(Vocals, b. 1946) Linda Ronstadt has had success with many different kinds of music – folk, rock, soul, operetta, show tunes and Tex-Mex – but much of her biggest success is associated with country music and she has been cited as a major influence by such singers as Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless and Terri Clark. ...
(Vocals, b. 1946) A former member of The Stone Poneys, Ronstadt launched a solo career in 1968 with the country-flavoured rock that would characterize her 1970s work. Her third album Linda Ronstadt (1972) featured the core of musicians who would go on to form The Eagles. On 1974’s Heart Like A Wheel, Ronstadt and producer/manager Peter Asher arrived ...
Composed in 1725, Rodelinda is remarkable for its quality. Handel composed many exceptional accompanied recitatives for Senesino throughout their collaborations, and in this opera the dethroned King Bertarido, believed dead by his steadfast wife, laments his misfortune in an accompanied recitative and aria, ‘Pompe vane di morte! … Dove sei amato bene’, which shows Handel ...
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on 19 January 1946, in Locust Ridge, Tennessee. Immediately after graduation in the summer of 1964, she travelled from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Nashville, taking with her dreams of country stardom and little else. Ever since, she has thrilled audiences worldwide. An entertainer extraordinaire, Dolly has also become an ...
(Singer-songwriter, b. 1947) Possessing the voice of an angel, Harris is one of the most adventurous country artists of the past four decades. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she released a folk album in 1969; but it was her duets with Gram Parsons in the early 1970s that set her on the road. Fine solo sets with Parsons’ ...
The undisputed queen of country rock, Emmylou Harris has long been both a student of traditional country music and a peerless innovator. Even now, some 30 years after she debuted with the tormented genius Gram Parsons, she is still the one others turn to for acceptance and support. Gram Parsons’ Influence Born in Birmingham, Alabama, on ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1946) Prine was a Chicago mailman when Kris Kristofferson stumbled across him at a local folk club and recognized him as one of the best lyricists of his generation. A very different lyricist than Bob Dylan, Prine used the unspoken implications of plain, blue-collar speech rather than the dazzle of literary language to make ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1942) Former member of The Monkees, Nesmith wrote key hits for Linda Ronstadt (‘Different Drum’) and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (‘Some Of Shelly’s Blues’) and formed the First National Band, whose albums demonstrated how country-rock might marry the Americana mythology of the former and the conceptual ambition of the latter. The TV-savvy Nesmith ...
(Guitar, b. 1952) In addition to writing, producing and performing with Chic, Rodgers, along with long-time collaborator Bernard Edwards, undertook similar duties for Sister Sledge. The pair worked with Diana Ross on her 1980 Diana album and Deborah Harry’s Koo-Koo (1981). Rodgers went on to helm many high-profile albums – David Bowie’s Let’s Dance (1983), Madonna’s ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1971–present) Bernie Leadon (guitar, mandolin, b. 1947) of The Flying Burrito Brothers and Randy Meisner (bass, b. 1946) of Poco joined Glenn Frey (guitar, b. 1948) and Don Henley (vocals, drums, b. 1947), first as Linda Ronstadt’s back-up band and then as The Eagles. Their second disc, 1973’s Desperardo, was ...
The Eagles defined the sound of California in the 1970s and were its most successful exponents. The band formed out of the Los Angeles country rock scene in 1971 when guitarist Glenn Frey (born 6 November 1948), drummer Don Henley (born 22 July 1947), guitarist Bernie Leadon (born 19 July 1947) and bassist Randy Meisner (born 8 March 1946) were recruited ...
One of country music's rare departures from down-home values, the urban cowboy phenomenon of the early 1980s was much more a fleeting trend, driven by commercial greed, than a genuine grassroots movement. The term ‘urban cowboy’ gained currency with the 1980 release Urban Cowboy, a hit Hollywood feature film of middling quality, starring John Travolta and ...
The young country movement was an industry-driven trend aimed at the mass market of teens and twenty-something music fans. Like the urban cowboys, young country artists often contemporized or diluted prevailing styles like honky-tonk and pop country for mass consumption. The early 1990s saw a continuation of the mid- and late-1980s neo-traditionalist movement and produced a glut of gifted young ...
Hank Williams Jr. (b. 1949) was only three years old when his daddy died, and he barely knew the man who was, arguably, the greatest honky-tonker of them all. But his widowed mother groomed her baby boy to imitate his papa as closely as possible. He was on stage by eight, in the recording studio by 14 ...
New country took many years and miles of travel before its current evolution – not least the new traditionalist movement of the 1980s, which returned country music to its roots. Garth Brooks (b. 1962) did it far more quickly, but that’s a different story. Sometimes it seemed like these artists were chipping away at a mountain with nothing more ...
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