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Plas Johnson
Plas John Johnson Jr. (born July 21, 1931) is an American soul-jazz and hard bop tenor saxophonist, probably most widely known as the tenor saxophone soloist on Henry Mancini’s "The Pink Panther Theme". He also performs on alto and baritone sax as well as various flutes and clarinets. Biography Born in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, United States, he sang with his family's group until his saxophonist father bought him a soprano saxophone. Largely self-taught, he soon began playing alto and later tenor saxophone. He and his pianist brother Ray first recorded as the Johnson Brothers in New Orleans in the late 1940s, and Plas first toured with R&B singer Charles Brown in 1951. After army service, he and his brother moved to Los Angeles in 1954, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donaldsonville, Louisiana
Donaldsonville (historically french: Lafourche-des-Chitimachas) is a city in, and the parish seat of Ascension Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located along the River Road of the west bank of the Mississippi River, it is a part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area. At the 2020 U.S. census, it had a population of 6,695, down from 7,436 in 2010. Donaldsonville's historic district has what has been described as the finest collection of buildings from the antebellum era to 1933, of any of the Louisiana river towns above New Orleans."10 Best Free Things to Do in Ascension Parish" Union forces attacked the city, occupying it and several of the river parishes beginning in 1862. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Williams
Larry Williams (born Lawrence Eugene Williams, a.k.a. Lawrence Edward Williams; May 10, 1935 – January 7, 1980) was an American rhythm and blues and rock and roll singer, songwriter, producer, and pianist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Williams is best known for writing and recording some rock and roll classics from 1957 to 1959 for Specialty Records, including " Bony Moronie", "Short Fat Fannie", "Slow Down", "Dizzy, Miss Lizzy" (1958), " Bad Boy" and "She Said Yeah" (1959). John Lennon was a fan, and The Beatles and several other British Invasion groups recorded several of his songs. Williams' life mixed tremendous success with violence and drug addiction. He was a longtime friend of Little Richard, with whom his life intertwined personally and professionally from their meeting in 1955 to Williams' death in 1980. Early life Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 10, 1935, Williams moved west with his family early in his childhood. He spent some time with relatives in Chicago ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobby Vee
Robert Thomas Velline (April 30, 1943 – October 24, 2016), known professionally as Bobby Vee, was an American singer who was a teen idol in the early 1960s and also appeared in films. According to '' Billboard'' magazine, he had thirty-eight Hot 100 chart hits, ten of which reached the Top 20. He had six gold singles in his career. Life Vee was born in Fargo, North Dakota, to Sydney Ronald Velline (a chef, pianist and fiddle player) and Saima Cecelia Tapanila, in a family of Norwegian and Finnish heritage. Personal life Vee and Karen Bergen married December 28, 1963. In the early 1980s, Vee moved his family from Los Angeles to near St. Cloud, Minnesota, where he and Karen organized annual fundraising concerts to provide music and arts facilities for local children. They had four children, including sons Jeffrey, Thomas, and Robert, who performed with Vee in his later career, and daughter Jennifer. Karen died of kidney failure on August 3, 2015. Bobby and his sons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ricky Nelson
Eric Hilliard Nelson (May 8, 1940 – December 31, 1985) was an American musician, songwriter and actor. From age eight he starred alongside his family in the radio and television series ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet''. In 1957, he began a long and successful career as a popular recording artist. The expression "teen idol" was first coined to describe Nelson, and his fame as both a recording artist and television star also led to a motion picture role co-starring alongside John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, and Angie Dickinson in Howard Hawks's Western (genre), western feature film ''Rio Bravo (film), Rio Bravo'' (1959). He placed 54 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and its predecessors, between 1957 and 1973, including "Poor Little Fool" in 1958, which was the first number one song on ''Billboard (magazine), Billboard'' magazine's then-newly created Billboard Hot 100, Hot 100 chart. He recorded 19 additional top ten hits and was inducted into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exotica
Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same name that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon "Si" Waronker, Liberty Records co-founder board chairman. The musical colloquialism ''exotica'' means tropical ersatz, the non-native, pseudo experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean and tribal Africa. Denny described the musical style as "a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient...what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like...it's pure fantasy though." While the South Seas forms the core region, exotica reflects the "musical impressions" of every place from standard travel destinations to the mythical "shangri-las" dreamt of by armchair safari-ers. History Les Baxter's album ''Ritual of the Savage'' (''Le Sacre du Sauvage'') was released in 1952 and would become a cornerstone of exotica. Thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Baxter
