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Johnny Heartsman
John Leroy "Johnny" Heartsman (February 9, 1936 – December 27, 1996) was an American electric blues and soul blues musician and songwriter. He showed musical diversity, playing a number of musical instruments, including the electronic organ and flute. He contributed his distinctive guitar playing to a number of recordings made in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s and 1960s. He continued playing until his death. His best-known recording, "Johnny's House Party", was an R&B hit in 1957. Other notable tracks recorded by Heartsman are "Paint My Mailbox Blue" and "Heartburn". He variously worked with Jimmy McCracklin, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Big Mama Thornton, Ray Agee, Jimmy Wilson, Johnny Fuller, Al King, Tiny Powell and Joe Simon. He is not to be confused with the American jazz singer Johnny Hartman. Biography Heartsman was born Johnnie Eastman Jr. in Houston, Texas, and moved at an early age to San Fernando, California. He was initially influenced by Lafayette Thomas. I ...
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Houston, Texas
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in 2020. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat and largest city of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second-most populous in Texas after Dallas–Fort Worth. Houston is the southeast anchor of the greater megaregion known as the Texas Triangle. Comprising a land area of , Houston is the ninth-most expansive city in the United States (including consolidated city-counties). It is the largest city in the United States by total area whose government is not consolidated with a county, parish, or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the ...
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Electronic Organ
An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed into several types of instruments: * Hammond-style organs used in pop, rock and jazz; * digital church organs, which imitate pipe organs and are used primarily in churches; * other types including combo organs, home organs, and software organs. History Predecessors ;Harmonium The immediate predecessor of the electronic organ was the harmonium, or reed organ, an instrument that was common in homes and small churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a fashion not totally unlike that of pipe organs, reed organs generate sound by forcing air over a set of reeds by means of a bellows, usually operated by constantly pumping a set of pedals. While reed organs have limited tonal quality, they are small, inexpensive, self ...
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Recording Studio
A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enough to record a single singer-guitarist, to a large building with space for a full orchestra of 100 or more musicians. Ideally, both the recording and monitoring (listening and mixing) spaces are specially designed by an acoustician or audio engineer to achieve optimum acoustic properties (acoustic isolation or diffusion or absorption of reflected sound echoes that could otherwise interfere with the sound heard by the listener). Recording studios may be used to record singers, instrumental musicians (e.g., electric guitar, piano, saxophone, or ensembles such as orchestras), voice-over artists for advertisements or dialogue replacement in film, television, or animation, foley, or to record their accompanying musical soundtracks. The typical ...
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Session Musician
Session musicians, studio musicians, or backing musicians are musicians hired to perform in recording sessions or live performances. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a recording artist on a tour. Session musicians are usually not permanent or official members of a musical ensemble or band. They work behind the scenes and rarely achieve individual fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders. However, top session musicians are well known within the music industry, and some have become publicly recognized, such as the Wrecking Crew, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and The Funk Brothers who worked with Motown Records. Many session musicians specialize in playing common rhythm section instruments such as guitar, piano, bass, or drums. Others are specialists, and play brass, woodwinds, and strings. Many session musicians play multiple instruments, which lets them play in a wider range of musical situations, genres an ...
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Lafayette Thomas
Lafayette Jerl Thomas (June 13, 1928 – May 20, 1977)Harris, S. (1981). Blues Who's Who. New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 509–510, was an American blues singer, and guitarist. Early life Thomas was born on June 13, 1928 in Shreveport, Louisiana. He sang in a local church choir as a youth, and was first introduced to blues guitar by his uncle, musician Jesse "Babyface" Thomas. Career Thomas began his music career in 1947 after a move to San Francisco, California, playing with Al Simmons’ Rhythm Rockers. The following year he joined Jimmy McCracklin's band, and continued to work and record with McCracklin for most of the rest of his life. He also frequently recorded on sessions with other singers, including Jimmy Wilson, from the late 1940s into the 1950s. As well as recording with McCracklin, Wilson and others, Thomas recorded a number of sessions of his own during the 1950s, appearing as L. J. Thomas and his Louisiana Playboys, or "Thing" Thomas, on Chess, as Jerry Thomas ...
