Remembering Etta James

Etta James
(January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012)
A few days ago, the world said farewell to Etta James, also known as "Miss Peaches" and "The Matriarch of R&B". Starting her music career in the 1950's, her style of music spanned multiple genres and she is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll. She gained fame with hits such as "Dance With Me, Henry", "At Last", "Tell Mama", and "I'd Rather Go Blind". James was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008. She is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards.

Hers is another amazing voice that will be missed, although we can still enjoy her recordings. She was an influence to many.

Happy Birthday: Anita O'Day, Chuck Berry & Wynton Marsalis

Anita O'day
(October 18, 1919 – November 23, 2006)
Born Anita Belle Colton, O'Day was admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appearances shattered the traditional image of the "girl singer". Refusing to pander to any female stereotype, O'Day presented herself as a "hip" jazz musician, wearing a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. She changed her surname from Colton to O'Day, pig Latin for "dough," slang for money. (Read more...)

Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of Rock and Roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), and "My Ding-a-Ling" (1972). Chuck Berry refined and developed Rhythm and Blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. (Read more...)

Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis, born October 18, 1961 in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a Jazz and Western classical virtuoso trumpeter and composer. He is Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music, often focusing on young audiences. (Read more...)

Happy Birthday: Ella Fitzgerald & Huey Long

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was a Jazz vocalist and pianist with a vocal range spanning three octaves (Db3 to Db6). She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

She is considered to be a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over a recording career that lasted 59 years, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards including one for Lifetime Achievement in 1967. Other major awards and honors she received during her career were the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award, National Medal of Art, first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award, named "Ella" in her honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.

EllaFitzgerald.com





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Huey Long (April 25, 1904 – June 10, 2009) was a singer, musician and composer who was the last living member of the Ink Spots, the legendary group that helped shape the musical genres of rhythm & blues, rock & roll and doo-wop.

Long was born in Sealy, Texas and grew up in a musical family with his brothers Jewell, Herbert and Sam, who all were active musicians. Huey started on piano, then moved to ukulele, to banjo and eventually guitar. In 1925, while working as a shoe shiner outside the Rice Hotel in Houston, opportunity knocked for Long to start a professional career as a musician when star trumpeter Punch Miller was in town to perform at the hotel with The Frank Davis Louisiana Jazz Band, who needed a banjo player to sit in.

After completing the summer with Davis' jazz band, Long played with a local band before moving to Chicago where he gained a foothold in Jazz. He changed to guitar with Texas Guinan's Cuban Orchestra at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Long absorbed the Chicago jazz scene playing with several big bands and recording with New Orleans pianist Richard M Jones and pianist-vocalist Lil Armstrong, the former wife of Louis Armstrong.

When bandleader Fletcher Henderson came to Chicago to play the Grand Terrace supper club, he asked the local musicians union to send him a good guitarist who could sightread. Long played the first show and passed the "audition". Long toured with Henderson and ended up at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York. After Henderson's group disbanded, Long stayed in New York and joined up with Earl Hines' Orchestra, which had Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the line-up. In early 1944, Long got the call from Bill Kenny, leader of the Ink Spots for a position with the group. His short lived tenure with the Ink Spots allowed Long to branch out as musician into other forms of entertainment.

While the Ink Spots were signed to Decca records, they recorded several tunes with label-mate Ella Fitzgerald.

Long moved back to Houston in 1996 and was cared for by his daughter Anita, who set up an Ink Spots museum featuring her father Huey. The museum is located in the Houston Heights area across the street from where his apartment was located. Huey Long was 105 years old when he passed away in 2009. For more info, log on to Ink Spots Museum and contact Anita Long.

Happy Birthday: Little Richard, Ozzy Osbourne & Jay-Z

Little Richard (December 5, 1932), the undisputed King of Rock-n-Roll, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. He began his recording career on October 16, 1951 by imitating the gospel-influenced style of late-1940s jump blues artist Billy Wright, who was a friend of his that set him up with the opportunity to record.

