SEARCH RESULTS FOR: Bunny Berigan
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(Trumpet, vocals, 1908–42) Rowland Bernard Berigan’s warm sound and fluent style made him a major figure of the swing era. To some extent, his alcohol-related death at 33 has unduly enhanced his legacy, lifting a solid talent to the level of tortured artist-genius. Berigan arrived in New York in 1929 and became a sought-after session player. He ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

(Vocal/instrumental group, 1978–93, 1997–present) A post-punk quartet originating in Liverpool’s thriving late 1970s new wave scene, comprising Ian McCulloch (vocals), Will Sergeant (guitar), Les Pattinson (bass) and Pete DeFreitas (drums). Career highlights include the moodily atmospheric 1980 debut Crocodiles and the lushly epic Ocean Rain (1984), but mainstream acceptance eluded them and the band split up in 1988 ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley

If swing in its most characteristic form was a hot and hard-driving music, William ‘Count’ Basie showed that there was a cooler and softer side to the music, an alter ego that even at swift tempos could move with a relaxed, almost serene restraint that subliminally mirrored the streamlined design forms of the Machine Age, in which ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

(Bandleader, trombone, trumpet, 1905–56) With the break-up of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, Tommy Dorsey quickly hired the Joe Haymes Orchestra en masse and built a new band to his specifications. For all the talent it would attract, however, it would always be built around the leader’s warm trombone sound and flawless perfection on ballads. The ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

The popularity of jazz hit a peak after the Depression years of 1929–33. By the end of 1934, huge numbers were tuning in to the NBC Radio series Let’s Dance, which broadcast performances by The Xavier Cugat, Kel Murray and Benny Goodman Orchestras. Goodman’s orchestra in particular caught on with the public and created a demand for live ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

As if at the convenience of history, the stock market crash in the final weeks of 1929 severed the 1920s from the 1930s. The breach was economic but its consequences were pervasive, sweeping away economic values and social illusions, and affecting all aspects of life for Americans and Europeans alike. America’s compliant 1920s middle class became the 1930s ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

The opera house and, more specifically, opera audiences, were among the last to be receptive to the new musical language that developed during the twentieth century. Slow, as well as reluctant to vary their traditional musical tastes, perceptions and expectations, many viewed the opera house with nostalgia; as a symbol of the establishment, holding ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Peter Tosh (1944–87), born Winston Hubert McIntosh, was the guitarist in the original Wailing Wailers. His mercurial temperament, provocative advocacy of the Rastafari movement and untimely death drew attention from his role in the most important band in the history of reggae. Tosh grew up in Kingston, Jamaica. His height (6ft 5in/2m) and temperament earned him the nickname ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

(Drums, vocals, 1907–83) Roy Bunny Milton was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. He had his own bands before moving to Los Angeles in 1935, where he formed the Solid Senders combo in 1938 and worked small clubs throughout the city. He began recording in 1945 and had a lengthy relationship with Specialty records throughout 1946–54, which produced ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

Dancehall reggae is a vivid example of how the music perpetually reinvents itself to refresh its rebel spirit and to keep itself relevant to its primary audience: downtown Kingston (both spiritually as well as geographically). it began to appear on the sound systems at the beginning of the 1980s, when roots reggae had reached a world stage through the likes ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

March The Dictators Go Girl Crazy The anarchic Dictators spiced up the New York scene with their Go Girl Crazy! album in 1975, a coarse blend of punk and heavy metal with sharp witty lyrics mocking the junk culture they saw all around them, which naturally included punk and heavy metal. Unfortunately the chaos that surrounded the band ...

Source: Punk: The Brutal Truth, by Hugh Fielder and Mike Gent

Jamaican music has never been that far away from mainstream British music since Millie Small stormed the charts in 1964 with the galloping ska of ‘My Boy Lollipop’, but it was not until the end of that decade that reggae became a bona fide part of pop. Heralded by Desmond Dekker’s incredible success in 1969 with ‘It Mek’ and ‘The Israelites’, ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

Seldom has a style of music been named with greater accuracy than rock steady. Like so many other Jamaican genres, it took its name from a dance, in which participants planted their feet and ‘rocked steady’. When rock steady began to dominate the dancehalls in the mid-1960s, it was the antithesis to ska’s rollicking, big-band, jazz-based ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

Roots reggae is probably the best-known genre of Jamaican music. Thanks to artists such as Bob Marley and Burning Spear, it achieved genuine worldwide success. Through these artists and their carefully articulated political dissent, social commentaries and praises to Jah Rastafari, it has been accepted across the world as one of the most potent protest musics. Roots reggae ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

After the seismic shifts of the previous decade, the 1970s reflected faster-moving, less permanent crazes, beginning with glam rock and ending with the new wave. Glam rock saw the likes of Alice Cooper and Kiss taking make-up to extremes, while the comparatively anonymous Eagles and Bruce Springsteen respectively updated the blueprints established the previous decade by country ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley
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