(Clarinet, 1901–67) Raised in a musical family (his father Edward also played clarinet), Hall played around New Orleans during the early 1920s before departing to New York in 1928 to work with Alonzo Ross. He worked with Claude Hopkins, Lucky Millinder, Joe Sullivan and Zutty Singleton in the 1930s; with Teddy Wilson and Eddie Condon through the 1940s; ...
(A’-dam de la Al) c. 1250–1300 French Trouvère Adam de la Halle appears as something of a Janus figure at the end of the thirteenth century, at once looking back to his forebears and forwards into the fourteenth century and beyond, and he composed works in amost every genre of the period, including monophonic and polyphonic songs and ...
Dancehall reggae is a vivid example of how the music perpetually reinvents itself to refresh its rebel spirit and to keep itself relevant to its primary audience: downtown Kingston (both spiritually as well as geographically). it began to appear on the sound systems at the beginning of the 1980s, when roots reggae had reached a world stage through the likes ...
During its golden years, music hall rivalled European cabaret and American vaudeville. But music hall performers were bawdier than their cabaret counterparts, indulging in more boisterous banter with audiences than their American cousins. It was singalong fun, sprinkled with lewd humour. The term first entered common usage in 1848, when the Surrey Music Hall opened in London. ...
Country music today retains little of the regional identity that characterized it in its early days. There are pockets of resistance to this homogeneity and to the hegemony of Nashville – a honky-tonk dance circuit and a fiercely independent singer-songwriter tradition in Texas, for example – but overall the scene is one of major stars playing huge venues. The middle ...
Just as sports have their pantheon of greats, the country-music industry established its own Hall Of Fame in 1961 to honour its most influential figures and deepen public understanding and appreciation of the music’s rich heritage and history. A Pantheon Of Country Stars As of 2005, 62 artists and industry leaders – starting with Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) and songwriter ...
(Vocals, songwriter, guitar, b. 1936) Hall had his own band, The Kentucky Travelers, by the time he was 16. He worked as a commercial DJ and for armed-forces radio in Germany between 1957 and 1961, moving to Nashville in 1964. Hall’s career changed overnight in 1968 when Jeannie C. Riley took his song, ‘Harper ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1972–83, 1988–present) Southern rock band from South Carolina fronted by Doug Gray and featuring brothers Toy (guitar) and Tommy (bass) Caldwell. Named after a piano tuner who used their rehearsal hall, they scored US hits in 1975 and 1977 with ‘Fire On the Mountain’ and ‘Heard It In A Love Song’, but lacked distinctiveness to inherit ...
(Piano, composer, 1898–1937) One of the most enduringly popular composers of the twentieth century, Gershwin composed such enduring melodies as ‘Summertime’, ‘Embraceable You’ and ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’. His tuneful songs with their rich harmonic progressions are ideal for improvisation and were popular with jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, ...
(Piano, 1912–86) Although the physical brilliance of Art Tatum may have eluded most pianists in the 1930s, the more practical possibilities offered by Teddy Wilson made him the most influential pianist of the decade. Softening Earl Hines’ emphasis on the beat still further, Wilson’s style was centred almost wholly in his right hand, which spun smooth, ...
A rollicking, fast piano style characterized by repetitive eighth-note bass figures in the left hand, meshed with sharp, bluesy single-note runs in the right hand, boogie-woogie was an infectious form that had an immediate appeal to dancers. While the left hand remained tied to the task of covering driving bass lines in a kind of ‘automatic pilot’ ...
Contemporary music whose ancestry lies in the Western classical tradition finds itself in a curious position. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that we are not entirely sure what to call it. The label ‘classical’ seems anachronistic, especially when applied to composers who have challenged some of the fundamental assumptions of the classical tradition. ‘Concert music’ is similarly problematic ...
If any city could be cited as epitomizing the sense of decline and despair in the late nineteenth century it would be Vienna. Heartland of the oldest existing European empire, its shift from the liberalism of the 1840s towards the political conservatism of the 1890s onwards was typical, as was the inability of its emperor and ruling aristocracy to ...
An important aspect of Romanticism was its focus on individual feeling and expression, in contrast to the universal strictures of classical form and style. This led inevitably to a concept of the artist as a misunderstood genius, battling against the world. The second generation of English Romantic poets, including Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, contributed significantly ...
In the twentieth century, Paris regained its place as the centre of musical innovation, especially in the years either side of World War I. In the late nineteenth century, Debussy’s influential musical innovations and explicitly anti-Wagnerian stance made Paris the centre of post-Wagnerian modernity. This was confirmed in the early modern period by the arrival of Serge Diaghilev ...
AUTHORITATIVE
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.