(Guitar, violin, vocals, 1924–2005) Clarence Brown Jr. was born in Vinton, Louisiana and raised in Orange, Texas. By the age of 10 he had learned guitar and violin. After the Second World War he settled in the Houston, Texas area. He made his recording debut in 1947 for Aladdin and signed with Peacock Records in ...
In his short life, California guitarist-mandolinist Clarence White (1944–73) conceived innovations that would inspire country and rock guitarists from both a stylistic and technical perspective long after his death. He brought bluegrass picking to the forefront of rock, turning acoustic guitar into a solo instrument. He developed a device for electric guitar that let traditional guitarists sound like pedal-steel ...
Clarence Williams was born in 1898 in Plaquemine, Louisiana, migrating to New Orleans in the teens to play piano in the District and begin a long career as a composer, bandleader and musical promoter. He was manager of two early jazz venues – the Big 25 Club and Pete Lala’s Café – hiring the best musicians in the ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1900–52) An associate of Charley Patton, Brown was a part of the Mississippi blues scene in the early 1920s. While he started out playing with Patton and Tommy Johnson, he teamed up with Son House in 1926 and accompanied his Paramount session in May 1930, also cutting four songs of his own. Brown played ...
(Piano, vocals, 1922–99) Charles Mose Brown was born in Texas City, Texas and had extensive classical piano training as a youth. He moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and by September 1944 had become the vocalist-pianist in Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers. The Blazers had several hits before Brown went solo in 1948 and scored success with songs such ...
(Vocals, 1925–81) Roy James Brown was born in New Orleans and raised in Texas and Louisiana. A strong blues shouter, Brown was one of the first stars of New Orleans R&B. He led his own group, Roy Brown & his Mighty, Mighty Men, and wrote most of the material he recorded. He began recording for DeLuxe ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1915–96) Walter Brown McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He learned to play guitar before his tenth birthday and dropped out of school to play throughout the state in the late 1920s. He met Sonny Terry in 1939 and they joined forces almost immediately. McGhee began recording for OKeh in 1940 and moved to New York. ...
(Trumpet, 1930–56) The tragic death of Clifford Brown in a road accident robbed jazz of one of its brightest young stars, but even his truncated legacy has established his standing as a major figure and profound influence. He took up the trumpet at the age of 13, drawing on the influence of bebop stars Dizzy Gillespie and Fats ...
(Vocals, b. 1929) Napoleon Brown Goodson Culp was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He sang with a gospel group, the Heavenly Lights, which recorded for Savoy, but was convinced to try blues material in 1954 and had several hits, including ‘Don’t Be Angry’. He returned to singing gospel in the 1960s but was rediscovered in ...
(Vocals, b. 1928) Ruth Alston Weston was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. She was heard performing in Washington, DC, where she was recommended to Atlantic Records. Her 1950 R&B number one ‘Teardrops From Your Eyes’ was followed by four more, including ‘(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean’, and she was so successful that the fledgeling label became ...
(Vocals, banjo, 1895–1967) Tom Ashley (as everyone but record companies called him) learned his trade as an entertainer by working on travelling shows. In the 1920s he played in The Carolina Tar Heels and recorded exceptional banjo-accompanied versions of ‘The Coo Coo Bird’ and the traditional ballad ‘The House Carpenter’. As late as the 1950s he was working with ...
There was a time during the western-swing revival of the 1970s when it looked as if the pioneering legacy of Milton Brown (1903–36) And His Musical Brownies would be entirely subsumed amid the accolades given to the music’s most popular, enduring figure, Bob Wills. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, though Wills continues to reign supreme in the popular ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1922–2003) In an era when every other singer was trying to sound like Bill Monroe or Carter Stanley, Hylo Brown sounded like no one else. An Ohio defence plant worker who moonlighted at hillbilly bars during the Second World War, Kentucky’s Frank Brown Jr. became renowned for a vocal range that went from a warm ...
(Vocals, 1928–2006) Beginning in 1949 Ruth Brown’s soulful voice put Atlantic Records on the map with a string of R&B classics like ‘So Long’, ‘Teardrops In My Eyes’ and ‘(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean’. Two-dozen hits later in 1960 Brown left the music business, enduring difficult times before resurging in the mid-1970s as a Broadway star. Her attempts ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1941) Discovered by TV producer Jack Good, guitarist Brown backed visiting American stars including Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, before launching his own career as a rocking Cockney with a handful of UK hit singles, before The Beatles changed the world. After appearing in British pop films and London theatre, Brown formed ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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