(Vocals, guitar, songwriter, actor, b. 1937) A dazzling guitar player, Atlanta, Georgia-born Jerry Reed Hubbard started out in Nashville in the mid-1960s, playing on recording sessions with artists such as Bobby Bare and Porter Wagoner. Later, Reed backed Elvis Presley on guitar when Presley recorded a pair of Reed’s original songs in 1968 ...
A leading figure on America’s West Coast music scene, Jerry Garcia was born in San Francisco in 1942. His father was a retired professional musician, his mother a pianist. The musically inclined Jerry began taking piano lessons as a child. The emergence of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran inspired him to learn guitar at 15, ...
At its simplest, a reed-pipe is made by slicing a flap out of a length of hollow reed or cane near the closed end, so that the cut piece springs slightly outwards, still joined to the rest of the reed at one end. How Reeds Work The reed, including the blocked end and section with the flap ...
At its simplest, to make a double reed the end of a piece of reed or similar plant tube is flattened so its sides nearly touch. Putting this flattened end into the mouth and blowing causes the two sides to briefly close against each other then spring back, hundreds of times a second. This causes a regular stream of ...
The birthplace of free reeds seems to have been eastern Asia. There, it is typical to place a small free reed, made of metal or bamboo, into a bamboo tube cut to the appropriate length so that its air column resonates at the reed’s frequency, increasing the volume and allowing the player to allow it to sound ...
(Guitar, harmonica, vocals, 1925–76) Mathis James Reed was born in Dunleith, Mississippi. His friend Eddie Taylor taught him guitar and harmonica, but he rarely played professionally until he moved to Gary, Indiana in 1948 and gradually worked himself into the Chicago blues scene. He recorded on harmonica with John Brim and, after failing an ...
(Vocals, fiddle, 1880–1956) Reed, a singer and fiddler from Princeton, West Virginia, made his living playing at dances and church meetings and giving music lessons. Recording in the late 1920s, he observed contemporary life in songs like ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live ?’– a catalogue of the ills that afflicted ...
(Steel guitar, 1920–2005) One of country music’s most influential steel guitar players, Gerald Lester Byrd was born in Lima, Ohio. He started out on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, where he backed singers such as Red Foley and began experimenting with various innovative tunings and playing techniques. In Nashville in the late 1940s and 1950s, he ...
If Jerry Lee Lewis had never existed, it seems unlikely that anyone would have had a sufficiently vivid imagination to have invented him. Through a 50-year career, this massively talented, yet infuriatingly self-destructive genius has scaled the heights and plumbed the depths, never for one moment compromising his music or his life. Most people mellow with age. ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1942) Walker grew up in upstate New York State and wrote his most famous song, ‘Mr Bojangles’, as a Greenwich Village folkie, but when he moved to Austin in 1972 he embraced the town’s cowboy-hippie ethos so wholeheartedly that he became its personification. Backing his singer-songwriter material with a Texas dancehall band transformed his ...
(Disc jockey, 1922–65) Freed, the DJ who gave rock’n’roll its name, fronted Moondog’s Rock’n’Roll Party at Cleveland’s WJW radio station, where he programmed mainly black R&B plus some early white rock’n’roll records. His vocal jive delighted his audience, and he also appeared in several early rock’n’roll exploitation movies, including Rock Around The Clock, Rock ...
(Piano, vocals, b. 1935) After signing to Sun Records in 1957, Louisiana-born rock’n’roller Lewis, noted for his percussive piano style, opened his account with two million-selling US Top 3 hits, ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’ and ‘Great Balls Of Fire’ (both 1957), but caused major media controversy during a 1958 UK tour when it was ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1967–72) If John Fogerty (vocals, guitar), Tom Fogerty (guitar), Stuart Cook (bass) and Doug Clifford (drums) were Californian hippy in appearance, their music harked back to the energy and stylistic cliches of 1950s rock’n’roll, and their spiritual home seemed to be the swamplands of the Deep South, as instanced in titles like ‘Born On ...
(Vocals/vocal group, 1957–90) Childhood friends Mayfield and Butler joined Sam Gooden and Arthur and Richard Brooks in The Impressions in 1957, Butler going solo after one hit, ‘For Your Precious Love’. In 1967, Butler teamed his distinctive smooth soul voice with producer-writers Gamble and Huff and helped to forge the polished Philadelphia Soul sound with No. 1s ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1995–2004, 2009–present) One of the biggest post-grunge rock acts, formed in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1995, Scott Stapp (vocals), Mark Tremonti (guitar, vocals), Brian Marshall (bass) and Scott Phillips (drums) self-financed their debut album My Own Prison (1998). This collection of powerful rock tunes and genuinely spiritual lyrics went on to spawn a ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.