(Guitar, banjo, bass, harmonica, mandolin, piano, vocals, b. 1942) Henry Saint Clair Fredericks’ concept of the blues was formed partly by his West Indian father’s diverse record collection and partly by his coming of age in the collegiate coffeehouses of western Massachusetts. Since Taj Mahal’s eponymous debut in 1967, followed in 1968 by ...
Sometimes called ‘the African John Lee Hooker’, Ali ‘Farka’ Touré (1939–2006) was a Malian singer and guitarist, and one of Africa’s most renowned musicians. Many consider his music to be a bridge between traditional Malian music and its presumed descendant, the blues. The interplay of rhythm and sound in Touré’s music was similar to John Lee Hooker’s hypnotic blues style. ...
When the great Mississippi musician Riley King left the cotton fields to seek his fortune in Memphis in 1946, he had $2.50 in his pocket and a battered guitar in his hand. Today, his name is synonymous with blues music itself, yet his ascendance to the zenith of the blues world never altered his friendly, downhome ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1951) Folk-bluesman Bibb blends deep roots with pop influences, occasionally incorporating African and Afro-Cuban sounds. He resides in Sweden but was born in New York City, where his father, Leon, performed in musical theatre and on the folk scene. His uncle was John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, while Odetta ...
John Lee Hooker’s sparse blues sound was a major influence on the younger generations of blues musicians dominating the music scene in the 1960s and 1970s. His individual style retained a primitive purity at a time when many of his contemporaries were experimenting with groups and incorporating the influences of other types of music into their blues. Hooker’s guitar technique was ...
Versatile American roots guitarist Ry Cooder was born in Los Angeles, California in 1947. As a child, he mastered the fundamentals of guitar, and at the age of 17, played in a blues outfit with singer/songwriter Jackie DeShannon. In 1965, Cooder teamed up with blues legend Taj Mahal and future Spirit drummer Ed Cassidy in The ...
(Guitar, mandolin, vocals, b. 1947) Cooder is one of America’s most versatile musicians, equally at home with blues, rock, jazz and various ethnic musics. In the mid-1960s he played guitar with Taj Mahal (in the Rising Sons) and Jackie DeShannon, then did studio work with Paul Revere & the Raiders. Especially gifted as a ...
From the 1950s through to the 1990s there was rarely a stranger experience for jazz audiences than witnessing the stage shows of Sun Ra and his Solar-Myth Arkestra. The mysterious, robed keyboardist and his exotic big band blended theatrics with pure jazz and free exploration, crafting a unique brand of ‘space jazz’ that reflected the mid-century’s curiosity about exploring ...
From Port of Spain on Trinidad to Nassau in the Bahamas, from Miami through to Port-au-Prince: you are never far from a great rhythm in the Caribbean. While Jamaican reggae and Cuba’s son, mambo and salsa have been exported to the world, there is a wealth of great music on the other islands, from calypso and zouk ...
While the Mississippi Delta gave birth to guitar-based acoustic blues, in the area known as the Piedmont region – which stretches along the Atlantic seaboard from Virginia to Florida – a wide range of blues styles flourished, from the backwoods sound of the Appalachian foothills of Virginia to the more urbane sound of big cities such as Atlanta. The ...
Of the entire century, the 1970s were the years of catching one’s breath. Superficially, the promise of the 1960s had faded or failed, the victim of wretched excess and just plain bad taste. America’s war in Vietnam sputtered to an end, international relations elsewhere seemed to stalemate in détente and economically the world suffered from stagflation: exhaustion ...
AUTHORITATIVE
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.