(Vocals, 1943–70) Influenced by Bessie Smith, Joplin became a rock star while in San Francisco’s Big Brother & the Holding Company, and enjoyed a meteoric solo career before her untimely death from a heroin overdose in Los Angeles. Nonetheless, she was perhaps the most commanding female blues singer of the modern era. Joplin’s raw emotional expression and ...
(Vocals, 1943–70) During a troubled adolescence in Texas, Joplin sang in regional clubs before a move to California, where she emerged as focal point of San Francisco’s Big Brother and The Holding Company, sounding weary, cynical and knowing beyond her years. In 1968, she began a solo career that was triumphant and tragic – for ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1940) Born in Sutherlin, Virginia, Janis Martin toured extensively but was too raunchy for mass acceptance, despite a series of outstanding rockabilly recordings. She retired in 1959 to raise her family but re-emerged in the 1980s. Since then she has made numerous live appearances, mainly in Europe, where she has established ...
1868–1917 American composer More than any other composer, Joplin brought ragtime to its pinnacle: his Maple Leaf Rag (1899) is characteristic of his joyous and infectious but disciplined art, while 15 years later Magnetic Rag, with its dramatic and unexpected shifts of key, suggests a composer ready to expand into other areas. Joplin evidently thought so, ...
During the mid-1960s, America’s military action in Vietnam was escalating out of control; students around the world were becoming more politically involved, civil rights and feminism were hot issues and the burgeoning youth movement was turning onto the effects of mind-bending drugs. Accordingly, certain strains of popular music melded attitude, experimentation and a social conscience, and ...
Albert King’s late 1960s and early 1970s recordings for the Stax label remain cornerstones of modern blues. Tunes like ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’, ‘Crosscut Saw’ and ‘I’ll Play the Blues For You’ are also an antidote to the over-the-top playing indulged in by so many contemporary blues guitarists. For King, a six-foot-four, 250-pound man possessed of a big ...
Bessie Smith was one of the greatest vocalists of the twentieth century; her emotional delivery and exquisite phrasing has been an influence on instrumentalists as well as innumerable singers, both male and female. Many of her records, including ‘Gimmie a Pigfoot’, ‘Woman’s Trouble Blues’, ‘St. Louis Blues’ and the song that became an anthem of the Great Depression, ...
(Drums, 1927–2004) Powerhouse drummer Elvin Jones was the engine of John Coltrane’s legendary quartet in the 1960s, appearing on most of the saxophonist’s most popular recordings. He was the younger brother of pianist Hank and trumpeter Thad Jones and had worked with Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and J.J. Johnson prior to joining Coltrane. A ...
(Vocals, b. 1967) Born Audrey Faith Perry, Hill moved to Nashville in 1986, where she was discovered singing back-up to singer-songwriter Gary Burr at the Bluebird Café. Hill made an instant and huge impact when in 1994 her debut single, ‘Wild One’, topped the country chart for four weeks. Effortlessly crossing over to pop, her Take ...
By adapting their songwriting and sublime harmonies to different trends over four decades, The Bee Gees have maintained a hugely successful and lucrative career. The three eldest Gibb brothers – Barry (born 1 September 1947) and twins Robin and Maurice (born 22 December 1949, died 12 January 2003) – moved to Australia with their parents in 1958. They started ...
(Vocals, b. 1940) This Welshman’s piledriving but flexible baritone was first heard by the world at large on 1965’s ‘It’s Not Unusual’, a UK No. 1 that also reached the Top 10 in the States. A lean period ended with ‘Green, Green Grass Of Home’ at the top at home and high in the US Hot 100. Further hits ...
January/February Nicaragua, Hawaii, New Zealand And Australia Plans to tour the Far East were hampered when Tokyo refused to let convicted drug users Mick and Keith into the country. Performing an Earthquake Relief Benefit concert in Nicaragua as a warm-up show, the group then played two shows in Hawaii. They filled the Tokyo gap by travelling to LA ...
Popular music’s most influential decade saw British and American rock develop in parallel, the creative torch passing across the Atlantic to The Beatles, then returning as the West Coast rock boom reflected the influence of drugs on music. In rock, guitar was now the undisputed focus of the music with ‘axe heroes’ like Clapton, Hendrix, Townshend ...
January Inducted Into Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame In the same year as Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Al Green, Janis Joplin, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas and The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on 12 January 1995. Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Steven Tyler inducted the ...
February Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award is given out yearly to ‘performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording’. In 2005, Led Zeppelin were one of those performers. Sadly, John Bonham was no longer alive to see his achievement realized, a fact ...
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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.