(Guitar, vocals, b. 1961) Toby Keith’s rich, booming voice is best known for his chart-topping 1993 debut single ‘Should’ve Been A Cowboy’, which the NFL Dallas Cowboys football team adopted as their anthem, while his eponymous debut album was certified platinum. His 1994 album, Boomtown, went gold, and after six years with Mercury he ...
Veteran Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards (b. 1943) was born in Dartford, Kent. After being expelled from technical school in 1958, Richards attended Sidcup Art College. The art-school environment was crucial to Richards’ development, as it was for many of his generation. Here he was able to nurture his passion for rhythm and blues, finding many fellow ...
(Piano, keyboards, flute, soprano saxophone, percussion, b. 1945) Few artists are as demanding of themselves and their audiences as Allentown, Pennsylvania native Keith Jarrett. A child prodigy, Jarrett first caused a stir while playing in saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s quartet. In 1970, he joined Miles Davis on electric piano and organ. Jarrett soon eschewed ...
(Banjo, pedal steel guitar, b. 1939) Keith grew up in Boston, but he fell in love with bluegrass and mastered the Scruggs roll so well that he could play fast, fluid fiddle tunes on the banjo. He founded a duo with college roommate Jim Rooney (vocals, guitar, b. 1938) and in 1963 joined Bill Monroe. ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1967) New Zealand-born, Australian-raised, Keith Urban represents the slick, rock-slanted visual side of Nashville. In 1988 Urban formed a three-piece band in Australia and gained a good following, signing with EMI Australia in 1990 before making the leap to Nashville in 1992. There he formed The Ranch and signed with Capitol. His ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1955–89) Initially a bluegrass artist, Whitley began performing at the age of eight on the Buddy Starcher radio show from Charleston, Virginia. In 1970, Whitley and his friend Ricky Skaggs joined Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, and during the 1970s, recorded with J. D. Crowe And The New South. He turned to ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1956) Texan Robert Earl Keen Jr. first came to notice with his self-financed 1984 album No Kinda Dancer, which included ‘The Front Porch Song’, co-written with Lyle Lovett. Keen’s raspy vocals coupled with his conversational-styled songs have produced such albums as West Textures (1989) and What I Really Mean (2005). Styles & Forms | New ...
When Vassar Clements formed a band called Hillbilly Jazz in 1975, Bill Monroe’s former fiddler pulled the cover off the hidden connection between country music and jazz. The two genres had more in common than most people thought. After all, Jimmie Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong early in their careers; jazz legend Charlie Christian debuted on Bob Wills’ radio ...
The drum kit is a collection of drums and cymbals played in all styles of rock, pop, jazz and blues. It is also widely used in urban music across the world, such as Afrobeat and reggae. Drum-Kit Construction A typical drum kit comprises a bass drum and hi-hat cymbal played with foot pedals, a snare drum, ...
Bass Guitar In 1951, guitar maker Leo Fender launched the first commercially available electric bass guitar, the Fender Precision. Compared to the cumbersome and often difficult-to-hear acoustic double bass, Fender offered an instrument that had many advantages. Not only was it louder because it was amplified – and more portable – it allowed for more precise intonation because ...
Country music has been euphemistically called ‘white man’s blues’ or ‘the poetry of the common man’. While both descriptions have elements of truth, neither is quite accurate. It is, in fact, a broad, nebulous, over-reaching category with no exact boundaries or parameters. Over the decades country music has grown to encompass a greatly varied assortment of ...
‘The Knight of the Rose’ For the follow-up to Elektra, Strauss declared he wanted to write a Mozart opera. Despite Hofmannsthal’s protests about a light, Renaissance subject set in the past, the librettist soon came up with a scenario that delighted Strauss. The correspondence between librettist and composer was good-natured and respectful. Each made suggestions to the other ...
‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’ Die Meistersinger has often been described as a comedy. This, though, is not ‘comedy’ as found in the operas of Rossini or in Verdi’s Falstaff: what ‘comedy’ means in this context is the bitter ‘human comedy’. The premiere of Die Meistersinger took place in Munich on 21 June 1868. Wagner based his opera on the real-life ...
‘The Trojans’ Composed: 1856–58 Premiered: 1890, Karlsruhe Libretto by the composer, after the Aeneid by Virgil Act I The Trojans celebrate peace and admire the wooden horse left by the Greeks after the siege. Cassandre (Cassandra), King Priam’s daughter, forsees the fall of Troy. Her husband Chorèbe (Coroebus) urges her to join the celebrations, but she begs ...
(Piano, b. 1934) Born Adolphe Johannes ‘Dollar’ Brand in Capetown, South Africa, Abdullah Ibrahim successfully fused African rhythms and lilting melodic lines with the piano styles of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. In 1960, with trumpeter Hugh Masekela and others as the Jazz Epistles, he released the first contemporary South African jazz album. The racial climate ...
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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.