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(Piano, 1908–92) Samuel Blythe Price was born in Honey Grove, Texas. His recording debut came in 1929. In 1938 he moved to New York and became the pianist for Decca Records blues sessions. In this capacity – in addition to making his own recordings – he accompanied Blue Lu Barker, Johnny Temple and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

(Guitar, 1935–90) Respected sideman Lawhorn began a nine-year stint with Muddy Waters’ band in 1956 after working with harmonica players Sonny Boy Williamson II and Willie Cobbs, among others. Waters fired the Little Rock, Arkansas native in 1973 for excessive drinking. By then his razor-edged tone and imaginative soloing had already left an indelible mark on the blues. ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

(Vocals, bandleader, b. 1926) One of the most important singers and innovators of the 1950s and 1960s, Perryville, Texas-born Ray Price introduced a more rhythmic and modernized variation of honky-tonk in the 1950s. In the early 1960s Price alienated some honky-tonk fans when he embraced the pop influences of the Nashville sound, with easy-listening hits like ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

b. 1927, American From the Mississippi to the concert stages of Europe, Price helped to pave the way for black American singers. Assisted by Paul Robeson and an affluent white family in her hometown, she gained entry to Juilliard, where she appeared in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts. When ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(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. ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley

Joseph Vernon Turner was born on 18 May 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri. He dropped out of school after sixth grade and worked with blind singers on the streets. The blues was in the air in Kansas City and when Turner joined in with the street singers he would make up blues lyrics. Turner was functionally illiterate and never learned ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

Although he is often cited as the first ‘folk’ bluesman to record, Blind Lemon Jefferson was actually much more than that: he was America’s first male blues pop star. On the strength of his recordings for the Paramount label – some of which are said to have sold upwards of 100,000 copies – Jefferson became a celebrity throughout the ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

(Drums, percussion, 1915–48) Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo was Dizzy Gillespie’s principal collaborator in melding Cuban music with jazz (a.k.a. ‘Cubop’). Their historic 1947 recordings ‘Manteca’ and ‘Cubana Be, Cubana Bop’ (co-written with George Russell) were the first to integrate real Afro-Cuban polyrhythms within a bop idiom. Their association proved brief; Pozo was shot dead in a ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

(Guitar, vocals, 1915–73) Born in Arkansas, Rosetta Nubin was the daughter of a missionary. She had learned to play guitar by the age of six and accompanied her mother at church functions. The family moved to Chicago and Tharpe signed with Decca in 1938. She was essentially a gospel performer, but with Lucky Millinder’s Orchestra (1941–43) she ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

The Enlightenment was a natural, if late, consequence of the sixteenth-century Renaissance and Reformation. Also known as the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment advanced to be recognized in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and brought with it new, controversial beliefs that upended the absolutisms on which European society had long been based. Absolute monarchy, ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started out in 1966 as a student jug band in Los Angeles, and in an early incarnation it included a teenage Jackson Browne. Among the group’s founder members was singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna. Both Hanna and multi-instrumentalist Jimmie Fadden are still Dirt Band members 40 years on. The extremely ambitious Will The Circle Be ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

The mandolin is a small, teardrop shaped, plucked stringed instrument. Its most famous form is the Neopolitan mandolin, beloved of all romantics for its use on Venetian gondolas. It is descended from the lute and, since its rejuvenation in the nineteenth century, has remained a popular and versatile instrument. Mandola The mandolin developed from the Italian ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

In 1905, and probably for several decades before that, there were more pianos in the United States than there were bathtubs. In Europe, throughout the nineteenth century, piano sales increased at a greater rate than the population. English, French and German makers dispatched veritable armies of pianos to every corner of the Earth. It was the ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

The Modern Age was characterized by rapid and radical change and political turmoil. By 1918 the Russian tsar, the Habsburg emperor and the German kaiser had lost their thrones. The two Russian revolutions of 1917 resulted in a Communist government led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was fragmented to allow self-determination to the newly formed countries of Czechoslovakia ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The opera house and, more specifically, opera audiences, were among the last to be receptive to the new musical language that developed during the twentieth century. Slow, as well as reluctant to vary their traditional musical tastes, perceptions and expectations, many viewed the opera house with nostalgia; as a symbol of the establishment, holding ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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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.

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