Blacks Whites and the Blues - Portfólio 2012 - 1ºc - JJLLMMNN by Work Portfólio

Blacks Whites and Blues Marcos, Natalia Ortiz, Natalia Guerra, Jaqueline, Jonathan, Luis, Lucas e Maria.

IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES YOU, THE READER WILL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN AND DELVE INTO ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE MUSICAL STYLES FOR ALL SEASONS, THE BLUES. YOU KNOW THE STORY, WHERE DID AS IT STARTED, THE LIFE OF THE MAIN SINGERS, FROM ITS HEYDAY TO ITS DECLINE, THE STYLES OF BLUES, LYRICS AND MORE. READING THIS PORTFOLIO CERTAINLY THEIR CULTURE ON MUSIC WILL BE ADDED, SO SPLENDID, BECAUSE THE BLUES IS NOT JUST A BLUE ROOM CLOSED, QUITE THE OPPOSITE IS THE GATEWAY TO THE VAST WORLD MUSIC, BLUES IS THE MUSIC ITSELF, IS THE ITS ESSENCE. SO OPEN YOUR MIND TO RECEIVE THIS WAVE KNOW. WE INVITE YOU THEN TO "TIGHTEN THEIR BELTS" "HOLD TIGHT" AND JUMP RIGHT IN BLUES!

WELCOME TO THE WORLD BLUES!

HISTORY OF BLUES----------------------------5 GENRES OF THE BLUES--------------------- 20 TRANSITION FROM ACOUSTIC---------- 44 TO ELETRIC BLUES INFLUENCES OF BLUES--------------------- 45 CLASSICAL BLUES--------------------------- 48 BLUESMAN-------------------------------------49 BLUESWOMEN--------------------------------59 INSTRUMENTS USED IN BLUES------------ 60 ARTISTS OF BLUES--------------------------- 73 WHITES INTEREST IN BLACK MUSIC ---125 A BIT MORE BLUES--------------------------127 BLUES REVIVAL ------------------------------136 DESENVOLVIMENTO PESSOAL -------- 137 BIBLIOGRAPHY------------------------------145 CONCLUSION ------------------------------147

Origins. The origin of the term of was most likely derived from mysticism involving blue indigo, which was used by many West African cultures in death and mourning ceremonies where all the mourner's garments would have been dyed blue to indicate suffering. This mystical association towards the indigo plant, grown in many southern US slave plantations, combined with the West African slaves who sang of their suffering as they worked on the cotton that the indigo dyed eventually resulted in these expressed songs being known as "the Blues". The first publication of blues sheet music was Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" in 1912; W. C. Handy's "The Memphis Blues" followed in the same year. The first recording by an African American singer was Mamie Smith's 1920 rendition of Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues". But the origins of the blues date back to some decades earlier, probably around 1890. They are very poorly documented, due in part to racial discrimination within American society, including academic circles, and to the low literacy rate of the rural African American community at the time. Chroniclers began to report about blues music in Southern Texas and Deep South at the dawn of the 20th century. In particular, Charles Peabody mentioned the appearance of blues music at Clarksdale, Mississippi and Gate Thomas reported very similar songs in southern Texas around 1901â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1902. These observations coincide more or less with the remembrance of Jelly Roll Morton, who declared having heard blues for the first time in New Orleans in 1902; Ma Rainey, who remembered her first blues experience the same year in Missouri; and W.C. Handy, who first heard the blues in Tutwiler, Mississippi in 1903. The first extensive research in the field was performed by Howard W. Odum, who published a large anthology of folk songs in the counties of Lafayette, Mississippi and Newton, Georgia between 1905 and 1908. The first non-commercial recordings of blues music, termed "proto-blues" by Paul Oliver, were made by Odum at the very beginning of the 20th century for research purposes. They are now utterly lost. Other recordings that are still available were made in 1924 by Lawrence Gellert. Later, several recordings were made by Robert W. Gordon, who became head of the Archive of American Folk Songs of the Library of Congress. Gordon's successor at the Library was John Lomax. In the 1930s, together with his son Alan, Lomax made a large number of non-commercial blues recordings that testify to the huge variety of proto-blues styles, such as field hollers and ring shouts. A record of blues music as it existed before the 1920s is also given by the recordings of artists such as Lead Belly or Henry Thomas who both performed archaic blues music. All these sources show the existence of many different structures distinct

