(Vocal/instrumental group, 1966–68) Migrating from New York to Los Angeles, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay rehearsed with a third singing guitarist, Canadian Neil Young, who recommended Bruce Palmer (bass) and Dewey Martin (drums). 1967’s Buffalo Springfield was remarkable for an acoustic bias and clever vocal harmonies. A hit single, ‘For What It’s Worth’, and healthy sales ...
(Vocals, 1939–99) British-born Springfield (born Mary O’Brien), formerly of The Springfields, showed her affiliation with American girl-group pop on her first outing, 1963’s ‘I Only Want To Be With You’. Hits by the Brill Building’s best songwriting teams (including Bacharach-David and Goffin-King) earned her respect as the finest white soul singer of her era. Her 1969 album Dusty ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1968–70) When on a US tour with The Hollies, Graham Nash (vocals, guitar) had sown the seeds of a ‘supergroup’ with ex-Byrd Dave Crosby (vocals, guitar) and Stephen Stills (vocals, guitar) from Buffalo Springfield. The new combine rehearsed in London for an eponymous album that featured hippy lyricism, flawless vocal harmonies and neo-acoustic ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1945) This highly respected Canadian musician first came to prominence in 1967 as a member of Buffalo Springfield. Young’s solo career began in 1969 with Neil Young. For his next album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), he recruited Danny Whitten (guitar), Billy Talbot (bass) and Ralph Molina (drums), collectively known as Crazy Horse. Shortly ...
Canadian rock legend Neil Young (b. 1945) has become respected as much for his playing as for his composing and vocal work with his occasional partners Crosby, Stills & Nash. Born in Toronto, Canada, Young got a ukulele from his father for Christmas in 1958. In 1960, Young moved to Winnipeg with his mother. A poor student ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1968–80s) Poco was formed in 1968 by two former members of the splintered Buffalo Springfield, Richie Furay (vocals, guitar, b. 1944) and Jim Messina (vocals, guitar, b. 1947). They signalled their commitment to the new country-rock sound in Los Angeles by hiring full-time steel guitarist Rusty Young (b. 1946) as well as George ...
Stephen Stills (b. 1945) turned acoustic guitar into a fiery blues instrument as a solo artist and performer. That alone might have made him a rock icon, but of course Stills was also busy producing, composing and singing with the most popular rock vocal group of all time, creating hit singles on his own, teaming up with ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1947–75) As one of a bohemian clique of singer-songwriters in mid-1960s New York, he developed a style of de rigueur melancholy introspection that was jazzier and more daring than most – though this was moderated on his first three albums. However, after 1970’s transitional Blue Afternoon, offerings like Lorca and Starsailor were virtually free-form ...
A crucial figure in New York’s late 1970s new-wave scene, Tom Verlaine (b. 1949) was born Thomas Miller in New Jersey. At an early age, he learned piano before switching to saxophone, inspired by John Coltrane. He took up the guitar in his teens and began forging his own style, searching for new ways of expressing himself ...
In terms of influences and origins, country and rock’n’roll draw so closely from the same antecedents that they are practically musical first cousins: branches from the same tree that share the same basic instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums. Two of country music’s greatest practitioners, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, launched their careers in the mid-1950s ...
1960 Jimmy Page: First-Ever Serious ‘Gig’ Aged just 16, Jimmy Page – whose first guitar was a steel-stringed Spanish guitar on which he learnt to play skiffle, before quickly moving on to rock’n’roll and the electric guitar – played his first ever serious ‘gig’. Though he had been in local bands before, playing for British poet Royston Ellis ...
The government-enforced isolation of Native Americans in the United States has fostered cultural independence, in contrast to the marked musical acculturation between the Hispanic-speaking and Amerindian societies in South America. But in modern times, North American groups have tended to set aside tribal differences and seek a pan-tribal cultural unity. The ‘Ghost Dance’, a religious cult led by Jack ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1895–1991) The Kentuckian singer-guitarist was a superstar of early country radio, appealing to the vast mid-western audience of the WLS National Barn Dance with gentle renditions of old songs like ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘The Fatal Wedding’. In the 1920s and 1930s he sold hundreds of thousands of songbooks and records. After retiring to run a music ...
(Tenor saxophone, vocals, 1919–89) Benjamin Joseph Jackson was born in Cleveland, Ohio and replaced Wynonie Harris as male vocalist with the Lucky Millinder Orchestra in 1945. From 1947 until the late 1950s he toured with his own group, the Buffalo Bearcats. He recorded for Queen/King from 1945; among his biggest hits were ‘I Love You, Yes ...
1876–1971 American composer Ruggles wrote only a handful of works, of which the most important are the orchestral Men and Mountains (1924) and Sun-Treader (1926), Portals (1926) for strings and Angels (1924) for brass ensemble. They exhibit a boldly powerful, big-boned atonal style that at times approaches his friends Ives and Varèse, but remains independent. He worked slowly ...
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An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.