(Piano, vocals, 1918–80) Henry Roeland Byrd was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana and formed his first combo, Professor Longhair and the Four Hairs, shortly after the Second World War. His Atlantic sessions in 1949 and 1953 produced his signature songs ‘Mardi Gras in New Orleans’ and ‘Tipitina’. As an ebullient and racy vocalist, and a pianist ...
(Piano, 1918–80) A New Orleans native, Roy Byrd brought an irresistible Caribbean feel to his piano-playing. The shaggy-haired Byrd got the nickname Professor Longhair from a club owner in 1948. Longhair first recorded his signature ‘Mardi Gras In New Orleans’ in 1949, the national R&B hit ‘Bald Head’ in 1950, and ‘Tipitina’ in 1953. Longhair endured tough ...
Malcolm John ‘Mac’ Rebennack Jr., a.k.a. ‘Dr. John the Night Tripper’, was born in New Orleans in November 1940. The singer and pianist began his professional career while he was still a teenager. He backed local favourites including Joe Tex and Professor Longhair on guitar and keyboards, produced and arranged sessions at Cosmio Studio, also frequented ...
(Harmonica, vocals, 1930–68) Marion Walter Jacobs was born in Marksville, Louisiana. He taught himself harmonica at the age of eight and was working the New Orleans streets by the time he was 12. He worked in Helena, Arkansas (where he met Rice Miller) and St. Louis before arriving in Chicago in 1946. He was encouraged by guitarists ...
(Vocals, b. 1933) Growing up outside New Orleans, Lloyd Price was exposed to music through the jukebox in his mother’s fish-fry joint. At 18, the crossover-ready performer recorded a version of ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’ that became a runaway hit and spawned a slew of successful follow-ups. Price’s ‘Stagger Lee’ topped both the R&B and pop lists in 1958. ...
(Piano, vocals, b. 1949) One of the leading exponents of the Professor Longhair school of piano playing, East Texas-born ‘Long Tall’ Marcia Ball was also greatly influenced by R&B divas Irma Thomas and Etta James, and zydeco king Clifton Chenier. Her infectious blend of modern Texas roadhouse blues, boogie-woogie and Louisiana swamp rock is best exemplified ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1936) Glaucoma and a brain tumour left Eaglin blind at the age of 19 months, but his unorthodox fingerpicking style and a sensibility based on the Crescent City’s Caribbean rhythms made him the king of New Orleans guitar. He first performed gospel in churches, before turning to blues and recording his debut album, ...
New Orleans is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of jazz, but it also produced its own indigenous brand of blues, which borrowed from Texas and Kansas City while also making use of Cajun and Afro-Caribbean rhythm patterns. A mix of croaking and yodeling, floating over the top of the music in an independent time scheme, Professor Longhair’s ...
The cultural momentum of the 1950s spilled directly into the 1960s – arguably, the change of the decade (and century) in jazz was 1959, when Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Sun ...
Steel pans or steel drums are a Caribbean instrument, originally made from oil drums beaten into shape and tuned. They originate from Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Origins of Steel Pans In the late 1930s, local people took to playing discarded metal objects like food tins and engine parts at carnivals and other celebrations, after the British ...
Hank Williams and George Jones would have found the whole notion of alt-country unfathomable. Why would anyone seek an alternative to bestselling country records ? For these sons of dire southern poverty, the whole point of making country records was to sell as many as possible and maybe catch hold of the dignity and comfort that a middle-class life might ...
1848–1918 English composer Parry’s precocious musical talents earned him an Oxford music degree while still a schoolboy at Eton. From 1867 he studied with Sterndale Bennett and Macfarren at Oxford, where he became Professor of Music (1900–08); he then succeeded Sir George Grove as director of the Royal College of Music. Although he produced four symphonies and chamber music, ...
1852–1924 British composer Born in Dublin where he studied the organ, Stanford moved to London at the age of 10 to study the piano with Ernst Pauer. At Cambridge he was organist of Trinity College (1873–92) and founder-conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society, where he gave the premieres of many of Brahms’ works. He also studied in Leipzig ...
(A-lex-an’-der Bô-ro-den’) 1833–87 Russian composer Borodin joined Balakirev’s circle known as ‘The Five’ while an army doctor in 1861. He later became a professor of chemistry and founded a school of medicine for women in St Petersburg, yet in his spare time composed a highly polished, if small, output. His melodic style draws on folk music reworked into compelling ...
1811–96, French The French composer Ambroise Thomas was a staunch anti-Wagnerian, regarding this and other ‘modern’ influences as dangerous to French music. Thomas’s music, which included nine stage works written between 1837 and 1843, was firmly in the French musical tradition. Of these works, the most successful was La double échelle (‘The Double Ladder’, 1837). Thomas ...
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