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Little Sonny
Little Sonny (born Aaron Willis; October 6, 1932, in Greensboro Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ..., Alabama) is an American electric blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. His early mentor and inspiration was Sonny Boy Williamson II. Nevertheless, Little Sonny stated that his nickname was originated by his mother: "[She] called me 'Sonny boy' from the time I can remember." He has released eight albums, including three for a subsidiary of Stax Records. His 1973 release, ''Hard Goin' Up'', reached the Top 40, Top 50 in the ''Billboard (magazine), Billboard'' Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, R&B record chart, chart. Biography Willis was born in 1932 and raised solely by his mother. He relocated to Detroit in 1953. He had no real interest in music, he said, "But then I ...
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Greensboro, Alabama
Greensboro is a city in Hale County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 2,497, down from 2,731 at the 2000 census. The city is the county seat of Hale County, Alabama, which was not organized until 1867. It is part of the Tuscaloosa, Alabama Metropolitan Statistical Area. History Greensboro was incorporated as a town in December 1823 as "Greensborough". It was named in honor of American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene. The name was soon simplified to "Greensboro". The community was known as "Troy" prior to incorporation. Reflecting the history of the antebellum years and a culture built on cotton plantations to produce the commodity crop, several sites on the National Register of Historic Places in or near Greensboro are connected to this past. These include Glencairn, the Greensboro Historic District, Magnolia Grove, the McGehee-Stringfellow House, Millwood, and the Payne House. One hundred years later, African Americans in Greensb ...
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John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 ā€“ June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930sā€“1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Hooker was ranked 35 in ''Rolling Stone''s 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists. Some of his best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "Crawling King Snake" (1949), "Dimples" (1956), " Boom Boom" (1962), and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" (1966). Several of his later albums, including '' The Healer'' (1989), '' Mr. Lucky'' (1991), ''Chill Out'' (1995), and '' Don't Look Back'' (1997), were album chart successes in the U.S. and UK. ''The Healer'' (for the song "I'm In The Mood") and ''Chill Out'' (for the album) both e ...
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Eddie Willis
Eddie "Chank" Willis (June 3, 1936 ā€“ August 20, 2018) was an American soul musician. Willis played electric guitar and occasional electric sitar for Motown's in-house studio band, The Funk Brothers, during the 1960s and early 1970s. Career Born in Grenada, Mississippi, Willis was known for his signature style of muted guitar riffs which added a distinctive tone or "color" to the beat, often timed with the snare, of the hundreds of hit songs recorded at Hitsville U.S.A. for Motown artists. Among the recordings Willis performed on are " Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes, "The Way You Do the Things You Do" by The Temptations, "You Keep Me Hanging On" by The Supremes, and "I Was Made to Love Her" by Stevie Wonder. Influences for Willis included Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, and Albert King. He played a Gibson Firebird guitar on most of his early 1960s work, later moving on to use a Gibson ES-335. On recordings such as The Supremes' "No Matter What Sign You Are", Willis perfor ...
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Joe Hunter (musician)
Joseph Edward Hunter (November 19, 1927 – February 2, 2007) was an American musician and keyboardist, known for his recording session work with Motown Records' in-house studio band, the Funk Brothers. One of the original Funk Brothers, Hunter served as band director from 1959 until 1964, when he left Motown and was replaced by Earl Van Dyke. Life and career Hunter was born in Jackson, Tennessee, to Vada Idona Hunter and John G. Hunter. His mother was a piano teacher and he started playing piano at an early age. At age 11, the family moved to Detroit. He was drafted into the army where he played in the jazz band alongside pianist Dwike Mitchell and drummer Elvin Jones. Hunter was influenced by the music of Art Tatum, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Nat King Cole. After the service, he performed in Detroit jazz clubs and toured with The Midnighters. In 1958 he was recruited by Motown Records, at the time a newly founded label. He led the record label's studio band, The Funk Brot ...
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Black Hills State University
Black Hills State University (BHSU) is a public university in Spearfish, South Dakota. Close to 4,000 students attend classes at its campus in Spearfish, at sites in Rapid City and Pierre, and through distance offerings. Enrollment comes from 64 out of 66 counties in South Dakota, 43 states, and 29 countries. BHSU is governed by the South Dakota Board of Regents. History The predecessor to Black Hills State University operated from 1881 to 1883 and was called Dakota College or Dakota Academy. Dakota College was funded by the Congregational Church and was not affiliated with BHSU. In 1883, in support for a new normal school, John Mauer put up a plot of land west of Spearfish Creek for sale for $800. Joseph Ramsdell collected money from donors and bought the land for $790.85. John Wolzmuth, Frank J. Washabaugh, and E.M. Bowman also gathered funds for the school. Established by the Dakota Territorial Legislature, the new school was called Dakota Territorial Normal School, and ...
