(Vocal duo, 1930s–60s) For years, husband and wife vocal team Andrew John Smik (b. 1914) and Jesse Wanda Crupe (b. 1919) sang on WWVA Jamboree, in Wheeling, West Virginia, and earned regional popularity within that radio show’s wide broadcast area. The Williamses were champions of old-time country music and their band The Border Riders created a ...
(Trumpet, vocals, 1905–97) Adolphus Cheatham played in countless bands and small groups in the 1920s, before settling in the Cab Calloway orchestra in 1931. He remained with Calloway until 1939, after which he resumed work with a variety of bands. He didn’t emerge as a soloist until the 1960s, working with George Wein, Benny Goodman ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1923) Arthel ‘Doc’ Watson was a blind, 37-year farm worker who was playing old-time country and rockabilly on weekends when folklorist Ralph Rinzler came across him in the North Carolina mountains in 1960. Recognizing Watson as one of the most dazzling guitar virtuosos of his generation, Rinzler soon convinced him to perform and record ...
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 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 ...
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 ...
(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 ...
One of modern country music’s most remarkable figures, Chester Burton Atkins born in Luttrell, Tennessee, rose from rural obscurity to become one of the world’s most celebrated guitarists and one of Nashville’s most influential record producers. Atkins’ musical vision did much to shape country music during the 1950s and 1960s. Early Years Atkins was born on 20 June ...
(Vocals, banjo, 1895–1967) Tom Ashley (as everyone but record companies called him) learned his trade as an entertainer by working on travelling shows. In the 1920s he played in The Carolina Tar Heels and recorded exceptional banjo-accompanied versions of ‘The Coo Coo Bird’ and the traditional ballad ‘The House Carpenter’. As late as the 1950s he was working with ...
(Clarinet, 1895–1944) The most fluid and graceful of the classic New Orleans clarinetists, Noone worked with trumpeter Freddie Keppard (1914) and also with the Young Olympia Band (1916) before following Keppard to Chicago in 1917. A member of King Oliver’s first Creole Jazz Band (1918–20), he also played in Doc Cooke’s Dreamland Orchestra (1920–26) before forming his popular Apex ...
(Vocals, b. 1919) Born Muriel Deason, in Nashville, Tennessee, Kitty Wells was one of the first women to achieve stardom in country music. Wells began singing in the 1930s with her cousin Bessie Choate as The Deason Sisters. In 1938, she married singer Johnnie Wright, who would later partner with Jack Anglin in the popular ...
(Instrumental group, 1912–18) Freddie Keppard’s Original Creole Orchestra toured extensively during the teens as an early harbinger of authentic New Orleans jazz, reaching big-time vaudeville’s prestigious Orpheum circuit. Powerful pioneer trumpeter Keppard (1889–1933) had with him Creole clarinetists George Baquet, ‘Big Eye’ Louis Nelson and Jimmie Noone, pioneer bassist Bill Johnson and multi-instrumentalist Dink Johnson as a ...
Ricky Skaggs was born on 18 July 1954, in Cordell, Kentucky, and from the age of five Skaggs and his trusty mandolin have been almost inseparable. A child prodigy, he was invited on stage to play a tune at a Bill Monroe concert at the age of six, and a year later, he appeared on ...
(Piano, arranger, bandleader, 1895–1985) Wooding led his Society Syncopators in the early 1920s before travelling to Berlin in 1925 with the Chocolate Kiddies revue. One of the first wave of expatriate American jazz musicians to live abroad, he spent the remainder of the 1920s in Europe playing with bands that featured star soloists such as Doc Cheatham ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1930–35) This group, created by the Berea, Kentucky, entrepreneur John Lair in 1930 for the WLS National Barn Dance, genially exploited popular perceptions of mountain folk through music and costume, and was an ancestor of shows like The Beverly Hillbillies and Hee Haw. The group lasted only five years, but its members ...
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...
CURATED
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.