from the twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar. The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. The first appearance of the blues is often dated after theEmancipation Act of 1863, between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with Emancipation and, later, the development of juke joints as places where Blacks went to listen to music, dance, or gamble after a hard day's work. This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to sharecropping, smallscale agricultural production, and the expansion of railroads in the southern United States. Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people. According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine states that "psychologically, socially, and economically, African-Americans were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did. There are few characteristics common to all blues music, because the genre took its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performances.However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues. Call-and-response shouts were an early form of blues-like music; they were a "functional expression ... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure."A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave ring shouts and field hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content". Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa and rural blacks into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States. Though blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the John Lomax, African call-and-response tradition, pioneering musicologist andfolklorist. transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots, and the influences are faint and tenuous. In particular, no specific African musical form can be identified as the single direct ancestor of the blues. However many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. That blue notes pre-date their use in blues and have an African origin is attested by English composer Samuel ColeridgeTaylor's "A Negro Love Song", from his The African Suite for Piano composed in 1898, which contains blue third and seventh notes.

The Diddley bow (a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of the American South in the early twentieth century) and the banjo are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary. The banjo seems to be directly imported from western African music. It is similar to the musical instrument that griots and other Africans such as the Igbo played (called halam or akonting by African peoples such as the Wolof, Fula and Mandinka). However, in the 1920s, when country blues began to be recorded, the use of the banjo in blues music was quite marginal and limited to individuals such as Papa Charlie Jackson and later Gus Cannon. Blues music also adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs", minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music". The musical forms and styles that are now considered the "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose in the same regions during the 19th century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively. At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country," except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies. Though musicologists can now attempt to define “the blues” narrowly in terms of certain chord structures and lyric strategies thought to have originated in West Africa, audiences originally heard the music in a far more general way: it was simply the music of the rural south, notably the Mississippi Delta. Black and white musicians shared the same repertoire and thought of themselves as “songsters” rather than “blues musicians.” The notion of blues as a separate genre arose during the black migration from the countryside to urban areas in the 1920s and the simultaneous development of the recording industry. “Blues” became a code word for a record designed to sell to black listeners.

Charlie Patton, one of the originators of the Delta blues style, playing with a pick or abottleneck slide.

The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The origins of spirituals go back much further than the blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian hymns, in particular those of Isaac Watts, which were very popular. Before the blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. It was the low-down music played by the rural Blacks. Depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered as a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music. Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters. However, at the time rural Black music began to get recorded in the 1920s, both

categories of musicians used very similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars. Gospel music was nevertheless using musical forms that were "Speaking to yourselves in psalms compatible with Christian hymns and therefore less marked by singing and making melody the blues form than its secular in your heart to the Lord counterpart. with hymns and spiritual songs ... "

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Spiritualâ&#x20AC;?.

The song is called spiritual by almost be a song of inspiration black slave. Although sometimes the spiritual progress is a cheerful and more with the allegro called Shout (in Portuguese, "Scream"), to dance among them, most spirituals has a gentle tone, in a way "off" and meditative, and the black, chained, seated and Wade in the water could sing acapella. But the Wade in the water, children, idea of the spiritual root Wade in the water comes from a biblical, spiritual God's a-going to trouble the songs that we can find in this water reading, with the mention of "spiritual songs." See that host all dressed in white The Spiritual of African God's a-going to trouble the Americans began to emerge water The leader looks like the Israelite during the years of slavery, God's a-going to trouble the which may extend well before water the American Revolution of 1776, but it was only around See that band all dressed in red 1860 that the music began to God's a-going to trouble the be published. This year, water Looks like the band that Moses led several states had already God's a-going to trouble the emancipated slavery. water Despite the religious tone of the Afro-American Spiritual Look over yonder, what do you was mainly a political function see? God's a-going to trouble the aimed at the abolition of water slavery. In these songs the The Holy SPIRIT a-coming on me abolitionists and / or already God's a-going to trouble the freed slaves (these usually water are ascribed authorship of such songs) inserted codes / If you don't believe I've been redeemed expressions that showed God's a-going to trouble the slaves to their flight paths and water thus means locate them. Just follow me down to the In the song Wade in the Water, we see a Jordan's stream clear example of political tone abolitionist God's a-going to trouble the encoded in one of the many songs that water mask the freedom struggle in verses that refer to Christianity.

