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 ...
songwriter, b. 1972) Moorer moved to Nashville after college and started songwriting after she met Oklahoma musician Doyle ‘Butch’ Primm, whom she later married. Moorer’s debut album, Alabama Song (1998) included ‘A Soft Place To Fall’, as featured in the soundtrack to the movie The Horse Whisperer. After four major-label albums, she was released from her contract ...
(Harmonica, vocals, 1926–84) Willie Mae Thornton was born in Montgomery, Alabama. She settled in Houston, Texas in 1948 and began recording for the Peacock label in 1951. She toured with Johnny Otis in 1952–53 and recorded her number-one R&B hit, ‘Hound Dog’, with his band. The record, famously covered by Elvis Presley, enabled her ...
(Producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, b. 1936) One of Nashville’s most influential producers during the 1970s and early 1980s, Alabama-born Billy Norris Sherrill started out playing piano at tent shows where his father, an evangelist minister, preached. Later, he played in local rock’n’roll and R&B bands. When he came to Nashville in 1964, Sherrill brought ...
He was playing house parties, brothels and drinking dens around Wortham, Texas, in his late teens, before travelling widely around Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia. He was eventually contacted by Paramount Records, who recorded him in Chicago. He would make most of his records there, although he remained settled in Dallas. ...
(Vocals, harmonica, guitar, 1867–1963) Daddy Stovepipe – a.k.a. Mobile, Alabama native Johnny Watson – is an obscure figure, with only a scattering of recording sessions to his credit, but he represents an important era of blues and pre-blues music. He was not only one of the first downhome blues performers to record (in ...
(Vocals, 1924–63) Ruth Lee Jones was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and raised in Chicago. She joined Lionel Hampton’s band in 1943 and made her first recordings that year. Included were the hits ‘Salty Papa Blues’ and ‘Evil Gal Blues’. She left Hampton in 1945 and signed with Mercury records in 1946. Her recorded output included all kinds of material ...
to Allman being offered session work on Wilson Pickett’s Hey Jude (1968) album, which in turn led to him becoming a full-time session musician at Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama, where he contributed to albums by Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge and Boz Scaggs. Frustration at the limitations of session playing led Allman to form The Allman Brothers Band ...
(Singer-songwriter, b. 1947) Possessing the voice of an angel, Harris is one of the most adventurous country artists of the past four decades. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she released a folk album in 1969; but it was her duets with Gram Parsons in the early 1970s that set her on the road. Fine solo sets with Parsons’ ...
years after she debuted with the tormented genius Gram Parsons, she is still the one others turn to for acceptance and support. Gram Parsons’ Influence Born in Birmingham, Alabama, on 2 April 1947, Harris grew up near Washington, D.C. She cut her teeth as a folk singer, but after an unsuccessful 1969 debut, ...
(Fiddle, vocals, 1875–1949) Carson’s June 1923 disc of ‘The Old Hen Cackled And The Rooster’s Going To Crow’ and ‘Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane’ was the first country record made in the South, in a temporary studio in Atlanta. A farmer by trade, Carson had been famous for years in Northern Georgia as an entertainer ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1926) A regular on the Town Hall Party, Alabama-born Freddie Hart arrived in Los Angeles following a troubled childhood, a couple of years in the Marines (enrolling when he was only 15), and travelling across the nation. His 1950s association with Capitol and Columbia resulted in some fine, though overlooked, country and ...
(Bandleader, vocals, 1936–2003) Alabama-raised Henry ‘Hank’ Ballard fronted The Midnighters (previously The Royals). 1954 brought the Detroit group four big US R&B hits with risqué lyrics about a fictitious ‘Annie’. In 1960, the group released the original version of ‘The Twist’, written by Ballard, but the younger, more photogenic Chubby Checker took the million sales and ...
(Singer-songwriter, 1923–53) Insofar as rock has been shaped by country music, it has been shaped by Hank Williams. Williams, a superstar at 25 and dead at 29, set standards for popular as well as country music, and was a virtual hit songwriting machine. Yet, like several young rock stars who followed him, he was ...
sincerity, plainspoken poeticism and his uncanny knack for turning his personal despair into music that has proven universal and enduring. Musical Rendezvous Williams was born in Mount Olive, Alabama, in 1923, the son of a log truck driver who suffered from shell shock after the First World War. The family lived in relative poverty and Williams was ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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