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The Hellecasters
The Hellecasters are an American guitar group. Composed of noted session players Will Ray, John Jorgenson (Desert Rose Band, and Elton John's backing band), and Jerry Donahue (Fairport Convention), they all play guitars by other manufacturers, but styled after Fender Telecaster as their main instruments. In 1988, Will Ray produced an album named "Hollywood Roundup", featuring an assortment of local musicians. One of the instrumentals included several of his acquaintances (John Jorgenson, Jerry Donahue, Jeff Ross, and Billy Bremner) who recorded the track under the name of "Candye Kane and the Super Pickers". According to Jerry Donahue, after running into Will Ray in 1990 at the Palomino, he proposed that they play a set together at an open-mike session at the same club. Will Ray then asked John Jorgenson to join them so as to have three-part harmonies. Their name was coined by John Jorgenson. Michael Nesmith of the Monkees The Monkees were an American rock and pop ba ...
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United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ...
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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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Will Ray
Will Ray (born 1950 in Richmond, Virginia) is an American session guitarist and current member of the Hellecasters. Ray has also released a number of solo albums. He is considered an influential player of the Fender Telecaster line of guitars. Fender made two Will Ray signature models in the late 1990s: the Jazz-a-Caster and the Mojo-Tele. G&L is now offering a Will Ray signature model guitar and a less expensive version within their lower cost brand, Tribute by G&L. In July 2005, Ray moved to North Carolina where he built a new state of the art recording studio for production projects. In September 2009, Ray began hosting a weekly music jam in Fletcher, North Carolina Fletcher is a town in Henderson County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 7,187 at the 2010 census, and was estimated to be 8,333 in 2018. Fletcher is adjacent to Asheville Regional Airport, which serves western North Carolina. ... at The Feed and Seed. The Tuesday night "Will Ray Mountain J ...
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John Jorgenson
John Richard Jorgenson (born July 6, 1956) is an American musician. Although best known for his guitar work with bands such as the Desert Rose Band and The Hellecasters, he is also proficient on the mandolin, mandocello, Dobro, pedal steel guitar, piano, upright bass, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. While a member of the Desert Rose Band, he won the Academy of Country Music's "Guitarist of the Year" award three consecutive years. Jorgenson has recorded or toured with Elton John, Tommy Emmanuel, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams Jr., Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, Roy Orbison, Patty Loveless, Michael Nesmith, John Prine, and Bonnie Raitt. Early years He was born in 1956 in Madison, Wisconsin, into a musical family. His mother was a piano teacher and his father an orchestra conductor and college music professor.
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Desert Rose Band
The Desert Rose Band was an American country rock band from Los Angeles, California, founded in 1985 by Chris Hillman (formerly of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers), with Herb Pedersen and John Jorgenson. The original lineup included Bill Bryson on bass guitar, JayDee Maness on pedal steel guitar, and Steve Duncan on drums. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band charted several hit singles on the US ''Billboard'' Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts until disbanding in February 1994. Formation The Desert Rose Band was formed in 1985 by frontman Chris Hillman (born December 4, 1944), formerly a member of The Byrds, and co-founder, along with the late Gram Parsons of the country-rock band The Flying Burrito Brothers. Additional members included John Jorgenson (born July 6, 1956), who was mainly responsible for the instrumental arrangements of the songs, and Herb Pedersen (born April 27, 1944), responsible for the vocal arrangements. Jorgenson and Pedersen sang three- ...
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Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s, having released 31 albums since 1969. Collaborating with lyricist Bernie Taupin since 1967, John is acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his work during the 1970s, and his lasting impact on the music industry. John's music and showmanship have had a significant impact on popular music. His songwriting partnership with Taupin is one of the most successful in history. John was raised in the Pinner suburb of London and learned to play piano at an early age, forming the blues band Bluesology in 1962. After leaving Bluesology in 1967 to embark on a solo career, John met Taupin after they both answered an advert for songwriters. For two years, they wrote songs for other artists, and John worked a ...
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Jerry Donahue
Jerry Donahue (born September 24, 1946, Manhattan, New York City) is an American guitarist and producer primarily known for his work in the British folk rock scene as a member of Fotheringay and Fairport Convention as well as being a member of the rock guitar trio The Hellecasters. Biography Donahue was born in New York, the son of big band saxophonist Sam Donahue and actress Patricia Donahue and grew up in Los Angeles. Encouraged by his parents, Donahue took classical guitar lessons as a child, but it was Gerry McGee (who later joined The Ventures) who made the biggest impression on him, when the 14-year-old Donahue witnessed him playing a behind-the-nut bend at a performance at the ''Sea Witch'', emulating Earl Scruggs' banjo technique. Donahue then took lessons from McGee. Regarding regular bends on the fretboard, Donahue cites Amos Garrett as a major influence. Other influences in his formative years were Chet Atkins, Duane Eddy, The Shadows and The Ventures; later influe ...
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Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are an English folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album. Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, ''What We Did on Our Holidays'' and ''Unhalfbricking'' (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a trad ...
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Fender Musical Instruments Corporation
The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC, or simply Fender) is an American manufacturer of instruments and amplifiers. Fender produces acoustic guitars, bass amplifiers and public address equipment, however it is best known for its solid-body electric guitars and bass guitars, particularly the Stratocaster, Telecaster, Jaguar, Jazzmaster, Precision Bass, and the Jazz Bass. The company was founded in Fullerton, California by Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender in 1946. Its headquarters are in Los Angeles, California. The FMIC is a privately held corporation, with Andy Mooney serving as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The company filed for an initial public offering in March 2012, but this was withdrawn five months later. In addition to its Los Angeles headquarters, Fender has manufacturing facilities in Corona, California (US) and Ensenada, Baja California (Mexico). As of July 10, 2012, the majority shareholders of Fender were the private equity firm of Weston P ...
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Telecaster
The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it is the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful Les Paul had built a prototype solid body electric guitar known as "The Log" in the 1940s, but could not market his invention. Gibson produced the Gibson Les Paul guitar in 1952 after bringing on Paul to help design a commercial model to compete with Fender. Likewise, Paul Bigsby and Merle Travis designed and built a solid-body electric in 1948, but this was a one-off guitar. solid-body electric guitar. Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music. Introduced for national distribution as the Broadcaster in the autumn of 1950 as a two-pickup version of its sister model, the single-pickup Esquire, the pair were the first guitars of their kind manufactured on a substantial scale. A trade ...
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Jeff Ross
Jeffrey Ross Lifschultz (born September 13, 1965) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known as the "Roastmaster General" for his insult comedy, his multiple appearances at celebrity roasts held by the New York Friars Club, the ''Comedy Central Roast'' television series, and the Netflix historical comedy series '' Historical Roasts''. In 2009 the ''Chicago Tribune'' called Ross "the new millennium Don Rickles." His directorial debut, the 2006 documentary '' Patriot Act: A Jeffrey Ross Home Movie'', won the prize for Best Film at the Comedia film festival held at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. Early life Ross was raised in Newark, New Jersey, until he was in second grade; then his family moved to Union, New Jersey, and later to Springfield, New Jersey, where he attended Jonathan Dayton High School. He is of Jewish heritage and has a younger sister named Robyn. His mother Marsha died from leukemia when he was 14 years old. His father died of d ...
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