(Trumpet, vocals, arranger, composer, 1910–88) Sy (Melvin James) Oliver was one of the finest of all big-band arrangers, and a capable instrumentalist and singer as well. His major associations included the bands of Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, and he also led his own bands at various times, from the mid-1940s ...
(Klo-dan’ da Sâr-me-se’) c. 1490–1562 French composer Sermisy spent most of his adult life in Paris and was the leading exponent of the genre known as the ‘Parisian chanson’. Mostly for four voices, his songs are similar in style to the early madrigal, which was developing at the same time. They are relatively easy to sing, with lively rhythms ...
Legendary ‘lost’ psychedelic genius Syd Barrett was born Roger Keith Barrett in Cambridge in 1946. He learned to play guitar at the age of 14 and formed his first band in 1965. While attending art college in London, he joined the embryonic Pink Floyd. Floyd began by playing blues and rhythm and blues covers, but soon developed the improvisational ...
Django Reinhardt (1910–53) overcame physical disabilities to create a unique playing style and one of the most highly influential sounds in jazz. He was born in Belgium to gypsy parents. At the age of eight his mother’s tribe settled near Paris. The French Gypsies, or Manouches, were medieval in their beliefs, and distrustful of modern science. But Django ...
Several musical movements are associated either directly or indirectly with a specific recreational drug or drugs; psychedelic rock went a step further, and was practically borne out of LSD or acid, as well as other hallucinogens including peyote, mescaline and even marijuana. Much psychedelic rock attempts to recreate the mind expanding and awareness-enlarging sensations of an acid trip ...
Until it was reclaimed with an ironic wink by 1990s hipsters, easy listening had been hugely popular, but rarely cool. While the teenagers of the 1950s and 1960s were getting off on dangerous rock’n’roll and subversive R&B, their parents were sweetly cocooned in the music of Mantovani and Percy Faith. Easy listening music never launched any rebellions; no ...
Although the composer Robert Schumann had prophesied in 1853 that Brahms would be pre-eminent in symphonic forms, he was diffident about coming before the public with a symphony. Many felt that Beethoven had already said all that there remained to say in this, the grandest of orchestral genres. So the eventual appearance of Brahms’ First Symphony in 1876 was ...
No instrument has had a more dramatic impact on contemporary music than the synthesizer. Its development opened up a whole new world of seemingly endless sonic possibilities and ushered in completely new forms of music. History The birth of the synthesizer dates back to the mid-1940s when Canadian physicist, composer and instrument builder, Hugh le Caine (1914–77) built the ...
Until the 1970s, most synthesizers were played by means of a traditional, piano-style keyboard. This tended to limit the player’s ability to expressively control the sound in real time and manufacturers sought to include additional means of control, such as modulation wheels and touch-sensitive ribbon controllers. Wind and brass players, however, realized that their experience of ...
The term ‘guitar synthesizer’ refers to a system consisting of a guitar controller interfaced to a synthesizer sound-module. Such instruments afford the guitar player access to not only synthesized (or sampled) emulations of guitar sounds but also to a vast array of electronic tones and instrumental simulations. In this way, the guitarist can bring techniques, such as string bending ...
One of the cornet kings of early New Orleans – along with Buddy Bolden, Freddie Keppard and Bunk Johnson – Joseph ‘King’ Oliver helped to define the bravura spirit of hot jazz through his work in Chicago during the 1920s with his Creole Jazz Band. He is said to have earned the sobriquet ‘King’ by besting Keppard in a cutting ...
(Cornet, 1906–67) Francis Joseph Spanier was an early part of the group of young white Chicagoans who in the late 1920s opened up and amended the original New Orleans styles that had come north during the Roaring Twenties. He had a hot, jabbing, poking attack, often coloured by the use of a plunger mute. When Spanier recorded ...
(Piano, vocals, 1906–83) Born in Elmar, Arkansas and raised in St. Louis, Sykes taught himself piano. He made his recording debut for OKeh in 1928 but also recorded for Paramount (as Dobby Bragg) and Victor (as Willie Kelly) from 1929–33. He settled in Chicago in 1931 and created the blues standards ‘44 Blues’, ‘Driving Wheel Blues’ and ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1933–50s) Patsy Montana And The Prairie Ramblers were stars of the WLS National Barn Dance, fortuitously paired for a number years beginning in 1933. Montana (1908–96) was born Ruby Blevins in Arkansas and arrived in Chicago after stints in Los Angeles and Shreveport. The Ramblers (originally Kentucky Ramblers: Tex Atchison, fiddle; Chick Hurt, mandolin/tenor banjo; ...
One of country music’s most influential and enduringly popular figures, Patsy Cline managed to transcend with seeming effortlessness the uneasy rift between traditional country music and the more urbane Nashville sound that emerged full-blown in the late 1950s. Crossover Diva Cline was one of the few female artists at the forefront of the emerging Nashville sound. With her smooth yet ...
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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.