Mike Fonfara
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Mike Fonfara
Michael Fonfara (11 August 1946 – 8 January 2021) was a Canadian keyboard player who was most notable for his work as a member of The Electric Flag and Rhinoceros in the 1960s, Rough Trade and Lou Reed's backing band in the 1970s and The Downchild Blues Band, from 1990 to the present. He studied classical piano at The Royal Conservatory of Music. He is a multiple Maple Blues Award winner as Piano/Keyboardist of the year and a Juno Award winner with the Downchild Blues Band. His distinguished musical career was so honoured by the Maple Blues Awards as early as 2000 and a Juno Award in 2014. Biography Fonfara's career as a professional musician commenced in 1963, when he started playing in the Toronto band, Lee Jackson & The Checkmates, which evolved into Jon and Lee & The Checkmates soon afterwards. Members of Jon and Lee & The Checkmates ultimately formed the nucleus of the later bands Rhinoceros and Blackstone, plus contributed significantly to the work of Lou Reed in the 19 ...
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Stevensville, Ontario
Stevensville is a small community in southern Ontario, Canada in the town of Fort Erie, Ontario, Fort Erie, most notable as the birthplace of Canadian entrepreneur James L. Kraft. Economy The centre of the community is the intersection of Stevensville Road and Main Street. Stevensville is home to several small shops and restaurants including Mae's Place, Scuttlebutt Tap & Eatery, Bertie Tire Centre, Lane's Restaurant, Stevensville Garden Gallery, etc. Construction companies like Gibbons Contracting, Circle P Paving, Peters Excavating, Niagara Industrial Maintenance, etc. Nomad Drum Cases, who manufactures cases for drummers, which are exported globally. Stevensville is also the home of EMD Music Inc's Canadian office, an international full line music distributor. Their head office is in Brussels, Belgium. The community of Stevensville is also home to Safari Niagara, a location featuring numerous exotic animals. Safari Niagara also has an outdoor amphitheater that hosts live conc ...
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Juno Award
The Juno Awards, more popularly known as the JUNOS, are awards presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music. New members of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame are also inducted as part of the awards ceremonies. The Juno Awards are often referred to as the Canadian equivalent of the Brit Awards in the United Kingdom or the Grammy Awards given in the United States. Members of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), or a panel of experts, depending on the award, choose the award winners. However, sales figures are the sole basis for determining the winners of nine of the forty-two categories like Album of the Year or Artist of the Year. CARAS members determine the nominees for Single of the Year, Artist and Group of the Year. A judge vote by experts in the relevant genre, determines the nominees for the remaining categories. The names of the judges remain confidential. Th ...
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Supergroup (music)
A supergroup is a musical group whose members are successful as solo artists or as members of other successful groups. The term became popular in the late 1960s when members of already successful rock groups recorded albums together, after which they normally disband. Charity supergroups, in which prominent musicians perform or record together in support of a particular cause, have been common since the 1980s. The term is most common context of rock and pop music, but it has occasionally been applied to other musical genres. For example, opera superstars The Three Tenors ( José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti) have been called a supergroup. A supergroup sometimes forms as a side project for a single recording project or other ''ad hoc'' purposes, with no intention that the group will remain together afterwards. In other instances, the group may become the primary focus of the members' career. History ''Rolling Stone'' editor Jann Wenner credited British rock ...
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Elektra Records
Elektra Records (or Elektra Entertainment) is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group, founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickolt. It played an important role in the development of contemporary folk and rock music between the 1950s and 1970s. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived as an imprint of Atlantic in 2009. In October 2018, Elektra was detached from the Atlantic Records umbrella and reorganized into Elektra Music Group, once again operating as an independently managed frontline label of Warner Music. In June 2022, Elektra Music Group was merged with 300 Entertainment to create the umbrella label 300 Elektra Entertainment (3EE), though both Elektra and 300 will continue to maintain their separate identities as labels. History 1950–1971: Founding and early history Elektra was formed in 1950, as the ''Elektra-Stratford Record Corporation'', with a singles label called Stratford R ...
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Paul Rothchild
Paul may refer to: *Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) *Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity * Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Christian missionary and writer *Pope Paul (other), multiple Popes of the Roman Catholic Church *Saint Paul (other), multiple other people and locations named "Saint Paul" Roman and Byzantine empire *Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus (c. 229 BC – 160 BC), Roman general *Julius Paulus Prudentissimus (), Roman jurist *Paulus Catena (died 362), Roman notary *Paulus Alexandrinus (4th century), Hellenistic astrologer *Paul of Aegina or Paulus Aegineta (625–690), Greek surgeon Royals * Paul I of Russia (1754–1801), Tsar of Russia *Paul of Greece (1901–1964), King of Greece Other people * Paul the Deacon or Paulus Diaconus (c. 720 – c. 799), Italian Benedictine monk *Paul (father of Maurice), the father of Maurice, By ...
