(Guitar, vocals, 1903–82) Joe Lee Williams was born in Crawford, Mississippi to tenant farmer parents and by the age of five he was playing a homemade guitar. He left home in 1915 to hobo through the South. Williams worked tent shows and medicine shows with a jug band and as a soloist from 1918–24. Often accompanied by Little ...
Alternative-rock guitarist Joey Santiago (b. 1965) was born in Manila, Philippines, to a wealthy family, who emigrated to the United States when President Marcos declared martial law. The family eventually settled in Massachusetts. Joey first played guitar at the age of nine, becoming a fan of Seventies punk and David Bowie. At the University of Massachusetts, ...
California native Joe Pass (1929–94) developed a thoroughly precise jazz technique that propelled him to virtuoso status alongside pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, with whom he made a series of essential recordings for the Pablo label in the Seventies. Pass was raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He took up guitar after being inspired by singing cowboy Gene Autry. ...
Classical guitarist-composer John Christopher Williams (b. 1941) is a Grammy-Award winning Australian classical guitarist who has explored many styles beyond the classical tradition. John’s father Leonard (Len) Williams was an accomplished guitarist who emigrated from Britain to Australia and was best known there for his jazz playing. He taught John to play guitar, and it soon became apparent that the ...
American guitarist Joe Satriani is widely credited with pioneering the rock-instrumental style in the 1980s, opening up the genre for guitarists like Steve Vai, Eric Johnson and Yngwie Malmsteen. His talent for creating highly evolved music, using a pop-song structure with tuneful melodies before applying his own virtuoso skills, has made him one of the most successful ...
Joe Bonamassa, born in 1977, began playing guitar at the age of four on a small instrument given to him by his father. By the age of seven, he was playing Stevie Ray Vaughan songs on a full-size guitar. Bonamassa began performing in upstate New York at the age of 10 and was discovered by the blues great ...
Too often, the music created by so-called ‘shred’ guitarists comes across as too cerebral and serious to elicit enjoyment from any but the most die-hard shred fan. Fortunately for all other fans of instrumental guitar, Paul Gilbert (b. 1966) prefers to dish out his hungry-man portions of notes with humour and irreverence matched only by his technical ferocity. Gilbert ...
One half of the infamous ‘Toxic Twins’, along with vocalist Steven Tyler, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry projects a swagger and ultra-cool stage presence that few guitarists can match. Fewer still possess his capacity for muscular, gritty soloing and hook-laden riffing. For over 30 years now, Perry and his stinging guitar tone, generated most often via his signature Gibson ...
Joe Walsh (b. 1947) was born in Kansas and spent his childhood in Ohio and his high-school years in New Jersey before returning to Ohio to attend college at Kent State. He played bass in various bands before adopting guitar for a stint in the local group The Measles from 1965 to 1969. That led to a spot with Cleveland-based trio ...
Clarence Williams was born in 1898 in Plaquemine, Louisiana, migrating to New Orleans in the teens to play piano in the District and begin a long career as a composer, bandleader and musical promoter. He was manager of two early jazz venues – the Big 25 Club and Pete Lala’s Café – hiring the best musicians in the ...
(Violin, 1903–78) Venuti teamed up with guitarist Eddie Lang in 1926 for some classic duet sessions on OKeh. They reprised their intimate chemistry on 1928 sessions and worked together through the 1920s and 1930s on recordings for Jean Goldkette, Paul Whiteman, Red McKenzie and Roger Wolfe Kahn. In 1933 Venuti led small group sessions and in 1935 fronted ...
The parents of William Lee Conley Broonzy were born into slavery. He was born in June 1893 in Scott, Mississippi, one of 17 children. Raised on a farm in Arkansas, Broonzy’s first musical instrument was a home-made violin, which he played at church and social functions. In the early teens he was an itinerant preacher, while ...
(Piano, vocals, 1905–53) Major Merriweather was born in Georgia and taught himself to play piano. He moved to Detroit in 1924 and worked at the Ford Motor Company, also playing jobs, mostly as a soloist, before moving to Chicago. There he developed a friendship with Tampa Red and they recorded for Bluebird in 1941. His ‘Worried ...
(Harmonica, vocals, 1914–48) John Lee Williamson was born in Jackson, Tennessee. He taught himself harmonica at an early age and left home in his mid-teens to hobo with Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes through Tennessee and Arkansas. He settled in Chicago in 1934 and made his recording debut for Bluebird in 1937. His first song, ‘Good ...
Joseph Vernon Turner was born on 18 May 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri. He dropped out of school after sixth grade and worked with blind singers on the streets. The blues was in the air in Kansas City and when Turner joined in with the street singers he would make up blues lyrics. Turner was functionally illiterate and never learned ...
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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
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