The Spiritual Form frequently uses the song, following the format: "A" for the first verse "A" for the second verse ("A" = repeating the same melody) "B" follows a chorus and, in general, back to the beginning (with the hood) and repeats the format with different verses. We can cite as an example the so Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord) "(in Portuguese," Were you there when they crucified the Lord? "). This form is not a rule not to be broken, therefore found also in spiritual strophic form and looks to a sacred hymn in his style. A melodic rhythm, with text in English, would be an optimistic tone in a song, sung with exultation, or tone of meditation, like a song for spiritual reflection or regret personnel; always print evangelical or meditation can be sung solo, unattended, since blacks had almost a musical instrument, or with an accompaniment of bagpipes. When a church service, a corner may have responsive, with a choir singing the responses of soil during the chorus, or even echoing his own solo singing, as responsory during the whole song. In many interpretations singer sings the verses tenderly, and when you start the chorus intones a posture and slurred diction and more aggressive, with more time on the pitch and attack with more speed. The melody is diatonic well and not tend to modulate or modulate only one step above to color a back end over mind, for example, but modulations do not appear generally in sheet originals - are only details of most modern arrangements . From this arose the pace style gospel music. The style was establishing itself commercially in the Twentieth Century and white composers began to write spiritual too. The scenarios for the period of the conquest of the West in which slaves lived, served as inspiration for many Broadway musicals such as "Oklahoma" from (Rodgers and Hammerstein), (1943), "Showboat" of (Jerome Kern and Hammerstein) ( 1927), in which the plots are in the states gave the new frontier to the West, Kansas, Oklahoma and along the southern U.S., on the Mississippi River. The very theme song from the musical Oklahoma develops responsory style, switching voices each phrase and Country has the pace of the old American West. In "Showboat" both blacks and whites attending the play, a musical racially integrated, including a chorus of blacks and whites in another chorus. The song Black Spiritual, Ol 'Man River, was written by Jerome Kern for this musical, Showboat. they ate chorizo and potatoes cooked only once a day. No more eating nothing like singing songs had revolted and hence was born ragtime.

The text often is simple and has a main phrase for each verse, which is repeated, sometimes even four times (four melodic phrases of the first verse), and in the chorus, which finally answers the verses repeat. Sometimes the initial text is a question, only one other message. There is even the suggestion that blacks while they were slaves because they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t talk when working on the construction of the railway, for example, were eager to communicate, they then sang to each other with your questions, and sometimes, another who was working nearby responded, singing the chorus. The themes were like: "Jesus is my friend" or "I'll work on the railroad, with Jesus by my side." The thematic idea came with the inspiration of the Old Testament Bible, the children of Israel, the story of Moses, and the premise that the Old Testament God destroyed enemies. There is even a specific spiritual cited above, Wade in the Water that the letter has instructions on how to escape ... "towards the water" (so that the dogs canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t trace them, obviously).

Pre-war blues. The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry had published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating theTin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by "Baby" F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand and "The Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy. Handy was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime; Handy's signature work was the Saint Louis Blues*.

*Saint Louis Blues is a popular American song composed by W. C. Handy in the blues style. It remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire. It was also one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song. It has been performed by numerous musicians of all styles from Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith to Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, and the Boston Pops Orchestra. It has been called "the jazz man's Hamlet". Published in September 1914 by Handy's own company, it later gained such popularity that it inspired the dance step the "Foxtrot".

