(Vocal/istrumental group, 1970s–present) Lynyrd Skynyrd were finally recognized as the major influence on country music that they were when the tribute album Lynyrd Frynds was released in 1994. At last artists such as Alabama, Hank Williams Jr., Travis Tritt, Steve Earle, Charlie Daniels and Wynonna Judd acknowledged how much they had borrowed from the Jacksonville, ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1964–77, 1979, 1987–present) This southern rock band came together in Jacksonville, Florida, around the core of Ronnie Van Zant (vocals), Allen Collins (guitar) and Gary Rossington (guitar), plus Billy Powell (keyboards), Larry Junstrom (bass) and Bob Burns (drums). An air crash shortly before the release of their sixth album Street Survivors in 1977 claimed ...
Southern-rock guitarist Duane Allman was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1946. Allman was inspired to take up the guitar by his brother Gregg. At first, they played country music, their initiation into the blues coming when the brothers saw B.B. King performing in Nashville. The pair began playing professionally in 1961, first in The Allman Joys ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1936) Kristofferson grew up on country music in Texas, but college in California, a Rhodes scholarship to England and service as an army helicopter pilot convinced him that the times demanded a new kind of country lyric – one that owed as much to Bob Dylan as to Hank Williams. Kristofferson moved to Nashville ...
(Vocal group, 1971–present) Renowned for their eclectic blend of styles, incorporating rhythm and blues, country, rock’n’roll and jazz rock, Little Feat was founded by two ex-members of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, guitarist and singer Lowell George and bassist Roy Estrada. They were joined by Richard Hayward (drums) and Bill Payne (keyboards, vocals). After ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1972–83, 1988–present) Southern rock band from South Carolina fronted by Doug Gray and featuring brothers Toy (guitar) and Tommy (bass) Caldwell. Named after a piano tuner who used their rehearsal hall, they scored US hits in 1975 and 1977 with ‘Fire On the Mountain’ and ‘Heard It In A Love Song’, but lacked distinctiveness to inherit ...
Belleville is a small town in downstate Illinois, south-east of St. Louis. Like a lot of mid-western towns, it was hit hard in the 1980s by the twin whammy of closing factories and faltering family farms. If punk-rock is the sound of factories and if country music is the sound of farms, it makes sense that a successful ...
Blues rock grew out of the British blues movement that started during the late-1950s, which was in turn developed in the 1960s. The Brits used more powerful amplification than their American counterparts, resulting in a harder, more imposing sound. Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and other artists developed this into a riff-oriented rock style. Among the earliest blues ...
In terms of influences and origins, country and rock’n’roll draw so closely from the same antecedents that they are practically musical first cousins: branches from the same tree that share the same basic instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums. Two of country music’s greatest practitioners, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, launched their careers in the mid-1950s ...
Taking its lead from the loud blues rock of late-1960s bands such as Cream and The Grateful Dead, southern rock materialized with the release of The Allman Brothers Band’s eponymous 1969 debut album, which embellished a fusion of rock’n’roll, blues, country and jazz with a distinct good ol’ boy edge from directly below the Mason-Dixon Line. Natives ...
When Steve Earle (b. 1955) was released from prison on 16 November 1994, it had been four years since he had released a studio album and three years since he’d done a tour. During that time lost to heroin and crack, much had changed in the world of country music. The charismatic but mainstream-pop-oriented Garth Brooks (b. 1962) was ...
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 ...
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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...
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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.