(Vocals, 1925–81) Roy James Brown was born in New Orleans and raised in Texas and Louisiana. A strong blues shouter, Brown was one of the first stars of New Orleans R&B. He led his own group, Roy Brown & his Mighty, Mighty Men, and wrote most of the material he recorded. He began recording for DeLuxe ...
Vocalist/pianist Leroy Carr’s life and career belie the myth that pre-war acoustic blues artists were necessarily ‘rural’ or ‘primitive’. Carr was born not on a plantation but in Nashville, Tennessee on 27 March 1905. His father worked as a porter at Vanderbilt University. After his parents separated, his mother brought him and his sister to Indianapolis (known in the ...
While Louis Armstrong remained a pre-eminent jazz symbol in the public mind through the 1930s, and inspired many imitators (Taft Jordan, Hot Lips Page, Wingy Manone), younger and better-schooled musicians were coming up who could navigate the trumpet with great agility and dexterity. They would break through the perimeters that Armstrong had established in the 1920s and take ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1900–52) An associate of Charley Patton, Brown was a part of the Mississippi blues scene in the early 1920s. While he started out playing with Patton and Tommy Johnson, he teamed up with Son House in 1926 and accompanied his Paramount session in May 1930, also cutting four songs of his own. Brown played ...
(Piano, vocals, 1922–99) Charles Mose Brown was born in Texas City, Texas and had extensive classical piano training as a youth. He moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and by September 1944 had become the vocalist-pianist in Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers. The Blazers had several hits before Brown went solo in 1948 and scored success with songs such ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1915–96) Walter Brown McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He learned to play guitar before his tenth birthday and dropped out of school to play throughout the state in the late 1920s. He met Sonny Terry in 1939 and they joined forces almost immediately. McGhee began recording for OKeh in 1940 and moved to New York. ...
(Drums, vocals, 1907–83) Roy Bunny Milton was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. He had his own bands before moving to Los Angeles in 1935, where he formed the Solid Senders combo in 1938 and worked small clubs throughout the city. He began recording in 1945 and had a lengthy relationship with Specialty records throughout 1946–54, which produced ...
(Guitar, violin, vocals, 1924–2005) Clarence Brown Jr. was born in Vinton, Louisiana and raised in Orange, Texas. By the age of 10 he had learned guitar and violin. After the Second World War he settled in the Houston, Texas area. He made his recording debut in 1947 for Aladdin and signed with Peacock Records in ...
(Trumpet, 1930–56) The tragic death of Clifford Brown in a road accident robbed jazz of one of its brightest young stars, but even his truncated legacy has established his standing as a major figure and profound influence. He took up the trumpet at the age of 13, drawing on the influence of bebop stars Dizzy Gillespie and Fats ...
(Vocals, b. 1929) Napoleon Brown Goodson Culp was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He sang with a gospel group, the Heavenly Lights, which recorded for Savoy, but was convinced to try blues material in 1954 and had several hits, including ‘Don’t Be Angry’. He returned to singing gospel in the 1960s but was rediscovered in ...
(Vocals, b. 1928) Ruth Alston Weston was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. She was heard performing in Washington, DC, where she was recommended to Atlantic Records. Her 1950 R&B number one ‘Teardrops From Your Eyes’ was followed by four more, including ‘(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean’, and she was so successful that the fledgeling label became ...
(Drums, b. 1925) Roy Haynes is a major jazz drummer in settings ranging from swing to jazz rock, taking in most genres of the music including free jazz. He spent three years with Charlie Parker (1949–52) and five with Sarah Vaughan (1953–58), and by the mid-1960s had also worked with Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1939–88) Roy Buchanan’s use of harmonics and his melodic sense were incomparable. Raised on gospel and R&B, he performed with Johnny Otis, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and Ronnie Hawkins’ Hawks as a young man. A 1971 PBS documentary, The Best Unknown Guitarist In The World, together with adulation from the likes of John Lennon ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1950) An exponent of acoustic and electric blues, California-based slide guitarist Rogers played with John Lee Hooker’s Coast To Coast band from 1982–86, before releasing his debut recording as a leader, Chops Not Chaps (1986). He followed up with 1988’s Slidewinder and in 1990 produced Hooker’s Grammy-winning comeback album The Healer. Rogers maintained ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1973–present) Thorogood’s energetic, Delaware-based band drew inspiration from Elmore James and Hound Dog Taylor. Flash guitarist and raw vocalist Thorogood moved the band to Boston in 1974 and gained popularity on the blues circuit there, leading to its 1978 self-titled debut on Rounder Records. The 1979 album Move It On Over was a commercial breakthrough and ...
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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
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sweep of incredible photographs.