(Vocal/instrumental group, 1989–present) Nickel Creek gave a youthful jolt to the bluegrass scene when the charismatic, virtuosic group released its Alison Krauss-produced, eponymous 2000 debut album before half the quartet had turned 20. The band formed in 1989 when Chris Thile (vocals, mandolin, b. 1981) met the siblings Sara Watkins (vocals, fiddle, b. 1981) ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1995–present) Canadians Nickelback – Chad Kroeger (vocals), Ryan Peake (guitar), Mike Kroeger (bass) and Daniel Adair (drums) – came to prominence in their home country via a law that stated a certain percentage of the radio play must be homegrown. This coupled with Kroeger’s distinctively gravelly vocal style lead to massive exposure and a snowballing interest in the ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1984–present) The Nashville Bluegrass Band put the blues back into bluegrass with their frank borrowings from black gospel quartets and country bluesmen. The band was founded in 1984 by Alan O’Bryant (vocals, banjo, b. 1955), Pat Enright (vocals, guitar, b. 1945), Mike Compton (mandolin, b. 1956) and bassist Mark Hembree, with Stuart ...
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 ...
Unlike practically any other strain of indigenous American music, bluegrass can be traced back to a particular time and a particular group of men: Kentucky-born mandolin player/bandleader Bill Monroe and a select handful of musicians he gathered in his band, The Bluegrass Boys. Monroe and the celebrated 1940s vintage line-up of The Bluegrass Boys first transformed traditional acoustic guitar-fiddle-bass-fiddle ...
The flute most familiar to us from its use in orchestral and solo music is more properly known as a ‘transverse’ or ‘side-blown’ flute. The flute family is distinct from the other woodwind instruments in that it does not use a reed to generate sound. Instead, a stream of air striking the edge of an opening in the side of ...
In 1995, Alison Krauss (vocals, fiddle, b. 1971) achieved a level of success no other bluegrass act had ever matched. Her 1995 retrospective album, Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection, went double platinum, and she won the CMA Awards for Single, Female Vocalist, Vocal Event and Emerging Artist as well as the ...
Ridiculed as a braggart, pimp, card shark and pool hustler, the audacious, self-proclaimed inventor of jazz Jelly Roll Morton was also hailed as a pioneering composer, gifted arranger, dazzling pianist and the greatest entertainer that New Orleans ever produced. He was one of the first jazz musicians to strike a perfect balance between composition and ...
Ricky Skaggs was born on 18 July 1954, in Cordell, Kentucky, and from the age of five Skaggs and his trusty mandolin have been almost inseparable. A child prodigy, he was invited on stage to play a tune at a Bill Monroe concert at the age of six, and a year later, he appeared on ...
Vince Gill (b. 1957) broke out of a respected but static 10-year career as a bandmember and solo act and into country stardom with the 1990 hit ‘When I Call Your Name’. Gill was in the forefront of the neo-traditional country movement and became one of the biggest crossover singing stars in Nashville. It helped that he was an excellent country ...
The ancestors of the indigenous peoples of North and South America migrated from Asia across the frozen Bering Strait over 20,000 years ago. Even after millennia, some characteristics are shared between Oriental and Amerindian music: monophonic forms, large intervals, a tense vocal style, rattles and frame drums, and the importance of music in healing rituals. ...
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 ...
Country music is identified with the American South and West, but its roots were established on the Atlantic seaboard, from Cape Breton to New England, then filtered into the lower-central USA through the 2,400-km 1,500-mile) Appalachian mountain range. Eventually it proliferated everywhere. And if such a reach seems so vast as to defy a single culture ...
AUTHORITATIVE
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.