(Guitar, vocals, 1939–97) Luther Allison was an impressive electric bluesman whose guitar playing at times recalled Jimi Hendrix. After his brother taught him basic guitar techniques, Allison backed artists such as Muddy Waters, Jimmy Dawkins and Howlin’ Wolf in Chicago clubs. Early records on Delmark and triumph at the Ann Arbor Festival led to Allison signing with ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1972) Moorer moved to Nashville after college and started songwriting after she met Oklahoma musician Doyle ‘Butch’ Primm, whom she later married. Moorer’s debut album, Alabama Song (1998) included ‘A Soft Place To Fall’, as featured in the soundtrack to the movie The Horse Whisperer. After four major-label albums, she was released from ...
(Vocals, 1951–2005) One of the US’s premier soul balladeers of the 1980s and 1990s, Vandross first sang backing vocals on Bowie’s Young Americans (1975) and charted as a guest vocalist with Change. His smooth baritone amassed R&B hits, until his 1989 crossover hit ‘Here And Now’. He won his first of eight Grammys for ‘Power Of Love – ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1936) Guitarist Jimmy Dawkins came from Mississippi to the West Side of Chicago in 1955, formed a friendship with Luther Allison and slowly built a good reputation with his slow-burning expressiveness. He made his first recording, the award-winning Fast Fingers, in 1969 for Delmark Records and followed up with the equally serious All ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1963–68) The Chicago blues-inspired Yardbirds, featuring Keith Relf (vocals, harmonica), Eric Clapton and Chris Dreja (guitars), Paul Samwell-Smith (bass) and Jim McCarty (drums), took over the Rolling Stones’ residency at London’s Crawdaddy Club and backed Sonny Boy Williamson II on tour in 1963. Clapton left after the release of their debut album in 1963 and was ...
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, ...
Contemporary music whose ancestry lies in the Western classical tradition finds itself in a curious position. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that we are not entirely sure what to call it. The label ‘classical’ seems anachronistic, especially when applied to composers who have challenged some of the fundamental assumptions of the classical tradition. ‘Concert music’ is similarly problematic ...
As part of the Renaissance (literally ‘rebirth’), which began in Italy in around 1450, the Baroque era was a revolution within a revolution. It saw a break from the Medieval view of humanity as innately sinful. Instead, Renaissance thinking cast individuals as a dynamic force in their own right and gave free rein to human imagination, ingenuity and ...
Although the art of the classical singer has traditionally been perceived as the pursuit of technical perfection and tonal beauty, the twentieth century enabled a re-evaluation of what that art should be. Due in part to the technological advances and harrowing events of the times, much of the music was innovative, challenging, moving, powerful and, ...
‘Renaissance’ is a French word meaning ‘rebirth’. It has been used since the nineteenth century to describe the period between c. 1300 and 1600. Three hundred years is a long time for a single historical or cultural period, and the strain shows in any attempt to define the term ‘Renaissance’. The cultural phenomenon central to the Renaissance was a revival ...
Once hailed by the Pope as ‘Defender of the Faith’ against Martin Luther, Henry VIII made an about-face when he declared himself primate of the Church of England in order to grant himself a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The political, religious and social results of Henry’s action are well-known; the impact on music was ...
Few would deny that the blues has played a more important role in the history of popular culture than any other musical genre. As well as being a complete art form in itself, it is a direct ancestor to the different types of current popular music we know and love today. Without the blues there would have been no Beatles ...
The revival and imitation of ancient theatrical genres in sixteenth-century Italy bore fruit in seventeenth-century England and France in the works of the great dramatists of those countries: William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In Italy, however, the sixteenth-century innovations in spoken drama were followed in the next century not by a great national ...
Classical ideals began to emerge and take shape in musical treatises in the late fifteenth century. One of the most famous exponents of this was Johannes Tinctoris (1430–after 1511), who, in his writings, claimed that music had been reborn in the works of John Dunstaple (c. 1390–1453) and his followers around 1440. Also central to Renaissance thinking about music ...
‘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 ...
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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
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