(Vocals, guitar, 1902–31) Barbecue Bob Hicks was a mainstay of the 1920s Atlanta scene. His 12-string guitar technique featured percussive, banjo-like flailing and sometimes a bottleneck slide, instead of the rag-style fingerpicking often associated with the Southeast. Hicks recorded over 60 sides for Columbia, including his trademark ‘Barbecue Blues’ (he had a day job at a ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1941) Dylan had already conquered the folk and rock’n’roll fields completely by the time he recorded in Nashville for the first time in 1965. That was for the rock-flavoured Blonde On Blonde album, but he was soon back to cut the more obviously country projects John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, which helped kick ...
Next to The Beatles, Bob Dylan was the most influential artist of his generation, writing and performing songs whose poetic, sometimes-abstract, often-philosophical lyrics of astute commentary and therapeutic introspection spoke to the masses during an era of social unrest, political upheaval and radical change. While cross-pollinating folk and country with electric rock, Dylan elevated the ...
(Vocals, 1937–78) Greatly influenced by Elvis Presley, Bob Luman from Kilgore, Texas was a regular on the Louisiana Hayride. He recorded rockabilly for Imperial and appeared in the movie Carnival Rock (1957). His band, which included guitarist James Burton, left him to join Ricky Nelson, after which he adapted to a pop-rock style and scored ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1945–81) The man responsible for popularizing reggae worldwide, Bob Marley’s career began in 1963 in the original Wailers, a six-piece vocal group, later slimmed to a trio, operating out of Kingston, Jamaica and enjoying great success locally. In 1969, Marley worked with producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, who introduced him to ...
(Piano, vocals, songwriter, publisher, 1895–1955) A Memphis riverboat pianist and bandleader, Miller got into the publishing and songwriting business in his twenties. Moving to New York, he worked for several labels as a record producer, supplying acts like Gene Autry and Cliff Carlisle with material of his own, such as ‘Twenty-One Years’, ‘Seven ...
Alternative guitarist Bob Mould (b. 1960) was born in Malone, New York. Mould was 16 when, inspired by The Ramones, he took up the guitar. While attending college in Minnesota in 1979, he founded Hüsker Dü, originally a hardcore punk/thrash band, with drummer Grant Hart and bassist Greg Norton. The band’s third album, Zen Arcade ...
Observers who saw him in his prime have likened the charisma of the ‘king of western swing’ Bob Wills to that of latter-day superstars such as Elvis and The Beatles. The Texas fiddler, with his trademark high-pitched folk hollers and jivey, medicine-show asides, was an irresistible force of nature. Although he was, in the earliest days of ...
(Bandleader, fiddle, 1905–75) Between 1929 and 1931 Bob Wills assembled his first western-swing band, The Light Crust Doughboys, later rechristened The Texas Playboys. By 1940, with its hit single ‘New San Antonio Rose’, it was filling concert halls across the country. The band’s biggest hit, ‘New Spanish Two Step’, spent 16 weeks at No. 1. ...
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 ...
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 ...
Almost no Texan musicians have ever herded cattle, but most like to think of themselves as cowboys nonetheless. They imagine themselves pulling out an acoustic guitar after dinner and singing a song about the adventures and frustrations they have known. And not just any old song – it has to be one they wrote and it has to be more ...
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 ...
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started out in 1966 as a student jug band in Los Angeles, and in an early incarnation it included a teenage Jackson Browne. Among the group’s founder members was singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna. Both Hanna and multi-instrumentalist Jimmie Fadden are still Dirt Band members 40 years on. The extremely ambitious Will The Circle Be ...
From its roots, country music has been associated with simplicity – in melody, in subject-matter and in instrumentation, and it is this that has perhaps ensured its longevity. However, all good musicians make their craft look simple, and the history of country music is packed with virtuosos, from the pioneering banjoist Earl Scruggs, through ...
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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.