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Wattstax
''Wattstax'' was a benefit concert organized by Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles. The concert took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on August 20, 1972. The concert's performers included all of Stax's prominent artists at the time. The genres of the songs performed included soul, gospel, R&B, blues, funk, and jazz. Months after the festival, Stax released a double LP of the concert's highlights, ''Wattstax: The Living Word''. The concert was filmed by David L. Wolper's film crew and was made into the 1973 film titled ''Wattstax''. The film was directed by Mel Stuart and nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Documentary Film in 1974. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Festival production Development Stax Record's West Coast ...
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Concert Film
A concert film, or concert movie, is a film that showcases a live performance from the perspective of a concert goer, the subject of which is an extended live performance or concert by either a musician or a stand-up comedian. Early history The earliest known concert film is the 1948 picture ''Concert Magic''. This concert features virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin (1916ā€“1999) at the Charlie Chaplin Studios in 1947. Together with various artists he performed classical and romantic works of famous composers such as Beethoven, Wieniawski, Bach, Paganini and others. The earliest known jazz concert film is the 1959 film ''Jazz on a Summer's Day''. The film was recorded during the fifth annual Newport Jazz Festival. The earliest known rock concert film was the T.A.M.I. Show, which featured acts such as The Beach Boys, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and the Rolling Stones. One of popular music's most ground-breaking concert films is '' Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii'' (1972), directed by A ...
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Soul Music
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became popular for dancing and listening, where U.S. record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential during the Civil Rights Movement. Soul also became popular around the world, directly influencing rock music and the music of Africa. It also had a resurgence with artists like Erykah Badu under the genre neo-soul. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the lead vocalist and the chorus and an especially tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls, and auxiliary sounds. Soul music reflects the African-American identity, and it stresses the importance of an African-Ameri ...
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Instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instrumentals. The music is primarily or exclusively produced using musical instruments. An instrumental can exist in music notation, after it is written by a composer; in the mind of the composer (especially in cases where the composer themselves will perform the piece, as in the case of a blues solo guitarist or a folk music fiddle player); as a piece that is performed live by a single instrumentalist or a musical ensemble, which could range in components from a duo or trio to a large big band, concert band or orchestra. In a song that is otherwise sung, a section that is not sung but which is played by instruments can be called an instrumental interlude, or, if it occurs at the beginning of the song, before the singer starts to sing ...
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Hit Single
A hit song, also known as a hit record, hit single or simply a hit, is a recorded song or instrumental that becomes broadly popular or well-known. Although ''hit song'' means any widely played or big-selling song, the specific term ''hit record'' usually refers to a single that has appeared in an official music chart through repeated radio airplay audience impressions, or significant streaming data and commercial sales. Historically, before the dominance of recorded music, commercial sheet music sales of individual songs were similarly promoted and tracked as singles and albums are now. For example, in 1894, Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern released ''The Little Lost Child'', which sold more than a million copies nationwide, based mainly on its success as an illustrated song, analogous to today's music videos. Chart hits In the United States and the United Kingdom, a single is usually considered a hit when it reaches the top 40 of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 or the top 75 of the UK ...
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Excello Records
Excello Records was an American blues independent record label, started by Ernie Young in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, in 1953 as a subsidiary of Nashboro, a gospel label. History It recorded such artists as Lonnie Brooks, Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo, Roscoe Shelton, Lazy Lester, the Kelly Brothers, Lonesome Sundown, Silas Hogan, Arthur Gunter, Marion James, Carol Fran, Warren Storm, Tabby Thomas, Guitar Gable, and a spoken word sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. Arthur Gunter recorded an answer song to Eddy Arnold's country and western song, " I Wanna Play House With You". His song, "Baby Let's Play House", was covered by Elvis Presley. See also * List of record labels * Sound Stage 7 * Dial Records * Nashboro Records * Stax Records * Hi Records * Goldwax Records * Fame Studios FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studios is a recording studio located at 603 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, an area of northern Alabama known as the Shoals. Though small a ...
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Duke Records
Duke Records was an American record label, started in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1952 by David James Mattis (WDIA program director and DJ) and Bill Fitzgerald, owners of Tri-State Recording Company. Their first release was Roscoe Gordon singing "Hey Fat Girl", issued on Duke R-1, later amended to R-101. History After forming a partnership with Mattis in the summer of 1952, Don Robey (founder of Houston's Peacock Records) took control of Duke. Both labels then headquartered at his Bronze Peacock club at 2809 Erastus Street in Houston, focusing on R&B and gospel music. Robey started a subsidiary, Back Beat Records, in 1957 and this later specialised in soul music, along with Sure Shot Records, whilst Peacock specialised in gospel recordings. Duke's leading artist was Bobby "Blue" Bland who stayed with the label for many years until its demise, mostly recording successfully with arranger/bandleader Joe Scott. Johnny Ace was a major R&B artist in the early years of the label before ...
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