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Tropicana Hotel (Los Angeles)
Tropicana may refer to: Companies *Tropicana Entertainment, a former casino company that owned several Tropicana-branded casinos *Tropicana Products, a Chicago-based food company known for orange juice Hotels and nightclubs *Tropicana Casino & Resort Atlantic City, Atlantic City, New Jersey *Tropicana Club, a nightclub in Havana, Cuba and New York City *Tropicana Evansville, now Bally's Evansville, a casino hotel in Evansville, Indiana *Tropicana Laughlin, a casino hotel in Laughlin, Nevada *Tropicana Las Vegas, a casino hotel on the Las Vegas Strip Music *"Tropicana", a song by Gruppo Italiano *"Club Tropicana", a song by Wham! from their album ''Fantastic'' Places *Tropicana, Weston-super-Mare, a now-derelict outdoor swimming pool in Somerset, England *Tropicana Avenue, a street in Las Vegas, Nevada *Tropicana Field, a stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida *Tropicana Gold Mine, a major gold mine in Western Australia *Tropicana LRT station (LRT3), a transit station in Malaysia Sp ...
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Albert Grossman
Albert Bernard Grossman (May 21, 1926 – January 25, 1986) was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music and rock and roll scene. He was famous as the manager of many of the most popular and successful performers of folk and folk-rock music, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Band, Odetta, Gordon Lightfoot and Ian & Sylvia. Early life Albert Grossman was born in Chicago on May 21, 1926, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who worked as tailors. He attended Lane Technical High School and graduated from Roosevelt University, Chicago, with a degree in economics. Career After finishing college Grossman worked for the Chicago Housing Authority, leaving in the late 1950s to go into the club business. Seeing folk star Bob Gibson perform at the Off Beat Room in 1956 prompted Grossman's idea of a 'listening room' to showcase Gibson and other talent, as the American folk-music revival movement grew. The result was the Gate of Horn in the b ...
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Bill Graham (promoter)
Bill Graham (born Wulf Wolodia Grajonca; January 8, 1931 – October 25, 1991) was a German-American impresario and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death in 1991 in a helicopter crash. On July 4, 1939, he was sent from Germany to France due to political uncertainty in his home country. At age 10, he settled into a foster home in the Bronx, New York. Graham graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and subsequently from City College with a business degree. In the early 1960s, Graham moved to San Francisco, and in 1965, began to manage the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He had teamed up with local Haight Ashbury promoter Chet Helms to organize a benefit concert, then promoted several free concerts. This eventually turned into a profitable full-time career and he assembled a talented staff. Graham had a profound influence around the world, sponsoring the musical renaissance of the '60s from the epicenter, San Francisco. Chet Helms and then Bill Graham made famous t ...
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Winterland
Winterland Ballroom (more commonly known as Winterland Arena or simply Winterland) was an ice skating rink and music venue in San Francisco, California. The arena was located at the corner of Post Street and Steiner Street. It was converted for exclusive use as a music venue in 1971 by concert promoter Bill Graham and became a common performance site for many famous rock artists. Graham later formed a merchandising company called Winterland Productions which sold concert shirts, memorabilia, and official sports team merchandise. Origins The venue was opened on June 29, 1928, as the ''New Dreamland Auditorium''. It served as an ice skating rink that could be converted into a seated entertainment venue. Sometime in the late 1930s the building's name was changed to ''Winterland'', and it successfully operated through the Great Depression. It was built in 1928 for $1 million (equivalent to $ million in ). The New Dreamland was built on the site of the Dreamland Rink (midway on the ...
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Fillmore West
The Fillmore West was a historic rock and roll music venue in San Francisco, California, US which became famous under the direction of concert promoter Bill Graham from 1968 to 1971. Named after The Fillmore at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard (which was Graham's principal venue from 1966 to 1968), it stood at the southwest corner of Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue in the Civic Center district. In June 2018, the top two floors of the building reopened as SVN West, a new concert and corporate event venue. History Originally, the El Patio Ballroom, later the Carousel Ballroom, it was a swing-era dance palace, located at 1545 Market street, on the second floor, above the street-level retail at 10 South Van Ness Avenue. Beginning in 1968, it was briefly operated by a collective formed by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company as a social/musical "laboratory experiment". According to ...
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Barry Goldberg
Barry Joseph Goldberg (born December 25, 1942) is an American blues and rock keyboardist, songwriter, and record producer. Goldberg has co-produced albums by Percy Sledge, Charlie Musselwhite, James Cotton, and the Textones, plus Bob Dylan's version of Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready". Career 1950s–1970s As a teenager in Chicago, Goldberg sat in with Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, and Howlin' Wolf. He played keyboards with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band backing Bob Dylan during his 1965 newly 'electrified' appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. He formed The Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield in 1967, and formed the Barry Goldberg Reunion in 1968. In 1965, after moving to Chicago to play the blues, Steve Miller and Goldberg founded the Goldberg-Miller Blues Band, along with bassist Roy Ruby, rhythm guitarist Craymore Stevens, and drummer Maurice McKinley. The band contracted to Epic Records and recorded a single, "The Mother Song", which they performed on Hullabaloo, befor ...
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Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American guitarist and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing, Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago's blues musicians before achieving his own fame and was instrumental in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he played on Bob Dylan's ''Highway 61 Revisited'', including the single "Like a Rolling Stone", and performed with Dylan at that year's Newport Folk Festival. Bloomfield was ranked No. 22 on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003 and No. 42 by the same magazine in 2011. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Early years Bloomfield ...
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