(Songwriter, b. 1941) Strong was a Motown staff writer whose own 1960 hit ‘Money’ helped fund the label’s early expansion. His compositions with Norman Whitfield included ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, and led Motown’s forays into more socially aware territory with hits like Edwin Starr’s ‘War’ and many of The Temptations’ psychedelic soul outings. Strong won a 1972 Grammy ...
Legendary ‘lost’ psychedelic genius Syd Barrett was born Roger Keith Barrett in Cambridge in 1946. He learned to play guitar at the age of 14 and formed his first band in 1965. While attending art college in London, he joined the embryonic Pink Floyd. Floyd began by playing blues and rhythm and blues covers, but soon developed the improvisational ...
An incomparable figure in the history of jazz, Armstrong played with an unprecedented virtuosity and bravura, while retaining an individual tone and a deceptively laid-back style. In the early 1920s, he shifted the emphasis of jazz from ensemble playing to a soloist’s art form, while setting new standards for trumpeters worldwide. The sheer brilliance of his playing ...
(Piano, vocals, arranger, 1898–1971) Memphis-born pianist Lillian Hardin joined King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago during the summer of 1921 and married fellow band member Louis Armstrong in 1924. She played on Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings and also received some composer credits. The couple separated in 1931 and were divorced in 1938. Lil subsequently ...
Back in 1966, who would have thought that 43 years later Pink Floyd would be known around the world as one of the most musically, artistically and commercially successful bands in the world ? Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett (1946–2006), Roger Waters (b. 1943), Nick Mason (b. 1944) and Richard Wright (1943–2008) were an underground band whose experimental un-tethering of songs ...
Origins Of The Band Nick Mason first played drums in school band The Hotrods, ‘retiring’ when he went to study architecture in London at Regent Street Polytechnic. He was soon back in service with guitar-playing fellow student Roger Waters in Sigma 6 and a revolving line-up featuring a fellow former architecture-turned-music-student Richard Wright (if venues had a piano). By 1964/65 ...
January First Gig, London The Pink Floyd Sound made their London debut at the Countdown Club in late 1965 and were paid £15 for their trouble. Their first London gig in 1966 took place at the Goings On Club on 9 January 1966. Like hundreds of other semi-professional bands around the country, Syd Barrett (guitar/vocals), Roger Waters (bass/vocals), Nick ...
January–February Early Recording Sessions Working for the London arm of Elektra Records, Joe Boyd had already produced artists like The Incredible String Band. Peter Jenner and Andrew King had given him a rough Pink Floyd demo with a view to securing a deal. Although Elektra boss Jac Holzman did not go for the Floyd, Boyd, as musical director ...
January David Gilmour Joins With Barrett’s unreliability profoundly affecting the band’s ability to make money by fulfilling live obligations, his old friend Dave Gilmour was drafted in as a backup guitarist. His previous bands Joker’s Wild, Flowers and Bullitt, had failed to make an impression and he was delighted, albeit with natural reservations over Barrett’s feelings. In ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1967–74) This Detroit quartet’s focal point was Iggy Pop (James Osterberg, vocals), fronting Ron Asheton (guitar), Scott Asheton (drums) and Dave Alexander (bass). Tiring of psychedelia, they had dug down to a raw three-chord bedrock for an eponymous maiden album in 1969, promoted with increasingly more manic stage performances at odds with the prevailing ‘laid-back’ ...
Since the dawn of the jazz era, the appeal of pop music had become increasingly intertwined with the demands of the dancefloor. As 1960s rock and soul became ever tougher and more orientated towards youth and hedonism it was only a matter of time before someone would come up with the ultimate dance groove. That someone was soul’s greatest innovator ...
This enduring British cult dance scene takes its name from the post-mod discos in the north-west of England where it developed, rather than the geographical location of the music-makers. Legendary disco venues like Manchester’s Twisted Wheel, Blackpool’s Mecca and The Wigan Casino, are still spoken about in reverential tones by soul and dance connoisseurs. The reason northern soul ...
The very name, ‘Classical Era’, speaks for itself: it proclaims a period that is regarded as ‘Standard, first-class, of allowed excellence’, with manifestations that are ‘simple, harmonious, proportioned, finished’, to quote a dictionary definition. The period from 1750 to roughly 1820 is widely recognized as one of exceptional achievement in music – it is the ...
The Enlightenment was a natural, if late, consequence of the sixteenth-century Renaissance and Reformation. Also known as the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment advanced to be recognized in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and brought with it new, controversial beliefs that upended the absolutisms on which European society had long been based. Absolute monarchy, ...
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 ...
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.