Sheet music cover

In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the Theater Owners Bookers Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton

Single by Bessie Smith Club and juke joints such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began to record African American music. As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter, Jimmie Rodgers (country singer), Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in the African American community. Kentuckyborn Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar

is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues. The first blues recordings from the 1920s are categorized as a traditional, rural country blues and a more polished 'city' or urban blues. Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar. Regional styles of country blues varied widely in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a roots sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. The little-recorded Robert Johnson combined elements of urban and rural blues. In addition to Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style included his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate ragtime-based fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition, with Curley Weaver,Tampa Red, "Barbecue Bob" Hicks and James "Kokomo" Arnold as representatives of this style. The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s near Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by jug bands such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Joe McCoy, Casey Bill Weldon and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as wash board, fiddle, kazoo or mandolin. Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinct style was smoother and had some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement, which blended country music and electric blues. City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate as a performer was no longer within their local, immediate community and had to adapt to a larger, more varied audience's aesthetic. Classic female urban and vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them Mamie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African-American to record a blues in 1920; her second record, "Crazy Blues", sold 75,000 copies in its first month. Ma Rainey, the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith each "[sang] around center tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room." Smith would "...sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed." Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr. An important label of this era was the Chicagoan Bluebird label. Before WWII,

Ma Rainey â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mother of Bluesâ&#x20AC;?

Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the Guitar Wizard". Carr accompanied himself on the piano with Scrapper Blackwell on guitar, a format that continued well into the 50s with people such as Charles Brown, and even Nat "King" Cole. Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-Woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Bessie Smith. an early blues singer, was Chicago boogie-woogie performers known for her powerful voice. included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand." The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles. Another development in this period was big band blues. The "territory bands" operating out of Kansas City, the Bennie Moten orchestra, Jay McShann, and the Count Basie Orchestra were also concentrating on the blues, with 12-bar blues instrumentals such as Basie's "One O'Clock Jump" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and boisterous "blues shouting" by Jimmy Rushing on songs such as "Going to Chicago" and "Sent for You Yesterday". A well-known The Count Basie Orchestra, with vocalist Ethel Waters, big band blues tune is Glenn from the film Stage Door Canteen (1943) Miller's "In the Mood". In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues grew up from the boogie woogie wave and was strongly influenced by big band music. It uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker, who is often associated with the California blues style, performed a successful transition from the early urban blues Ă la Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s. Another development in this period was big band blues. The

"territory bands" operating out of Kansas City, the Bennie Moten orchestra, Jay McShann, and the Count Basie Orchestra were also concentrating on the blues, with 12-bar blues instrumentals such as Basie's "One O'Clock Jump" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and boisterous "blues shouting" by Jimmy Rushing on songs such as "Going to Chicago" and "Sent for You Yesterday". A well-known big band blues tune is Glenn Miller's "In the Mood". In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues grew up from the boogie- woogie wave and was strongly influenced by big band music. It uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker, who is often associated with the California blues style, performed a successful transition from the early urban blues Ă la Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s.

1950s. The transition from country to urban blues that began in the 1920s had always been driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms and the associated move of the rural Blacks to urban areas, the Great Migration. The long boom in the aftermath of World War II induced a massive migration of the African American population, the Second Great Migration, which was accompanied by a significant increase of the real income of the urban Blacks. The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry. The name race record disappeared and was succeeded by Rhythm and Blues. This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by the Billboard Rhythm and Blues Chart. This marketing strategy reinforced trends within urban blues music such as the progressive electrification of the instruments, their amplification and the generalization of the blues beat, the blues shuffle that became ubiquitous in R&B This commercial stream had important consequences for blues music which, together with Jazz and Gospel music, became a component of the R&B wave. After World War II and in the 1950s, new styles of electric blues music became popular in cities such as Chicago, Memphis, Detroit and St. Louis. Electric blues used electric guitars, double bass (slowly replaced by bass guitar), drums, and harmonica played through a microphone and a PA system or a guitar amplifier. Chicago became a center for electric blues from 1948 on, when Muddy Waters recorded his first success: "I Can't Be Satisfied" Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by the Mississippi blues style, because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region.

Muddy Waters, described as "the guiding light of the modern blues school"

Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar; sometimes slide

guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. J. T. Brown who played in Elmore James's bands, or J. B. Lenoir's also used saxophones, but these were used more as "backing" or rhythmic support than as solo instruments. Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) are well known harmonica (called "harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. Howl in' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices. Bassist and composer Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many standard blues songs of the period, such as "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters) and, "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records and Checker Records labels. Smaller blues labels of this era included Vee-Jay Records and J.O.B. Records. During the early 1950s, the dominating Chicago labels were challenged by Sam Phillips' Sun Records company in Memphis, which recorded B. B. King and Howlin' Wolf before he moved to Chicago in 1960. After Phillips discovered Elvis Presley in 1954, the Sun label turned to the rapidly expanding white audience and started recording mostly rock 'n' roll. In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music. While popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry both recording for Chess, were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana's zydeco music, with Cli fton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and Cajun arrangements of blues standards. Overseas, in England, electric blues took root there during a much acclaimed Muddy Waters tour. Waters, unsuspecting of his audience's tendency towards Skiffle, an acoustic, softer brand of blues, turned up his amp and started to play his Chicago brand of electric blues. Although the audience was largely jolted by the performance, the performance influenced local musicians such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies to emulate this louder style, inspiring the British invasion of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.

