AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Fifties
• Jazz & Blues

(Clarinet, b. 1929) Acker Bilk was born in Somerset, England. He took up clarinet in the Army and formed his first band in 1950. His Paramount Jazz Band adopted trademark uniforms of striped waistcoats and bowler hats and was very successful in the UK’s trad boom of the late 1950s. Bilk enjoyed a major pop hit with his own ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

1925–2010 Australian conductor Mackerras began his career as an oboist in Australia before coming to Europe to study conducting. In Prague he became interested in Czech music, particularly Janáček, whose operas he championed through definitive recordings and performing editions. He was music director of Sadler’s Wells (later English National) Opera 1970–77, Welsh National Opera 1987–92, and later ...

• Personalities
• Fifties
• Jazz & Blues

(Trumpet, producer, composer, b. 1918) Davis Louis Bartholomew was born in Edgard, Louisiana. He was one of the most prominent bandleaders in New Orleans in the mid-1940s. He recorded for DeLuxe, King and Imperial during the 1940s and 1950s, but is best known as the producer, bandleader and songwriting partner of Fats Domino, ...

• Styles & Forms
• Pop
• The British Invasion

On 1 February 1964, The Beatles’ ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ topped America’s Cashbox singles chart. Six days later, they arrived in New York for their first US visit, and on 9 February an audience of around 73 million people tuned in to see them on The Ed Sullivan Show, which had been booked the previous ...