(Publisher, 1918–90) The son of legendary songwriter and publisher Fred Rose, Chicago-born Wesley Herman Rose entered the music business in 1945 as general manager of Acuff-Rose, the Nashville publishing company co-founded by his father and singer Roy Acuff. Under the younger Rose’s steady hand, Acuff-Rose (whose crown jewel was the priceless Hank Williams song catalogue) became one ...
English musical family The Wesley family, remembered primarily through the religious leader John Wesley (1703–91), made a deep and long-lasting contribution to English music. John’s brother Charles (1707–88), the hymn writer, had two musician sons, Charles (1757–1834) and Samuel (1766–1837). The young Charles, though a prodigy, never developed as a composer, but was a professional ...
(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 ...
(Music publisher, songwriter, 1898–1954) Born in Evansville, Indiana, Fred Rose was a key figure in Nashville’s rise from a provincial backwater to an international musical capital. Rose penned a number of country standards, including ‘Wait For The Light To Shine’ and ‘Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain’. He began his career in Chicago as a jazz ...
(Vocals, 1925–98) Before rockabilly, hillbilly humour and flashy rhinestone outfits, there was the feisty Rose Maddox and her brothers Cal, Fred and Don. She started singing on radio when she was 11, as part of Maddox Brothers And Rose, gaining popularity with a wild, fast-paced presentation that mixed loud honky-tonk music and almost vaudeville-style ...
‘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 ...
1903–82 Scottish violist Primrose played as a soloist and as a member of the London String Quartet before moving to the US to become principal viola of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini, 1937–42. He continued with his solo career, and commissioned a concerto from Bartók in 1944. He taught in Los Angeles and at Bloomington, Indiana. Introduction ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1940–2002) Rose was omnipresent in the clubs of New York’s vibrantly bohemian Greenwich Village when his arrangement of the murder ballad ‘Hey Joe’ was covered in 1966 as The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut single. ‘Morning Dew’ proved the hardiest of his own compositions via retreads by such as The Jeff Beck Group, The Grateful Dead and ...
(Vocal group, 1975–88) A soul/disco outfit originally formed as an all-purpose backing band comprising ex-Motown personnel Kenji Brown (guitar), Victor Nix (keyboards), Kenny Copeland and Freddie Dunn (both trumpets), Michael Moore (saxophone), Duke Jobe (bass) and Henry Garner and Terrai Santiel (both drums). Fronted by singer Gwen Dickey, they supplied the platinum-selling soundtrack to the movie Car Wash (1976) ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1985–present) Axl Rose (b. William Bailey, vocals) and Izzy Stradlin (b. Jeffrey Isbell, guitar) were joined by Slash (b. Saul Hudson, guitar), Duff McKagan (bass) and Steve Adler (drums) to form a band that gave the heavy rock scene a mighty shaking. Signed to Geffen – after the 1986 EP Live ?1*@ Like A Suicide ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1983–96, 2011–present) This Manchester band – Ian Brown (vocals), John Squire (guitar), Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield (bass) and Alan ‘Reni’ Wren (drums) – announced their jangling guitar pop with second single ‘Sally Cinnamon’. An eponymous debut album (1989) fused the vibe of acid house on to hook-laden melodic hypnotic pop songs. The funk groove of ‘Fool’s Gold’ and ...
(Vocals, songwriter, 1925–82) One of country music’s most versatile singers and energetic stage performers, Martin David Robison, born near Glendale, Arizona, possessed a fluid, empathetic baritone that enabled him to master a variety of music idioms, including country, pop and western (cowboy) songs. One of the most popular figures on the Grand ...
The Everlys were born into a country music family; Don on 1 February 1937 in Brownie, Kentucky; Phil in Chicago – where father Ike had moved to play in bands with his brothers – on 19 January 1939. The family moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, to a regular slot on a local radio station, and Ike and Margaret’s ...
The late Baroque era (1700–50) was a time of major political change throughout Europe, involving a shift in the balance of power between sovereign states. Across the continent it was a period of almost continuous warfare, the effects of which were later felt in other parts of the world as a result of conflicting ambitions among the various trading ...
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, opera was established in some form in most major European centres. The basic types of serious and comic opera in both Italian and French traditions shared similarities, although the content and style of an operatic entertainment could vary according to whether it was intended to flatter a private patron, resound with ...
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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.