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Frankie Ervin
Frank Miller "Frankie" Ervin (March 27, 1926 – February 1, 2009) was an American R&B singer who recorded both solo and with vocal groups including Johnny Moore's Three Blazers ("Dragnet Blues", 1953) and The Shields ("You Cheated", 1958). Life and career Ervin was born in Blythe, California. After his father left, his mother, Lula Deveroux (or Debroux), moved with her children to Woodville and then Madill, Oklahoma, and encouraged the children (four boys and four girls) to take part in talent shows. They later moved to Ardmore, Oklahoma, where Frankie learned tap dancing, and sang in church. In 1942 he joined his older brothers Jesse and Warren, who were working as a dance act, Skid and Slid, in Fort Worth, Texas. The family moved in 1944 to Los Angeles, where Frankie and Jesse Ervin worked in menial jobs and began performing in clubs on Central Avenue. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blythe, California
Blythe is a city in eastern Riverside County, California, United States. It is in the Palo Verde Valley of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River, approximately east of Los Angeles and west of Phoenix. Blythe was named after Thomas Henry Blythe, a San Francisco financier, who established primary water rights to the Colorado River in the region in 1877. The city was incorporated on July 21, 1916. The population was 18,317 at the 2020 census. History Etymology Blythe was named after Thomas Henry Blythe, a San Francisco businessman and entrepreneur. Mr. Blythe established primary water rights to the Colorado River in the southwestern California region in 1877. The town was originally named Blythe City, by Thomas Blythe himself, but the name was shortened to simply ''Blythe'' around the time the first post office was opened in 1908. Early years In the early or mid-1870s, William Calloway (kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bihari Brothers
The Bihari brothers, Lester, Jules, Saul and Joe, were American businessmen of Hungarian Jewish origins. They were the founders of Modern Records in Los Angeles and its subsidiaries, such as Meteor Records, based in Memphis. The Bihari brothers were significant figures in the process that transformed rhythm and blues into rock and roll, which appealed to white audiences in the 1950s. Origins The brothers' parents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary to the U.S. Edward Bihari (1882–1930) was born in Budapest. Esther "Esti" Taub (1886–1950) was born in Homonna, Hungary (now Humenné, Slovakia). They were married in Philadelphia (U.S.) in 1911. The couple had four sons: :Lester Louis Bihari (May 12, 1912, Pottstown, Pennsylvania – September 9, 1983) :Julius Jeramiah Bihari (September 9, 1913, Pottstown – November 17, 1984, Los Angeles) :Saul Samuel Bihari (March 9, 1918, St. Louis, Missouri – February 22, 1975) :Joseph Bihari (May 30, 1925, Memphis, Tenne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny "Guitar" Watson
John Watson Jr. (February 3, 1935 – May 17, 1996), known professionally as Johnny "Guitar" Watson, was an American musician and singer-songwriter. A flamboyant showman and electric guitarist in the style of T-Bone Walker, his recording career spanned forty years, and encompassed rhythm and blues, funk and soul music. Watson recorded throughout the 1950s and 1960s with some success. His creative reinvention in the 1970s with funk overtones, saw Watson have hits with "Ain't That a Bitch" and "Superman Lover". His highest charting single was 1977's "A Real Mother for Ya". Early life Watson was born in Houston, Texas. His father John Sr. was a pianist, and taught his son the instrument. But young Watson was immediately attracted to the sound of the guitar, in particular the electric guitar as played by T-Bone Walker and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. His grandfather, a preacher, was also musical. "My grandfather used to sing while he'd play guitar in church, man," Watson reflected ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jesse Belvin
Jesse Lorenzo Belvin (December 15, 1932 – February 6, 1960) was an American singer, pianist and songwriter popular in the 1950s. Belvin co-wrote the 1954 Penguins' doo-wop classic " Earth Angel", which sold more than 10 million copies, while his top recording was the 1956 single " Goodnight My Love", a song that reached No. 7 on Billboard's R&B chart. Belvin's success was cut short by his death in a car crash at the age of 27. The accident, which also claimed the lives of his wife Jo Ann and their driver, occurred after a concert in Little Rock, Arkansas that had been disrupted at least twice by white supremacists. According to an Arkansas state trooper at the scene of the accident, the tires of Belvin's 1959 Cadillac had "obviously been tampered with". After his death, legendary blues singer Etta James referred to Belvin as the "most gifted of us all. Even now I consider him the greatest singer of my generation. Rhythm and Blues, Rock and Roll, crooner, you name it, he was g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Slades
The Slades were a vocal group out of Austin, Texas. All the members attended local McCallum High School. Personnel included John Goeke, Don Burch, Tommy Kaspar, Bobby Doyle, and Jimmy Davis. The first four were on their initial recording with Davis joining on the second disc. "Baby", backed with "You Mean Everything To Me", was their first record on the new Domino label from Austin. Soon after the initial pressing on Domino as the Spades, their name was changed to the Slades and the record was released on the Liberty label with national distribution. Their second recording for Domino records was their biggest. "You Cheated" peaked at #42 in 1958 on the Billboard charts. However, when Domino passed on a national distribution deal with Dot Records, the song was soon covered by the Los Angeles-based Shields who had the bigger hit. The Slades record was still popular enough to earn them a spot on American Bandstand. Many follow up recordings and back up credits for other Domino lab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Motola
