Pat and their daughters Sharon (vocals, guitar, b. 1953) and Cheryl (vocals, bass, b. 1955). Buck’s Monroe-like mandolin and his daughters’ pretty harmony soon made The Whites a popular fixture on the bluegrass circuit. Sharon married Ricky Skaggs, who helped The Whites score several hit singles with a country/bluegrass fusion similar to his own. Styles & ...
1960s, white adults were still running the show, and a combination of social pressure and self-destructive circumstances helped to spell the end for the black-derived rock’n’roll that some whites referred to as ‘jungle music’. Chuck Berry was jailed for statutory rape, Jerry Lee Lewis was ostracized for marrying his 13-year-old cousin, Little Richard joined the Church, ...
Tony Rice in J. D. Crowe And The New South in 1974, co-founded Boone Creek with Skaggs in 1976, released his first solo album 1979, joined The Whites in 1979, became Nashville’s dobroist of choice in the 1980s and 1990s, and joined Union Station in 1999. In every setting, he displayed not only speed and ...
local coal miner Arnold Schultz at local dances. From his ‘Uncle Pen’ (later the title of one of Monroe’s most popular songs) the youngster learned the Anglo-Celtic repertoire of local whites and from Schultz the blues repertoire of local blacks. Like many young men of their generation, Bill Monroe and his brothers Birch (fiddle, 1901–82) and Charlie (vocals, ...
Charles Edward Anderson Berry, known to all as Chuck, was born in St Louis, Missouri, on 18 October 1926, at the family’s home in Goode Avenue. The local gospel choir used it for their rehearsals and there was a well-employed piano in situ. Berry began learning the guitar in his mid-teens. At 17 he was involved ...
carried on his career, founding an annual acoustic-music festival in North Carolina that he named Merlefest after his son. Styles & Forms | Bluegrass | Country Personalities | The Whites | Bluegrass | Country ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1948) Gail Davies initially played jazz, and then formed a duo with her brother, songwriter Ron Davies. After session work in Los Angeles, she moved to Nashville in the mid-1970s. Two breaks came in 1978: Ava Barber’s only US Top 20 country hit was Davies’ song ‘Bucket To The South’, and Davies released ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1892–1966) A songster and fingerpicking guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi, John Hurt excelled in the pre-blues black folk ballad tradition as well as in blues, gospel and dance instrumentals. He spent most of his life working on farms and entertaining at local parties and functions for both blacks and whites. His first opportunity to record ...
Ricky Skaggs was born on 18 July 1954, in Cordell, Kentucky, and from the age of five Skaggs and his trusty mandolin have been almost inseparable. A child prodigy, he was invited on stage to play a tune at a Bill Monroe concert at the age of six, and a year later, he appeared on ...
Aaron Thibeaux Walker was born in Linden, Texas on 28 May 1910, the only child of Rance and Movelia Walker. The family moved to Dallas in 1912 and as a pre-teen Walker would lead Blind Lemon Jefferson around the Dallas streets. He taught himself guitar and worked streets and functions until he toured with various travelling shows in the ...
underwent rapid changes in order to keep its audience. Thus was born zydeco, a turbo-charged R&B that took black Louisiana’s music in an alternative direction from that of the whites, a gap that remains to this day. The man at the forefront of this revolution was the accordionist Clifton Chenier, who was signed to the same label, ...
Rumbling out of Los Angeles with different beats, a different look and a very different attitude, gangsta rap was hip hop’s belligerent street child. This new sound grew up at black discos and parties away from mainstream interference, and so, much as the original hip hop had, it quite literally pleased itself and harked back to ...
, Jay-Z and Mobb Deep are now, more or less, a legitimate part of the mainstream music scene, where, incidentally, hip hop sells more to whites than it does to its assumed black audience. But while these are easily defined areas, for the last twenty-odd years, rap’s golden age has maintained itself with an ...
musicians, interacted in America with European musical traditions, including Scotch-Irish fiddle tunes, English ballads, Christian songs and marching bands. Slaves with musical talent learned to entertain whites at plantation dances, performing the popular dances and songs of the day. The work songs and hollers of those labouring in the fields often harked back to the chants ...
Country music is identified with the American South and West, but its roots were established on the Atlantic seaboard, from Cape Breton to New England, then filtered into the lower-central USA through the 2,400-km 1,500-mile) Appalachian mountain range. Eventually it proliferated everywhere. And if such a reach seems so vast as to defy a single culture ...
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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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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.