Leslie Thompson "Les" Baxter (March 14, 1922 – January 15, 1996) was a best-selling American musician and composer. After working as an arranger and composer for swing bands, he developed his own style of easy listening music, known as exotica and scored over 100 motion pictures. Early life Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. From 1943 on he played tenor and baritone saxophone for the Freddie Slack big band. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer. At the age of 23 he joined Mel Tormé's Mel-Tones, singing on Artie Shaw records such as "What Is This Thing Called Love?" Career Baxter then turned to arranging and conducting for Capitol Records in 1950, and conducted the orchestra in two early Nat King Cole hits, "Mona Lisa" and " Too Young". He also recorded Yma Sumac's first album: "Voice of the Xtabay", which can be considered one of the first recordi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular entertainers of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. He is among the List of best-selling music artists, world's best-selling music artists with an estimated 150 million record sales. Born to Italian immigrants in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra was greatly influenced by the intimate, easy-listening vocal style of Bing Crosby and began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. He found success as a solo artist after signing with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the "Bobby soxer (music), bobby soxers". Sinatra released his debut album, ''The Voice of Frank Sinatra'', in 1946. When his film career stalled in the early 1950s, Sinatra turned to Las Vegas, where he became one of its best-known concert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glen Gray
Glenn Gray Knoblauch (June 7, 1900 – August 23, 1963), known professionally as Glen Gray, was an American jazz saxophonist and leader of the Casa Loma Orchestra.''The Mississippi Rag'', "Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra," George A. Borgman, October 2006, page 1 Early years Gray was born to Lurdie P. and Agnes (Gray) Knoblauch in Roanoke, Illinois, United States. His father was a saloon keeper and railroad worker who died when Glen was two years of age. He had an older sister. His widowed mother married George H. DeWilde, a coal miner, and moved her family to Roanoke. Gray graduated from Roanoke High School, in 1917 where he played basketball and acquired his nickname, "Spike". Career Gray attended the American Conservatory of Music in 1921 but left during his first year to go to Peoria, Illinois, to play with George Haschert's orchestra. From 1924 to 1929, he played with several orchestras in Detroit, Michigan. Gray served as leader of the Casa Loma Orchestra thou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nat "King" Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued for the remainder of his life. He found great popular success and recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Cole also acted in films and on television and performed on Broadway. He was the first African-American man to host an American television series. He was the father of singer Natalie Cole (1950–2015). Biography Early life Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919. He had three brothers: Eddie (1910–1970), Ike (1927–2001), and Freddy (1931–2020), and a half-sister, Joyce Coles. Each of the Coles brothers pursued careers in music. When Nat King Cole was four years old, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peggy Lee
Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002), known professionally as Peggy Lee, was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress, over a career spanning seven decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, Lee created a sophisticated persona, writing music for films, acting, and recording conceptual record albums combining poetry and music. Called the "Queen of American pop music," Lee recorded over 1,100 masters and composed over 270 songs. Early life Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, United States, on May 26, 1920, the seventh of the eight children of Selma Emele (née Anderson) Egstrom and Marvin Olaf Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad. Her family were Lutherans. Her father was Swedish-American and her mother was Norwegian-American. After her mother died when Lee was four, her father married Minnie Schaumberg Wiese. Lee an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note in the United States in 1942 by Johnny Mercer, Buddy DeSylva, and Glenn E. Wallichs. Capitol was acquired by British music conglomerate EMI as its North American subsidiary in 1955. EMI was acquired by Universal Music Group in 2012, and was merged with the company a year later, making Capitol and the Capitol Music Group both distributed by UMG. The label's circular headquarters building is a recognized landmark of Hollywood, California. Both the label itself and its famous building are sometimes referred to as "The House That Nat Built." This refers to one of Capitol's most famous artists, Nat King Cole. Capitol is also well known as the U.S. record label of the Beatles, especially during the years of Beatlemania in America from 1964 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
