a producer for a number of artists, and then an inventor, coming up with an enhancement method for stereo named Q-Sound. He even did a... [+] Read More
Artist: Alex Morgan
The many socially disruptive activities of Jack Grisham have been fairly well documented, ranging from singing in grindcore and punk rock bands to running for governor of California in 2004. A more obscure but nonetheless compelling aspect of his devious nature involves what appears to be nothing less than a vicious assault on mild-mannered... [+] Read More
Artist: Ben Richardson
Like many players associated with the New York jazz scene during various periods, Ben Richardson wandered in from someplace else, the hills of Kentucky in this case. He had recorded and performed in the '30s with several legendary early territory bands as well as with vocalist and bandleader Blanche Calloway, covering the range of several... [+] Read More
Artist: Mike Sammes Singers
Michael Sammes was born in Reigate, Surrey, and studied cello, singing, and arranging. He went to work for a music publisher and formed the Mike Sammes Singers during the mid-'50s. A vocal ensemble of varying size whose members were often divided up into smaller ensembles for session work, the Mike Sammes Singers were busy from the start, making... [+] Read More
Artist: Richard Lerman
The work of sound artist Richard Lerman centers around his custom-made contact microphones of unusually small size. Numerous well-placed mics are essential to his work recording environmental sounds not easily heard (or noticed) by humans, as in his project of sonically mapping the Sonoran Desert. While growing up in Milwaukee, Lerman played... [+] Read More
Artist: Arthur Herfurt
This versatile multi-instrumentalist appeared on more than 300 different recordings between 1934 and 1980, and is particularly associated with the legacy of the Dorsey Brothers' bands, in which Arthur "Skeets" Herfurt was often at the crux of some unique instrumental combination. He came from the "mile high" city of Denver, Colorado and took... [+] Read More
Artist: The Goofus Five
In 1924 Ed Kirkeby, the manager of the California Ramblers, decided to form a small group taken from the larger orchestra to play novelties and hotter jazz numbers. At first known as the Little Ramblers on its Columbia recordings, the quintet (comprised of trumpeter Bill Moore, Adrian Rollini on a goofus, pianist Irving Brodsky, banjoist Ray... [+] Read More
Artist: William H. Graham
Drummer William H. Graham is one of the only recorded musicians with this name to use the formal version of the first half; that and sporadic use of an initial may have helped him avoid confusion with many other people in the entertainment business named Bill Graham. When going for the gold on the California music scene, on the other hand, being... [+] Read More
Artist: Stew Pletcher
A guy nicknamed "Stew" playing a mellophone may seem the ultimate in cozy, but the changing demands of big-band instrumentation typically required Stuart "Stew" Pletcher to blast away on trumpet instead. It is in this capacity that he is best remembered, especially the parts he played in a superb extended band put together by vibraphonist Red... [+] Read More
