(Vocals, yodels, 1925–97) Although she might only be a footnote in country-music history, Arkansas-born Carolina Cotton was a prolific entertainer in the West Coast’s post-war era. Known as the ‘Yodelling Blonde Bombshell’, she first gained attention working with Spade Cooley’s Orchestra, then furthered her western-swing association by touring with both Hank Penny’s and Bob Wills’ bands. She ...
(Instrumental group, 1926–34) Formed in 1926 by drummer Bill McKinney (1895–1969), this Ohio-based big band improved significantly after hiring arranger Don Redman from Fletcher Henderson’s band in the summer of 1927. For the next four years, until Redman left in 1931, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers rivalled both Henderson’s and Duke Ellington’s orchestras for ensemble precision. The band’s trumpeter and ...
(Harmonica, vocals, b. 1935) James Henry Cotton was born in Tunica, Mississippi and was inspired by hearing Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller) on the radio. He worked with his mentor from the late 1940s until 1953, when he made his recording debut for Sun Records. He joined Muddy Waters in 1954 and played with him, ...
(Violin, vocals, bandleader, 1910–69) When Bob Wills set up business in the San Fernando Valley, he found strong competition from Spade Cooley, an Oklahoma-born fiddle player who initially worked as a singing-cowboy stand-in and musician before becoming bandleader in the Venice Pier Ballroom. There he attracted sell-out business with his band, which numbered 22 members ...
The banjo is a plucked stringed instrument with a circular body and fretted neck. Its roots lie in the French and British colonies of Africa, where instruments made from a hollowed-out gourd covered with animal skin, bamboo neck and catgut strings were popular. Particularly associated with celebrations and dancing, these instruments went by various names including banza and ...
Country music has been euphemistically called ‘white man’s blues’ or ‘the poetry of the common man’. While both descriptions have elements of truth, neither is quite accurate. It is, in fact, a broad, nebulous, over-reaching category with no exact boundaries or parameters. Over the decades country music has grown to encompass a greatly varied assortment of ...
The first African slaves arrived in America in 1619 and brought their music with them. From then until the Civil War of 1861–65, the music both fascinated and frightened the white slave owners who would flock to see the black people celebrating their weekly ‘day off’ in New Orleans’s Congo Square. At the same time, slave owners suppressed the ...
Reggae is unique. No other style has made so much out of its original musical resources to present itself in so many different guises with only a couple of structural changes in over 40 years. No other style has so accurately reflected the people that create and consume it. Jamaican music’s relationship with its people is such that it is not ...
Composed: 1959–61 Premiered: 1961, Schwetzingen Libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman Act I Hilda Mack recalls how her husband set out to climb the Hammerhorn 40 years ago. Dr Reischmann and Carolina, physician and secretary to the poet Gregor Mittenhofer, agree that no one thanks ‘the Servants of the Servant of the Muse’. Reischmann’s son Toni ...
‘The Secret Marriage’ Composed: 1792 Premiered: 1792, Vienna Libretto by Giovanni Bertati, after George Colman and David Garrick Act I Carolina, Geronimo’s daughter, is secretly married to Paolino, her father’s clerk. The couple are trying to find a way to tell Geronimo of their marriage; he would not approve of such a lowly match. Paolino comes ...
Alabama, who appropriately came from Fort Payne, in Alabama, emerged into the spotlight in 1980, when ‘Tennessee River’ topped the Billboard country charts. Three group members – Randy Owen (guitar, lead vocals, b. 1949), Teddy Gentry (bass, vocals, b. 1952) and Jeff Cook (keyboards, fiddle, vocals, b. 1949) – were ...
When the great Mississippi musician Riley King left the cotton fields to seek his fortune in Memphis in 1946, he had $2.50 in his pocket and a battered guitar in his hand. Today, his name is synonymous with blues music itself, yet his ascendance to the zenith of the blues world never altered his friendly, downhome ...
(Vocal/instrumental duo, 1930s–50s) Raised near Louisville, Kentucky, Cliff Carlisle (1904–83) was attracted as a boy to blues and Hawaiian music. His fusion of the two would make him one of the most distinctive musicians of his time. Playing the dobro resonator guitar with a slide, he transmuted the blue yodels of Jimmie Rodgers, becoming a popular ...
(Vocals, b. 1937) Columbia, South Carolina-born James William Anderson emerged as one of Nashville’s most celebrated songwriters in 1958, when Ray Price took his ‘City Lights’ to the top of the charts. Anderson soon signed his own recording contract with Decca Records and joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1961. In the years since he has parlayed his ...
(Harmonica, vocals, b. 1951) Branch began playing harmonica at the age of 10, before polishing his onstage technique in Chicago with Big Walter, James Cotton, Junior Wells and Carey Bell. In 1975 he became a sideman for Willie Dixon and then formed Sons of Blues with Lurrie Bell (guitar). Branch continues to front the band and ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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