In 1955, under the guidance of Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, Richard began recording in a style he had been performing onstage for years, featuring varied rhythm (derived from everything from drum beats he would hear in his voice to the sounds of trains he would hear thundering by him as a child), a heavy backbeat, funky saxophone grooves, over-the-top Gospel-style singing, moans, screams, and other emotive inflections, accompanied by a combination of boogie-woogie and rhythm and blues music. This new music, which included an original injection of funk into the rock and roll beat, inspired many of the greatest recording artists of the twentieth century, including James Brown, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, and generations of other rhythm & blues, rock, and soul music artists.

In October 1951, Richard began recording jump blues records for RCA Camden. In October 1953, he began recording with Peacock Records. Records were released each year from 1951–54, but none were significant hits. Richard recorded a demo for gospel/R&B label Specialty Records on February 9, 1955. Specialty's owner, Art Rupe, loaned him money to buy out his contract from Peacock Records and placed his career in the hands of Specialty's A&R man Robert "Bumps" Blackwell. Richard told Rupe he liked Fats Domino's sound, so Rupe and Blackwell booked Cosimo Matassa's J & M Recording Studio in New Orleans, and hired studio musicians who had worked with Domino (including Earl Palmer on drums and Lee Allen on sax) rather than members of Richard's road band on many of the mid-1950s Specialty tracks.

Following some recording that did not satisfy Blackwell, they took a break. Richard began pounding out a boogie woogie rhythm on piano and hollering out impromptu recital of "Tutti Frutti", a song he had written and had been performing on stage for years. Blackwell was so impressed with the sound that he had Richard record the song. However, in order to make it commercially acceptable, Richard's lyrics were rewritten. Blackwell recognized that the lyrics, with their “minstrel modes and homosexuality humor” needed to be cleaned up. For example “Tutti Frutti, good booty", were replaced with “Tutti Frutti, aw-rooty”. The song featured the a cappella intro "A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop-a-lop-bam-boom!", which Richard first belted out years before onstage based on a drum beat he heard in his voice, that had also been altered slightly to make it commercially acceptable. The recording was released on Specialty in October 1955.



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Ozzy Osbourne (December 3, 1948), born in Burmingham, England, is a singer/songwriter whose career has spanned over 40 years. As of December 2010, Osbourne has sold over 100 million albums worldwide.

Osbourne rose to prominence as lead vocalist of the pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, a band whose radically different, intentionally dark, doom sound spawned the heavy metal genre. In his subsequent solo career Osbourne achieved a multi-platinum status in addition to the one he had earned with Black Sabbath. These things are what led Osbourne to become known as the "Godfather of Heavy Metal".



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Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is a rapper and businessman. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America having had a net worth of over $450 million in 2010. He has sold approximately 50 million albums worldwide, while receiving ten Grammy Awards for his musical work, and numerous additional nominations.

Happy Birthday: Anita O'Day, Chuck Berry & Wynton Marsalis

Anita O'Day
(October 18, 1919 – November 23, 2006)
Born Anita Belle Colton, O'Day was admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appearances shattered the traditional image of the "girl singer". Refusing to pander to any female stereotype, O'Day presented herself as a "hip" jazz musician, wearing a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. She changed her surname from Colton to O'Day, pig Latin for "dough," slang for money.

O'Day's skills in improvisation of rhythm and melody put her squarely among the pioneers of bebop; indeed, a staple of her live act in the 1950s was a cover of "Four" by Miles Davis. She cited Martha Raye as the primary influence on her vocal style, although she also expressed admiration for Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. O'Day's backbeat-based singing style was strongly influential on many other female singers of the late swing and bebop eras, including June Christy, Chris Connor and Doris Day.

O'Day's career was on the upswing after performing with Count Basie in September 1948 at the Royal Roost in New York City. Her first album, Anita O'Day Sings Jazz (reissued as The Lady Is a Tramp), was recorded in 1952 for the newly established Norgran Records (it was also the label's first LP). The album was a critical success and further boosted her popularity. On February 25, 1954, she began work on her second album, Songs by Anita O'Day (reissued as An Evening with Anita O'Day). She recorded steadily throughout the 1950s, accompanied by small combos and big bands. In person, O'Day was generally backed by a trio which included John Poole, the drummer with whom she would work for the next 40 years.

As a live performer O'Day also began performing in festivals and concerts with such musicians as Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Dinah Washington, George Shearing, Cal Tjader, and Thelonious Monk. She appeared in the documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day, filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival which increased her popularity.



