(Alto saxophone, arranger, trumpet, vocals, 1907–2003) One of the great arrangers and soloists in jazz history, Bennett Lester Carter wrote some of the first big-band music to fully realize the flowing, legato ensemble of the coming swing movement. His saxophone ensembles were smooth projections of his solo style. ‘Lonesome Nights’ and ‘Symphony In Riffs’ were ...
Benny Goodman was the first of the great bandleader virtuosos of the 1930s to achieve global success. Through a combination of personal connections, nerve, enormous talent and sheer luck, he parlayed a sequence of opportunities in 1934–35 into a payoff that changed American music. After forming his first band in New York in 1934, he won a ...
The influence of jazz on concert music stretches back almost to the emergence of jazz itself from roots in gospel, ragtime and blues. One of the most popular black American dances of the 1890s was taken up by Debussy in his ‘Golliwog’s Cakewalk’ (from the piano suite Children’s Corner, 1906–08). Ragtime found its way into Satie’s ballet Parade and ...
When Vassar Clements formed a band called Hillbilly Jazz in 1975, Bill Monroe’s former fiddler pulled the cover off the hidden connection between country music and jazz. The two genres had more in common than most people thought. After all, Jimmie Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong early in their careers; jazz legend Charlie Christian debuted on Bob Wills’ radio ...
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 ...
Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed ...
The drum kit is a collection of drums and cymbals played in all styles of rock, pop, jazz and blues. It is also widely used in urban music across the world, such as Afrobeat and reggae. Drum-Kit Construction A typical drum kit comprises a bass drum and hi-hat cymbal played with foot pedals, a snare drum, ...
A musical ensemble is a group of two or more musicians who have come together to play music. In theory, an ensemble could contain any number of instruments in any combination, but in practice, certain combinations just don’t work very well, either for musical reasons or because of the sheer practicality of getting particular instruments and players ...
Bagpipe Somewhere, perhaps in Mesopotamia, about 7,000 years ago, a shepherd may well have looked at a goat skin and some hollow bones and had an idea for a new musical instrument: the bagpipe. In the early Christian era, the instrument spread from the Middle East eastward into India and westward to Europe. By the seventeenth ...
The most commercially successful pop band of the 1970s, ABBA rose again in the 1990s when ABBA Gold (1992) revived their peerless singles’ legacy, which has carried on ever since. ABBA were formed in 1973 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Benny Andersson (born Goran Bror Benny Andersson, 16 December 1946), Bjorn Ulvaeus (born 25 April 1945) and ...
(Vocals, composer, b. 1930) Lincoln caps her long, diversified singing and acting career as an iconic songwriter and performer. Her first record, in the 1950s, was with Benny Carter’s orchestra; in the 1960s she recorded politicized material with then-husband Max Roach. In the mid-1980s she re-emerged, paying tribute to Billie Holiday and embodying an African-American ...
(Trumpet, flugelhorn, 1928–99) Art Farmer was largely responsible for popularizing the mellow-toned flugelhorn as a solo jazz instrument. A wonderfully lyrical player, he came up in Los Angeles’ Central Avenue jazz clubs in the 1940s and worked with Lionel Hampton, Horace Silver, Gerry Mulligan and alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce. In 1959–62 he and tenor saxophonist Benny ...
(Clarinet, bandleader, composer, 1910–2004) If the 1930s comes down to about half a dozen great brand names, Artie Shaw’s is surely one of them. After much freelancing in the early 1930s and several years of band-building, Shaw (née Arthur Arshawsky) hit his stride just as Benny Goodman peaked in 1938. But no one ever confused these ...
(Vocals, b. 1938) Ben E. King was lead singer on The Drifters’ 1959 hits, including ‘There Goes My Baby’ and ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’. He quit in 1960 over royalty payments, finding solo success with 1961’s ‘Spanish Harlem’, and co-wrote the follow-up, ‘Stand By Me’, a US top 5 hit and his meal-ticket recording. King ...
(Drums, 1903–71) A member of the Chicago-based New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Pollack formed his own band in 1926 and by 1928 was employing such promising young players as Benny Goodman, Jimmy McPartland, Jack Teagarden and Glenn Miller. When Pollack’s orchestra disbanded in 1934, its membership became the core group for Bob Crosby’s orchestra. Pollack became the ...
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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.