Telephone Bill And The Smooth Operators
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Telephone Bill And The Smooth Operators
Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators is a UK musical group performing an original blend of folk/ country/swing music. They formed in Cambridge, UK in the 1970s, split up in the 1980s, and re-formed to play at the 2001 Cambridge Folk Festival and thereafter. History Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators formed in Cambridge, England in around 1975 as an amalgam of musicians from some previous local groups including "Baby Whale" and "Duke, Duke and the Dukes", several of whom (Nick Barraclough, Anne Baker and Gerry Hale) also worked with UK bluegrass musician and recording artist Pete Sayers. The group was/is fronted by Nick Barraclough (later a BBC country/folk presenter and producer) on guitar, 5-string banjo and vocals and also included virtuoso fiddle/mandolin player Gerry Hale (who later moved to Australia), singers and songwriters Anne Baker and Chris Cox, plus (at different times) Robb Appleton, Andy Metcalfe, Tony Shepherd and Richard Lee. Their music has roots in b ...
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Cambridge, UK
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge became an important trading centre during the Roman and Viking ages, and there is archaeological evidence of settlement in the area as early as the Bronze Age. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, although modern city status was not officially conferred until 1951. The city is most famous as the home of the University of Cambridge, which was founded in 1209 and consistently ranks among the best universities in the world. The buildings of the university include King's College Chapel, Cavendish Laboratory, and the Cambridge University Library, one of the largest legal deposit libraries in the world. The city's skyline is dominated by several college buildings, along with the spire of the Our Lady and the English Martyrs ...
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Folk Music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk rev ...
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Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encomp ...
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Swing Music
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Django Reinhardt. Overview Swing has its roots in 1920s dance music ensembles, which began using new styles of written arrangements, incorporating rhythmic innovations pioneered by Louis Armstrong ...
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Nick Barraclough
Nick Barraclough (born 1951) is a British radio producer, presenter, musician and writer, who is best known for hosting shows related to specialist American music. He had presented the long-running ''Nick Barraclough's New Country'' show for BBC Radio 2 between 1992 and 2007, and ''Smooth Country'' for the Smooth Radio network from 2007 to 2008. Between 2006 and 2013 he made a number of music-related documentaries for BBC Radio 4. Early career For a number of years in the 1970s-early 1980s he worked as a musician in groups that included "Baby Whale", worked as one of the backing musicians for bluegrass artist Pete Sayers, and led the folk/country/swing acoustic group " Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators", later revived in the 2000s. His career in radio began in 1982, with the launch of BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. There he hosted the breakfast show and was later a mid morning presenter. In 1986, he moved to Manchester to produce programmes and sessions for Radios 1 and ...
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Gerry Hale
Gerald Richard "Gerry" Hale (born 1959, Newmarket, Suffolk) is an English-born, Australian-based multi-instrumentalist and vocalist. He has worked as a session musician for the Soft Boys (1978–80) and was a band member of Bouncing Czecks (fl. 1984) before relocating to Australia in 1987. He has provided violin and mandolin for Colin Hay Band (1988–90, 1994, 1998) and Broderick Smith Band (1990, 1994, 1996). Hale formed a bluegrass group, Uncle Bill, in 1996 which has had a variable line up. The group worked with Paul Kelly and together they released an album, ''Smoke'' (October 1999), which peaked at No. 36 on the ARIA Albums Chart. On that album, Hale provided guitar, mandolin, fiddle, dobro, lap steel, vocals and he co-produced it with Kelly. Biography Gerry Hale grew up in Newmarket, Suffolk and started playing music at the age of twelve, he turned professional at fifteen, spending three years touring rural England. He performed with American bluegrass pioneer, ...
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Cambridge Folk Festival
The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival, established in 1965, held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is known for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs over a long weekend (3½ days) in summer at Cherry Hinton Hall. Until 2008 it was sponsored by BBC Radio 2, who broadcast it live, with highlights were recorded and shown later and occasionally live on digital television channel BBC Four from 2002 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2012 on Sky Arts. History Recent histories have obscured the early origins of the folk festival. Ken Woollard's ''1974 Ten years of folk: A history of the Cambridge Folk Festival'' mentions three councillors who had an idea for a festival (but doesn't name them). Ken Woollard was the first director of the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1965, and continued to work as Festival Organiser and Artistic Dir ...
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Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge became an important trading centre during the Roman and Viking ages, and there is archaeological evidence of settlement in the area as early as the Bronze Age. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, although modern city status was not officially conferred until 1951. The city is most famous as the home of the University of Cambridge, which was founded in 1209 and consistently ranks among the best universities in the world. The buildings of the university include King's College Chapel, Cavendish Laboratory, and the Cambridge University Library, one of the largest legal deposit libraries in the world. The city's skyline is dominated by several college buildings, along with the spire of the Our Lady and the English Martyrs ...
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Pete Sayers
Pete or Petes or ''variation'', may refer to: People * Pete (given name) * Pete (nickname) * Pete (surname) Fictional characters * Pete (Disney), a cartoon character in the ''Mickey Mouse'' universe * Pete the Pup (a.k.a. 'Petey'), a character (played by several dogs) in Hal Roach's ''Our Gang'' comedies Places * Pete, Zanzibar, a village in Tanzania * Pete, the Hungarian name for Petea village, Dorolț Commune, Satu Mare County, Romania * Petes, Gotland, Visby, Gotland, Sweden * Petes Hill, a summit in the Adirondack Mountains, New York State, USA * Petes Creek, a tributary of the Sacandaga River, located in New York State, USA Sports and athletics * The Pete, Petersen Events Center, athletics complex and basketball arena on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh * Pete and Penny, Pete the Penguin, one of the two mascots of Youngstown State University * Purdue Pete, bookstore logo turned unofficial mascot of Purdue University * A member of the Peterborough Petes junior ice ...
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Bluegrass Music
Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as ''traditional music'', ''traditional folk music'', ''contemporary folk music'', ''vernacular music,'' or ''roots music''. Many traditional songs have been sung ... that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the United States. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Like Country music, mainstream country music, it largely developed out of Old-time music, old-time string music, though in contrast, bluegrass is traditionally played exclusively on Acoustic music, acoustic instruments and also has roots in traditional English, Scottish, and Irish Ballads, Irish ballads and dance tunes as well as in blues and jazz. Bluegrass was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe, including 5-string banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt. Monroe characterized the genr ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Dan Hicks (singer)
Daniel Ivan Hicks (December 9, 1941 – February 6, 2016) was an American singer-songwriter known for an idiosyncratic style that combined elements of cowboy folk, jazz, country, swing, bluegrass, pop, and gypsy music. He led ″Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks″. He is perhaps best known for the songs "I Scare Myself" and "Canned Music". His songs are frequently infused with humor, as evidenced by the title of his tune "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?". His album ''Live at Davies'' (2013) capped over forty years of music. Writing about Hicks for ''Oxford American'' in 2007, critic David Smay said, " ere was a time from the ’20s through the ’40s when swing—'hot rhythm'—rippled through every form of popular music. That’s the music Dan Hicks plays, and there’s no single word for it because it wasn’t limited to any one genre. Django Reinhardt and the Mills Brothers and Spade Cooley and Hank Garland and the Boswell Sisters and Stuff Smith and Bing Crosby ...
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