Vocalist/pianist Leroy Carr’s life and career belie the myth that pre-war acoustic blues artists were necessarily ‘rural’ or ‘primitive’. Carr was born not on a plantation but in Nashville, Tennessee on 27 March 1905. His father worked as a porter at Vanderbilt University. After his parents separated, his mother brought him and his sister to Indianapolis (known in the ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1937–95) Johnny Carroll, from Cleburne, Texas, recorded some wild rockabilly for Decca in Nashville and appeared in the cult movie Rock Baby Rock It in 1957. He later toured with Scotty Moore and Bill Black after they left Presley. He nearly died after a nightclub shooting in the 1960s, but he recovered and ...
b. 1946 Spanish tenor Carreras was born and studied in Barcelona. He also made his professional debut there in 1970 as Ismaele in Nabucco. He made his London debut in 1971. In 1974 he appeared at Covent Garden as Alfredo in La traviata and at the New York Met as Cavaradossi in Tosca. Leukaemia halted his career for some time, ...
Joseph Vernon Turner was born on 18 May 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri. He dropped out of school after sixth grade and worked with blind singers on the streets. The blues was in the air in Kansas City and when Turner joined in with the street singers he would make up blues lyrics. Turner was functionally illiterate and never learned ...
(Clarinet, bassoon, 1902–91) Jazz’s first double-reed specialist on bassoon, Bushell played with Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds before a two-year stint with Sam Wooding’s Orchestra (1925–27). In 1928 he formed the Louisiana Sugar Babies with Fats Waller and Jabbo Smith, and he later worked with Otto Hardwick (1931), Fess Williams (1933), Fletcher Henderson (1935–36), Cab Calloway (1936–37) and ...
Muddy Waters was without question the creator of the Chicago blues sound, the most important figure in post-war blues and the greatest influence on the British blues movement that followed. The Rolling Stones even went as far as to name themselves after a Muddy song. Muddy’s music blended the downhome essence of Mississippi Delta blues with the sophistication of Chicago’s ...
While blues music has produced dozens of great, innovative musicians, vocalists and songwriters, the continuing influence of Robert Johnson over the years has shown that no other performer has succeeded in combining all the elements in quite the exceptional way that he did. The fascination that Johnson holds for so many people lies not only in his extraordinary ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1903–62) Francis ‘Scrapper’ Blackwell is best known as Leroy Carr’s musical partner, but he was also a gifted artist in his own right. In 1928 he recorded ‘Kokomo Blues’, which Kokomo Arnold covered as ‘Original Old Kokomo Blues’, before Robert Johnson retooled it as ‘Sweet Home Chicago’. After Carr died in 1935, Blackwell retired from ...
The 1920s was, without doubt, the Jazz Age. Workers and the newly burgeoning middle class turned into consumers due to relatively higher wages. The international political advantages that came from having just won a major war buttressed a ‘lost generation’ of artistic types, who took up residence in Europe. New moral codes, sophistication and cynicism abounded. Some ...
The saxophone occupies an unusual position in that it is a bespoke instrument that has barely changed since its creation. Although it does not occupy the position in the orchestra its creator had envisaged, Adolphe Sax’s invention has played a central part in music ever since it burst on to the scene in the 1840s. Sax’s father, Charles, ...
Composed: 1858 Premiered: 1859, Paris Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré Act I Faust’s search for knowledge has been futile and he calls on the devil. Méphistophélès offers wealth, fame or power, but all Faust wants is youth. He is shown a vision of Marguerite and signs his soul away, being transformed into a young man. ...
‘The Tales of Hoffmann’ Premiered: 1881, Paris Libretto by Jules Barbier after the play by Barbier and Michel Carré Act I Hoffmann has neglected poetry in his search for love. His muse is transformed into a companion named Nicklausse in order to protect him. Hoffmann’s latest love, Stella, an opera singer, is also admired by Counsellor Lindorf. ...
‘The Pearl Fishers’ While the success of Carmen overshadows his other operas, Bizet’s first lasting success was with Les pêcheurs de perles, written when he was only 24. Set in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), it uses gently oriental inflections to portray the priestess Leïla torn between love and her sacred vows, and a more romantic and dramatic style for ...
1867–1944 American composer Beach (née Cheney) made her debut as a pianist in 1883, the year in which her first composition was published. In 1885 she married, and retired from a professional performing career. She did, however, continue to compose, writing large-scale works such as the ‘Gaelic’ Symphony in E minor op. 32 (1896) and the ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1970s–present) The most impressive and most successful of the western-swing revival bands was co-founded by a couple of hippies from the Philadelphia suburbs. Ray Benson (vocals, guitar, b. 1951) and Reuben ‘Lucky Oceans’ Gosfield (pedal steel guitar, b. 1951) fell in love with the records of Bob Wills and formed the band in 1969, ...
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