(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1953) Texas singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith first emerged via her early ‘folkabilly’ acoustic fare, and then introduced a broader spectrum to her music, involving country. Exposure to a wider audience than the folk circuit in Texas and neighbouring states came through her Jim Rooney-produced albums, Once In A Very Blue Moon (1985) and the ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1959) Kathy Mattea joined bluegrass band Pennsboro as a student, before moving to Nashville. After working in Bobby Goldsboro’s road show, she signed with Mercury in 1983. Her first two albums were only modest successes, but Walk The Way The Wind Blows (1986) included her first Top 3 single – a cover of ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1944–97) Van Zandt, the bohemian son of Texas aristocracy, spent much of his life drifting from place to place and battling alcoholism, but he became a songwriting mentor for Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Susanna Clark, Nanci Griffith, Rodney Crowell and The Flatlanders. His small, roughened voice limited the appeal ...
(Vocals, b. 1934) Vern Gosdin was part of The Gosdin Family Gospel radio show in the 1950s in Alabama, before moving to California with his brother, Rex Gosdin (1938–83), to form The Golden State Boys, a bluegrass combo who in 1964 became The Hillmen (featuring Chris Hillman, later of The Byrds). After emerging in 1976 as ...
There have always been avant-garde artists and bands that take elements of country and fuse them with other musical idioms to make their own highly original, often idiosyncratic styles. Many of these artists also address controversial issues that are taboo in the politically correct country mainstream. It was the late-1960s and early 1970s, when America’s anti-war ‘alternative’ sub-culture was ...
It may not fit into the purists’ ideal, but contemporary song has long been an essential element of folk music. The art of the singer-songwriter, from Woody Guthrie through to Bob Dylan, and a whole host of artists who emerged in their wake, fuelled much of the early folk revival. Today’s singer-songwriters borrow heavily from many disparate ...
In 1996, the Californian singer Gillian Welch released her debut album, Revival. Her unassuming, folksy songs and plaintive, old-time singing could have come straight out of the Appalachians at any time in the last hundred years. With guitarist David Rawlings, Welch came to pinpoint and define a new style of folk music: the neo-traditional performer. Welch personified ...
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 ...
The high quality of performance and sound on modern CDs, as well as the sheer range of recordings available, has had a dramatic effect on the reception of classical music. On the one hand, recording has brought the music to much larger audiences than concert halls could ever accommodate. On the other hand, it has altered the ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1962–80) Doug Dillard (banjo, b. 1937) and Rodney Dillard (vocals, guitar, b. 1942) grew up in Missouri’s Ozark Mountains but ended up in California where they portrayed Mayberry’s local bluegrass band on television’s Andy Griffith Show. The Dillards, featuring mandolinist Dean Webb and electric bassist Mitch Jayne, soon mixed their bluegrass with Bob ...
In the 1980s, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis leapt from jazz-steeped New Orleans to international artistic prominence. In 1979 he was enrolled in New York City’s Juilliard School and was jamming with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and 10 years later he had seeded what has become an unrivalled international jazz performance centre. In between, Marsalis established himself as a hot ...
Free jazz is seen by many as an avant-garde art form rather than a type of jazz, with its unpredictable rhythm and chord progressions. Evolving out of bebop in the 1940s and 1950s the exponents of free jazz abandoned traditional forms to expand the music’s creative possibilities, challenging mainstream listeners and players alike. The first documented free jazz recordings ...
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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.