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List Of Musicians Of The 1950s
''For music from a year in the 1950s, go to 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59'' This is a partial list of notable active and inactive bands and musicians of the 1950s. Musicians * Black Ace * Johnny Ace * Lee Allen * Gene Allison * Marian Anderson * Pink Anderson * Paul Anka * Louis Armstrong * Eddy Arnold * Chet Atkins * Gene Autry * Frankie Avalon * Charles Aznavour * LaVern Baker * Hank Ballard * Sidney Bechet * Harry Belafonte * Jesse Belvin * Tex Beneke * Boyd Bennett * Tony Bennett * Chuck Berry * Richard Berry * Otis Blackwell * Scrapper Blackwell * Blind Blake * The Big Bopper * Johnny Bond * Pat Boone * Jimmy Bowen * Calvin Boze * Jackie Brenston * Teresa Brewer * Big Bill Broonzy * Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown * James Brown * Nappy Brown * Roy Brown * Ruth Brown * Dave Brubeck * Jimmy Bryant * Solomon Burke * Johnny Burnette * James Burton * Erskine Butterfield * Sam Butera * Maria Callas * Glen Campbell * Mart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1950 In Music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1950. Specific locations * 1950 in British music * 1950 in Norwegian music Specific genres *1950 in country music * 1950 in jazz Events * January 3 – Sam Phillips launches Sun Records at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. * March 14 – Pablo Casals terminates his recording contract with RCA Records and signs with their chief competitor, Columbia Records. *June 26 – Louis Armstrong records the first American version of ''C'est si bon'' with the English lyrics by Jerry Seelen. *August 29 – The first American Music Competition of the Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity is won by Richard Winslow for ''Huswifery'', a choral composition for women's voices. *August – Herbert Howells' ''Hymnus Paradisi'' is premiered at the Three Choirs Festival. *September 24 – Alan Lomax sets sail from the United States for London and spends until 1959 recording in Europe for the ''Columbia World Library of Folk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pink Anderson
Pinkney "Pink" Anderson (February 12, 1900 – October 12, 1974) was an American blues singer and guitarist. Life and career Anderson was born in Laurens, South Carolina, and raised in nearby Greenville and Spartanburg. He joined Dr. William R. Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company in 1914 to entertain the crowds, while Kerr tried to sell a concoction purported to have medicinal qualities. During this time Anderson occasionally worked with Blind Simmie Dooley in the Spartanburg area, recording with him in 1928 for the Columbia label. In the 1950s Anderson toured with Leo "Chief Thundercloud" Kahdot and his medicine show, often with the harmonica player Arthur " Peg Leg Sam" Jackson, who was based in Jonesville, South Carolina. Anderson was recorded by the folklorist Paul Clayton at the Virginia State Fair in May 1950. He recorded an album in the early 1960s and performed at some live venues.Unterberger, Richie. Pink Anderson: Biography AllMusic. He appeared in the 1963 film ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tex Beneke
Gordon Lee "Tex" Beneke ( ; February 12, 1914 – May 30, 2000) was an American saxophonist, singer, and bandleader. His career is a history of associations with bandleader Glenn Miller and former musicians and singers who worked with Miller. His band is also associated with the careers of Eydie Gormé, Henry Mancini and Ronnie Deauville. Beneke also solos on the recording the Glenn Miller Orchestra made of their popular song "In The Mood" and sings on another popular Glenn Miller recording, "Chattanooga Choo Choo". Jazz critic Will Friedwald considers Beneke to be one of the major blues singers who sang with the big bands of the early 1940s. Early life Beneke was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He started playing saxophone when he was nine, going from soprano to alto to tenor saxophones and staying with the latter. His first professional work was with bandleader Ben Young in 1935, but it was when he joined the Glenn Miller Orchestra three years later that his career hit its strid ... [...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] |
Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927) is an American singer, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Jamaican-American pop star, he popularized the Trinbagonian Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album '' Calypso'' (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Belafonte is best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, " Jump in the Line", and " Jamaica Farewell". He has recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, including ''Carmen Jones'' (1954), '' Island in the Sun'' (1957), and ''Odds Against Tomorrow'' (1959). Belafonte considered the actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson a mentor, and was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. As he later recalled, "Paul Robes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, and first recorded several months before trumpeter Louis Armstrong. His erratic temperament hampered his career, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim. Bechet spent much of his later life in France. Biography Early life Bechet was born in New Orleans in 1897 to a middle-class Creole of color family. Bechet's father Omar was both a shoemaker and a flute player, and all four of his brothers were musicians as well. His older brother, Leonard Victor Bechet, was a full-time dentist and a part-time trombonist and bandleader. Bechet learned and mastered several musical instruments that were kept around the house (he began on the cornet), mostly by teaching himself; he decided to specialize in the clarinet (which he played almost exclusively until about 1919). At the age of six, he started to perform w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hank Ballard
