(Vocals, b. 1968) Dion had already released a handful of French-language albums in her native Canada before her English-singing debut Unison (1990). Hit ballads like ‘Where Does My Heart Beat Now’ revealed a potent singer. Her emotional duet with Peabo Bryson on The Beauty And The Beast movie theme (1992) was a monster hit and the first of many successful ...
(Vocal group, 1958–present) Formed in New York’s Bronx in 1958 by Dion DiMucci, Angelo D’Aleo, Carlo Mastangelo and Fred Milano, this doo-wop group had had several US hits by 1960, including 1959’s ‘A Teenager In Love’, also a UK hit. Dion went solo in 1960, scoring more US hits, the biggest 1961’s million-selling US ...
songs from 1966–67, but died during heart surgery. Kevin Spacey’s 2004 biopic Beyond The Sea helped keep the memory alive. Styles & Forms | Fifties | Rock Personalities | Dion & The Belmonts | Fifties | Rock ...
Of Wales Memorial Fund. In 1998 he was knighted by the Queen for his charitable work. In 2004, Elton started a three-year Las Vegas residency, alternating with Celine Dion, and in 2005 he appeared at Live 8, 20 years after he had appeared at Band Aid. In 2016 he released his thirty-second studio album, Wonderful Crazy ...
Alanis Morissette. On albums like Everyday (2001) and Stand Up (2006) Matthews’ winning compositional ability and band interplay remain undimmed. Styles & Forms | Nineties | Rock Personalities | Celine Dion | Nineties | Rock ...
– whose 1957 hit ‘Come Go With Me’ was the first song that the adolescent Paul McCartney ever saw John Lennon perform – as well as all-white outfits such as Dion & The Belmonts, The Mystics and The Skyliners. The Doo-Wop Bandwagon Doo-wop had made vast strides within a very short time, and many of the teens who were ...
and spent time in rehab. Virgin dropped her in 2002, but it was not all bad news: the record company gave her a $28m pay-off. Her Canadian rival Celine Dion also married her mentor, manager Rene Angelil, despite a 26-year age difference. The couple fell victim to a different kind of tragedy, though, as Angelil was ...
in America, where Dick Dale & His Del-Tones were purveyors of the ‘surf guitar’. The remains of white doo-wop could be heard in recordings by The Four Seasons and Dion (both with and without The Belmonts); and the last vestiges of Gene Vincent-style rock’n’roll was performed in Britain by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates. Still, while the controversy associated ...
romance from a female perspective. The Rock’n’Roll Gospel Girl groups would not emerge until the following decade, but there were many doo-wop-influenced male vocal combos already out there like Dion and The Belmonts and Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Often drawn from immigrant Italian or Hispanic stock, they made the transition from street-corner harmonizing to the hit parade ...
Like its close relation the concertina, the accordion is a glorified mouth organ, in which the ‘reeds’ (now generally made of tempered steel) are set in vibration by a rectangular bellows. The bellows are operated by the left hand, which also – as in all keyboard instruments – manipulates the so-called bass keyboard, in this case a ...
The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ...
From its roots, country music has been associated with simplicity – in melody, in subject-matter and in instrumentation, and it is this that has perhaps ensured its longevity. However, all good musicians make their craft look simple, and the history of country music is packed with virtuosos, from the pioneering banjoist Earl Scruggs, through ...
Often regarded as the country cousin (and hence the bumpkin) of the organ family, the harmonium did add a touch of warmth to many nineteenth-century rural homes, where the purchase of a piano would have been an unaffordable luxury. But the two instruments often cohabited, too. Harmonium Compositions Today, unlike the piano, the harmonium is a ...
Zither The zither is part of a group of instruments which are linked by the fact that sets of strings run parallel to their main body, and that – unlike the lute, lyre or harp – they can still be played even without a resonating device. In the concept’s least advanced state, native instruments exist which are little ...
Bass Drum The dominant feature of every military band is its big bass drum. Throughout the history of percussion instruments, this drum has been the mainstay of time-keeping, whether it is used for a marching army or in a late-twentieth century heavy metal band. Early versions of the bass drum (it was certainly known in Asia around 3500 BC) ...
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