George Louis Motola (November 15, 1919 – February 15, 1991) was an American record producer, songwriter and sound engineer from the 1950s until his death. Early life and career Motola, whose last name is often misspelled as Mottola, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, one of five brothers and three sisters born to parents who had migrated to the USA from Italy. He started his business career as a used car dealer, but soon found out that music was his real interest. By the mid-1950s he was working as a producer at Modern Records in Los Angeles, where he supervised acts like Jesse Belvin, Young Jessie and Jimmy Beasley. His most famous composition is " Goodnight My Love", which was originally recorded by Jesse Belvin in 1956 (# 7 R&B). Subsequent versions by the McGuire Sisters (1957), Ray Peterson (1959), The Fleetwoods (1963), Ben E. King (1966), Paul Anka (1969), The Four Seasons (1963), and Paula Abdul (1991), all made the Billboard Top 100. Paul Anka reached no. 27 on ''Bill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dick Hugg
James "Dick" Hugg (also known as "Huggy Boy") (June 9, 1928 – August 30, 2006) was a radio disc jockey in Los Angeles, California. Rock and Roll Hugg was the first white disc jockey to broadcast (on station KRKD) from the front window of John Dolphin's popular all-night record store, Dolphin's of Hollywood, at the corner of Central and Vernon Avenues. He also co-produced several artists, such as vocalist Jesse Belvin and saxophonist Joe Houston, on Dolphin's various record labels, including Cash and Money. With his own record label, Caddy Records, Hugg recorded local favorites Jim Balcom, Jeanette Baker, Chuck Higgins and Johnny Flamingo. Hugg later promoted bands like The Jaguars, the Village Callers, Thee Midniters and The Champs; these groups were part of what was later known as the Chicano rock movement. Though originally an R&B disc jockey, Hugg gradually aimed his radio and television shows at Los Angeles' burgeoning Latino population and featured almost every ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christmas Songs
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols or songs, may employ lyrics whose subject matter ranges from the nativity of Jesus Christ, to gift-giving and merrymaking, to cultural figures such as Santa Claus, among other topics. Many songs simply have a winter or seasonal theme, or have been adopted into the canon for other reasons. While most Christmas songs prior to 1930 were of a traditional religious character, the Great Depression era of the 1930s brought a stream of songs of American origin, most of which did not explicitly reference the Christian nature of the holiday, but rather the more secular traditional Western themes and customs associated with Christmas. These included songs aimed at children such as "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", as well as sentimental ballad-type songs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Ace
John Marshall Alexander Jr. (June 9, 1929 – December 25, 1954), known by the stage name Johnny Ace, was an American rhythm-and-blues singer. He had a string of hit singles in the mid 1950s. Alexander died of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 25. Life and career John Alexander was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of preacher John Marshall Alexander and Leslie Newsome, and grew up near LeMoyne-Owen College. He dropped out of high school to join the United States Navy. Alexander was reportedly AWOL for much of his duty. After he was discharged, Alexander joined Adolph Duncan's Band as a pianist, playing around Beale Street in Memphis. The network of local musicians became known as the Beale Streeters, which included B. B. King, Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, Earl Forest, and Roscoe Gordon. Initially, they weren't an official band, but at times there was a leader and they played on each other's records. In 1951 Ike Turner, who was a talent scout and prod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R&B Chart
The Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart ranks the most popular R&B and hip hop songs in the United States and is published weekly by ''Billboard''. Rankings are based on a measure of radio airplay, sales data, and streaming activity. The chart had 100 positions but was shortened to 50 positions in October 2012. The chart is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, rock and roll, soul, and funk, it is today dominated by contemporary R&B and hip hop. Since its inception, the chart has changed its name many times in order to accurately reflect the industry at the time. History Beginning in 1942, ''Billboard'' published a chart of bestselling black music, first as the Harlem Hit Parade, then as Race Records. Then in 1949, ''Billboard'' began publishing a Rhythm and Blues chart, which entered "R&B" into mainstream lexicon. These three charts were consolidated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billboard (magazine)
''Billboard'' (stylized as ''billboard'') is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style related to the music industry. Its music charts include the Hot 100, the 200, and the Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in different genres of music. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows. ''Billboard'' was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Donaldson later acquired Hennegan's interest in 1900 for $500. In the early years of the 20th century, it covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs, and burlesque shows, and also created a mail service for travelling entertainers. ''Billboard'' began focusing more on the music industry as the jukebox, phonograph, and radio became commonplace. Many topics it covered were spun-off ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dragnet (theme Music)
"Dragnet" is an instrumental theme from the radio and television show of the same name. It was composed by Walter Schumann for the radio show, and was also used on the subsequent television series and later syndication of the TV series under the name "Badge 714". The theme is in two parts: an opening signature "Main Title" (the ominous "Dum - - - de - DUM - DUM") and the "Dragnet March" used over the end credits. Popular chart hit versions were recorded by Ray Anthony and his Orchestra (1953) and The Art of Noise (1987). Film and television composer Nathan Scott, who began orchestrating for Schumann beginning in 1952, later became ''Dragnets second composer following Schumann's departure from the series. Authorship dispute After the theme became a chart hit, the publishers of the score for the 1946 film version of ''The Killers'' composed by Miklós Rózsa challenged the authorship of the copyright of the Dragnet "Main Title". They contended that Walter Schumann had visited t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