Hank Ballard (born John Henry Kendricks; November 18, 1927 – March 2, 2003) was an American singer and songwriter, the lead vocalist of The Midnighters and one of the first rock and roll artists to emerge in the early 1950s. He played an integral part in the development of the genre, releasing the hit singles "Work With Me, Annie" and answer songs " Annie Had a Baby" and "Annie's Aunt Fannie" with his Midnighters. He later wrote and originally recorded (in 1959) " The Twist" which was notably covered a year later by Chubby Checker, this second version spreading the popularity of the dance. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Early years Born John Henry Kendricks in Detroit, Michigan, he and his brother, Dove Ballard, grew up and attended school in Bessemer, Alabama, after the death of their father. He lived with his paternal aunt and her husband, and began singing in church. His major vocal inspiration during his formative years was the "Singing Cowboy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LaVern Baker
Delores LaVern Baker (November 11, 1929 – March 10, 1997) was an American R&B singer who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were "Tweedle Dee" (1955), " Jim Dandy" (1956), and "I Cried a Tear" (1958). Baker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. The Hall remarked that her "fiery fusion of blues, jazz and R&B showcased her alluring vocals and set the stage for the rock and roll surge of the Fifties". Between 1955 and 1965, 20 of her songs made the R&B charts. Over the years, Elvis Presley recorded eight Baker songs. Early life Baker was born Delores Evans in Chicago. She was raised in Calumet City, Illinois. Under her mother's new surname, McMurley, Delores – on December 23, 1948, at age , in Cook County, Illinois – married Eugene Williams.Goldberg, Marv (2009)"Lavern Baker". ''Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks'' Retrieved May 25, 2014. Career Baker began singing in Chicago clubs such as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour ( , ; born Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian, hy, Շահնուր Վաղինակ Ազնավուրեան, ; 22 May 1924 – 1 October 2018) was a French-Armenian singer, lyricist, actor and diplomat. Aznavour was known for his distinctive vibrato tenor voice: clear and ringing in its upper reaches, with gravelly and profound low notes. In a career as a composer, singer and songwriter, spanning over 70 years, he recorded more than 1,200 songs interpreted in 9 languages. Moreover, he wrote or co-wrote more than 1,000 songs for himself and others. Aznavour is regarded as one of the greatest songwriters in the history of music and an icon of 20th-century pop culture. One of France's most popular and enduring singers, he was dubbed France's Frank Sinatra, while music critic Stephen Holden described Aznavour as a "French pop deity". He was also arguably the most famous Armenian of his time. In 1998, Aznavour was named Entertainer of the Century by CNN and users of ''T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frankie Avalon
Francis Thomas Avallone (born September 18, 1940), better known as Frankie Avalon, is an American actor, singer, and former teen idol. He had 31 charting U.S. ''Billboard'' singles from 1958 to late 1962, including number one hits, "Venus" and "Why" in 1959. Avalon, started appearing in films in the 1960s and is also well known for his role in the 1970s musical film '' Grease'' as ''Teen Angel'', in which he sings " Beauty School Dropout" to Frenchy (played by Didi Conn). Early life and music Avalon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Mary and Nicholas Avallone. His mother was originally from Sicily. His father was a butcher from Naples or Salerno, in Campania, Italy. His paternal grandmother was from Sicily. In December 1952, Avalon made his American network television debut playing the trumpet in the Honeymooners "Christmas Party" sketch on ''The Jackie Gleason Show''. Two singles showcasing Avalon's trumpet playing were issued on RCA Victor's "X" sublabe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, musician, rodeo performer, and baseball owner who gained fame largely by singing in a crooning style on radio, in films, and on television for more than three decades beginning in the early 1930s. Autry was the owner of a television station, several radio stations in Southern California, and the Los Angeles/Anaheim/California Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997. From 1934 to 1953, Autry appeared in 93 films, and between 1950 and 1956 hosted ''The Gene Autry Show'' television series. During the 1930s and 1940s, he personified the straight-shooting hero—honest, brave, and true. Autry was also one of the most important pioneering figures in the history of country music, considered the second major influential artist of the genre's development after Jimmie Rodgers. His singing cowboy films were the first vehicle to car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music style which expanded its appeal to adult pop music fans. He was primarily a guitarist, but he also played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele, and occasionally sang. Atkins's signature picking style was inspired by Merle Travis. Other major guitar influences were Django Reinhardt, George Barnes, Les Paul, and, later, Jerry Reed. His distinctive picking style and musicianship brought him admirers inside and outside the country scene, both in the United States and abroad. Atkins spent most of his career at RCA Victor and produced records for the Browns, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Sk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