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Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of Rock and Roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), and "My Ding-a-Ling" (1972). Chuck Berry refined and developed Rhythm and Blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name, as well as a lucrative touring career.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several Rolling Stone "Greatest of All Time" lists, including being ranked sixth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry's songs: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Now in his eighties, Berry continues to play live.



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Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis, born October 18, 1961 in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a Jazz and Western classical virtuoso trumpeter and composer. He is Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music, often focusing on young audiences.

As a Jazz performer and composer he has made display of his extensive knowledge about jazz and jazz history and for being a classical virtuoso. As of 2006, he has made sixteen classical and more than thirty jazz recordings, has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for a Jazz recording.

Happy Birthday: Lennon, Vaughn, Mellencamp, Yo-Yo Ma, Braxton, Checker, Yorke

John Lennon
(October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)
Born John Winston Ono Lennon in Liverpool, England, was an English singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles and, with Paul McCartney, formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing, on film, and in interviews, and became controversial through his work as a peace activist. He moved to New York City in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while his songs were adapted as anthems by the anti-war movement. Disengaging himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to his family, Lennon reemerged in 1980 with a comeback album, Double Fantasy, but was murdered three weeks after its release.

Stevie Ray Vaughn
(October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990)
Stephen Ray "Stevie" Vaughan, born in Dallas, Texas, was a guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Vaughan has won several Grammy awards during his lifetime and posthumously including 'Best Rock Instrumental Performance' and 'Best Contemporary Blues Album'. Eighteen albums of Vaughan's work have been released.

Vaughan was inspired to play guitar by his older brother, Jimmie Vaughan, and was influenced by such players as Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy. After a few years as a sideman in and around Austin, Vaughan formed the band Double Trouble, with whom he made four successful studio albums and established a reputation as one of the foremost blues guitarists in the world. He was noted for using the Fender Stratocaster, with several guitars being made in tribute to Vaughan, including a Signature Stratocaster and a replica of his famous Strat named "Lenny". In 1986, after years of substance abuse from alcohol and cocaine, he spent a month in drug rehabilitation, and remained clean and sober for the final four years of his life, until his death in 1990 in a helicopter crash.

Chubby Checker
Born Ernest Evans on October 3, 1941 in Spring Gulley, South Carolina, is a singer-songwriter. He also popularized the dance style Twist, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard's R&B hit "The Twist". In September 2008, "The Twist" topped Billboard's list of the most popular singles to have appeared in the Hot 100 since its debut in 1958.

Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma born October 7, 1955 in Paris, France, is an cellist, virtuoso, orchestral composer and winner of multiple Grammy Awards. He is one of the most famous cellists of the modern age. His mother, Marina Lu, was a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a violinist and professor of music. His family moved to New York when he was five years old.

Ma studied at the Juilliard School of Music with Leonard Rose and briefly attended Columbia University before ultimately enrolling at Harvard University. Prior to entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of nonagenarian cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. Ma would ultimately spend four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival after meeting and falling in love with Mount Holyoke College sophomore and festival administrator Jill Hornor his first summer there in 1972.

Ma was named Peace Ambassador by United Nations then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in January 2006. On November 3, 2009, President Obama appointed Ma to serve on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

John Cougar Mellencamp
Born October 7, 1951 in Seymore, Indiana, John Cougar Mellencamp is a rock singer-songwriter, musician, painter and occasional actor known for his catchy, populist brand of heartland rock that eschews synthesizers and other artificial sounds in favor of organic instrumentation. He has sold over 40 million albums worldwide and has amassed 22 Top 40 hits in the United States. In addition, he holds the record for the most tracks by a solo artist to hit number-one on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Toni Braxton
Toni Michelle Braxton born October 7, 1967 in Severn, Maryland, is an R&B singer-songwriter. Braxton has won six Grammy Awards in her career and has sold 40 million records worldwide. She has a contralto vocal range. Braxton topped the Billboard 200 with her 1993 self-titled debut album and continued that streak with her second studio album Secrets, which spawned the number-one hits "You're Makin' Me High" and "Un-Break My Heart".

Thom Yorke
Thomas Edward "Thom" Yorke, born October 7, 1968 is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the alternative rock band Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar (notably during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions). In July 2006, he released his debut solo album, The Eraser.