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Johnny Hartman
John Maurice Hartman (July 3, 1923 – September 15, 1983) was an American jazz singer who specialized in ballads. He sang and recorded with Earl Hines' and Dizzy Gillespie's big bands and with Erroll Garner. Hartman is best remembered for his collaboration in 1963 with saxophonist John Coltrane, ''John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman'', a landmark album for both him and Coltrane. Biography Born in Louisiana and raised in Chicago, Hartman began singing and playing the piano by the age of eight. He attended DuSable High School studying music under Walter Dyett before receiving a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College. He sang as a private in the Army's Special Services during World War II, but his first professional break came in September 1946 when he won a singing contest at the Apollo Theater, earning him a one-week engagement with Earl Hines, which lasted a year. Hartman's first recordings were with Marl Young during that time, though it was his collaboration with Hines t ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Joe Simon (musician)
Joe Simon (September 7, 1936 – December 13, 2021) was an American soul and R&B musician. He began as a gospel artist singing with the Golden West Singers in the Bay Area in California. A consistent presence on the US charts between 1964 and 1981, Simon charted 51 U.S. Pop and R&B chart hits between 1964 and 1981, including eight times in the US top forty, thirty-eight times in the top 40 of the US R&B charts, and 13 chart hits in Canada. His biggest hits included three number one entries on the US ''Billboard'' R&B chart: " The Chokin' Kind" (1969), " Power of Love" (1972), and " Get Down, Get Down (Get on the Floor)" (1975). In 2021, he was one of the 60 nominees for the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. Career Simon was born in Simmesport, Louisiana, United States. Similar to many other African-American artists from the era, Simon began singing in his father's Baptist church. He pursued his vocal abilities full-time once the family moved to Richmond (near Oakland, Cali ...
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Johnny Fuller (musician)
Johnny Fuller (April 20, 1929 – May 20, 1985) was an American West Coast blues, West Coast and electric blues singer and guitarist. Fuller showed musical diversity, performing in several musical genres including rhythm and blues, gospel music, gospel and rock and roll. His distinctive singing and guitar playing appeared on a number of 1950s San Francisco Bay Area recordings, although he ceased performing regularly by the late 1970s. He worked as an auto mechanic from 1968 to 1983. His best known recording, "Haunted House", was later cover version, covered with some success by Jumpin' Gene Simmons. His other better known tracks were "Crying Won't Make Me Stay", "All Night Long", "You Got Me Whistling" and "Johnny Ace's Last Letter." He is not to be confused with, nor was he related to, the American blues musician Jesse Fuller. Biography Fuller was born in Edwards, Mississippi. He relocated with his family to Vallejo, California, in 1945. His musical styling often masked his up ...
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Jimmy Wilson (blues Musician)
Jimmy Wilson (possibly January 21, 1918, 1921 or 1923Komara, Edward and Lee, Peter (2004). ''Blues Encyclopedia''. Routledge, p. 1092 – February 5, 1965 or February 24, 1966) was an American West Coast blues singer, best known for his 1953 hit "Tin Pan Alley". Life and career Details of Wilson's life are sketchy and uncertain. He may have been born Jimmie Ned Wilson in Gibsland, Louisiana, in 1918, or (according to other sources) near Lake Charles, Louisiana a few years later. Wilson was singing with a Gospel music, gospel quartet, the Pilgrim Travelers, in California, when Bob Geddins began recording him in Oakland, California, Oakland in 1951, initially with his band Bob Geddins' Cavaliers. Further recordings were made under Wilson's own name, often accompanied by guitarist Lafayette Thomas. Some of the masters were purchased by Aladdin Records, Aladdin, and Wilson then recorded for Aladdin in 1952 before returning to record for Geddins' Big Town Records in 1953.Leadbitter, ...
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Ray Agee
Raymond Clinton "Ray" Agee (April 10, 1921 – April 15, 1989) was an American blues and R&B singer and songwriter who recorded over a hundred tracks between the early 1950s and mid-1970s, and is described at Allmusic as "a fine, versatile blues singer whose work deserves a wider audience". Biography Agee was born in Dixons Mills, Alabama, in 1921 according to most official records, though some sources give 1930. Biography by Bill Dahl, ''Allmusic.com''
Retrieved January 30, 2017
He was the eighth child out of 17 in the family. By the age of four, he developed , which left him with a permanent disability. He moved to Los Angeles with his pa ...
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Big Mama Thornton
Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), better known as Big Mama Thornton, was an American singer and songwriter of the blues and R&B genres. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's " Hound Dog", in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the ''Billboard'' R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies. Thornton's other recordings included the original version of "Ball and Chain", which she wrote. Her recording of "Hound Dog", written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952, and later recorded by Elvis Presley, reached Number 1 on the Rhythm & Blues Records chart. According to Maureen Mahon, a music professor at New York University, "the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument". Early life Thornton's birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama, but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz, she claimed Montgomery, ...
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