(Vocals, guitar, harmonica, 1910–68) Clyde Julian ‘Red’ Foley was born in Blue Lick, Kentucky, and was central to the surge in country music’s popularity in the 1940s and early 1950s with hits like ‘Smoke On The Water’ (1944), ‘Tennessee Saturday Night’ (1948), ‘Chattanoogie Shoeshine Boy’ (1950) and ‘Birmingham Bounce’ (1950). For three decades, Foley headlined ...
Many guitarists of the ‘shred’ variety unfortunately stick to scalar lines and diatonic arpeggios in straight major or minor keys. Marty Friedman (b. 1962) is not one of them. Indeed, Friedman’s tendency towards Eastern, Middle Eastern and other ethnic sounds has distinguished him as one of the most musically gifted super-pickers the guitar world has ever seen. Martin Adam ...
Freddie (sometimes spelled Freddy) King (1934–76) revitalized the Chicago blues scene in the 1960s. His aggressive playing and piercing solos helped to set up the blues-rock movement, and he was a major influence on 1960s British guitarists like Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. King’s mother taught him to play guitar as a child in Gilmer, Texas ...
The term ‘manufactured pop’ is, in many ways, a red herring. Despite the changes in our perception of pop talent brought about by The Beatles, much mainstream pop has been based on the ‘Tin Pan Alley’ tradition, in which teams of producers, composers and music-business moguls find young, attractive performers (mainly singers) to front potential ...
(Fri-drikh Fran’-zhek [Fra-da-rek’ Fran-swa’] Sho-pan) 1810–49 Polish composer Chopin was unique among composers of the highest achievement and influence in that he wrote all his works, with the merest handful of exceptions, for the solo piano. Leaving Warsaw, which at the time offered only restricted musical possibilities, and living most of his adult life in Paris, ...
(Trumpet, 1908–67) The son of bandleader Henry Allen Sr., Henry ‘Red’ Allen was one of the greatest trumpeters to come out of New Orleans, although he remained eternally in the shadow of Louis Armstrong. He moved to New York in 1927 to join King Oliver’s Dixie Syncopators and in 1929 the Victor label signed him as an answer ...
(Cornet, 1905–65) As a child, Nichols played in his father’s brass band. After moving to New York in 1923 he teamed up with trombone player Miff Mole, and this marked the start of a long musical partnership. With Mole, Nichols recorded various line-ups under different names, the most common of which was Red Nichols & His ...
(Alto saxophone, clarinet, vocals, composer, arranger, 1900–64) Renowned for crafting the polished sound of the mid-1920s Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, Redman’s innovative arrangements pre-dated the swing era by a decade. His sophisticated compositions were significantly affected by the driving, swinging trumpet work of Louis Armstrong, who played in Henderson’s orchestra throughout 1924. The conservatory-trained ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1904–72) Self-taught as a guitarist, music was only a sideline for McDowell for the first 60 years of his life. He worked in the Memphis area before settling in Como, Mississippi to work as a farmer in 1929; he didn’t own a guitar until 1940. Discovered and recorded by Alan Lomax in 1959, McDowell’s ...
(Guitar, piano, kazoo, vocals, 1904–81) Hudson Woodbridge was born in Smithville, Georgia; he changed his surname to Whittaker when he went to Tampa, Florida to live with his maternal grandmother. A self-taught musician, he worked juke joints throughout Florida in the early 1920s, before moving to Chicago in 1925. He made his recording ...
(Piano, vocals, 1911–85) Willie Lee Perryman was born in Hampton, Georgia. Perryman was sometimes known as Dr. Feelgood, and his older brother, Rufus, was known as Speckled Red. He worked mainly as a soloist in the Atlanta area before signing with RCA in 1950. His first record, ‘Rockin’ With Red’/‘Red’s Boogie’ was a two-sided ...
In the 1960s and early 1970s, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard was the primary alternative to Miles Davis’s domination of the field. Hubbard came up in the hard-bop era, blew free jazz with Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, and established a body of exemplary compositions, recordings and improvisations with the best of the 1960s Blue Note artists: Art Blakey ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1934–76) Few bluesmen have possessed the bristling intensity of Freddie King, whose stinging vibrato and energetic, soaring vocal style influenced Eric Clapton. King was born in Gilmer, Texas and learned guitar from his mother at age six. He moved to Chicago in 1950, earning a reputation among peers like Buddy Guy and Otis ...
(Vocals, harmonica, guitar, b. 1936) Iverson Minter, a.k.a. Louisiana Red, rose from childhood tragedy to build an impressive career. His mother had died and his father had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan by the time Red was five years old. He first recorded for Chess in 1949, prior to his military ...
(Tenor saxophone, b. 1929) Admired by post-1960s Chicago improvisers as a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson’s reputation spread after his first trip to Europe in 1977, but he was very sparsely recorded until the 1990s. Since then his huge tone and gutsy, freely associative statements have been ...
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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.