John Lee Hooker

In the late 1950s, a new blues style emerged on Chicago's West Side pioneered by Magic [104] Sam, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush on Cobra Records. The 'West Side Sound' had strong rhythmic support from a rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums and as perfected by Guy, Freddie King, Magic Slim and Luther Allison was dominated by amplified electric lead guitar. Other blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly

Influenced by boogie woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His [ first hit, "Boogie Chillen", reached #1 on the R&B charts in 1949. By the late 1950s, the swamp blues genre developed near Baton Rouge, with performers such as Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain around the producer J. D. "Jay" Miller and the Excello label. Strongly influenced by Jimmy Reed, Swamp blues has a slower pace and a simpler use of the harmonica than the Chicago blues style performers such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Songs from this genre include "Scratch my Back", "She's Tough" and "I'm a King Bee". Alan Lomax's recordings of Mississippi Fred McDowell would eventually bring him wider attention on both the blues and folk circuit, with McDowell's droning style influencing North Mississippi hill country blues musicians. Otis Rush, a pioneer of the 'West Side Sound'

1960s and 1970s. By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by African American music such as rock and roll and soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers had brought African-American music to new audiences, both within the US and abroad. However, the blues wave that brought artists such as Muddy Waters to the foreground had stopped. Bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy and Willie Dixon started looking for new markets in Europe. Dick Waterman and the blues festivals he organized in Europe played a major role in propagating blues music abroad. In the UK, bands emulated US blues legends, and UK blues-rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s. Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album Endless Boogie. B. B. King's virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support from a saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, instead of using slide guitar or harp.Tennessee-born Bobby "Blue" Bland, like B. B. King, also straddled the blues and R&B genres. During this period, Freddie King and Albert King often played with rock and soul musicians (Eric Clapton, Booker T & the MGs) and had a major influence on those styles of music. The music of the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the US prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African American music. As well as Jimmi Bass

Music festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis. Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished by the Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir from the Chicago blues movement in the 1950s recorded several LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His songs, originally distributed in Europe only, commented on political issues such as racism or Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His Alabama

I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me (2x) You know they killed my sister and my brother, and the whole world let them peoples go down there free Blues recording had a song that stated:

White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicagobased Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the British blues movement. The style of British blues developed in the UK, when bands such as The Animals, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and Cream and Irish musician Rory Gallagher performed classic blues songs from the Delta or Chicago blues traditions. Many of Led Zeppelin's earlier hits were renditions of traditional blues songs. The British and blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American blues rock fusion performers, including Canned Heat, the early Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter,The J. Geils Band, Ry Cooder, and The Allman Brothers Band. One blues rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and feedback in his music. Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of rock music. Santana, which was originally called the Carlos Santana Blues Band, also experimented with Latin-influenced blues and blues-rock music around this time. At the end of the 1950s appeared the very bluesy Tulsa Sound merging rock'n'roll, jazz and country influences. This particular music style started to be broadly popularized within the 1970s by J.J. Cale and the cover versions performed by Eric Clapton of "After Midnight" and "Cocaine". In the early 1970s, The Texas rock-blues style emerged, which used guitars in both solo

Carlos Santana, guitarist. 17

and rhythm roles. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of the Texas style are Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and ZZ Top. These artists all began their musical journey in the 1970s, but they did not achieve major international success until the next decade.

1980s to the 2000s Since at least the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, Mississippi and other deep South regions. Often termed "soul blues" or "Southern soul", the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's Down Home Blues (1982) and Little Milton's The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work this vein of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease, Peggy Scott-Adams, Mel Waiters, Clarence Carter, Dr. "Feelgood" Potts, O.B. Buchana, Ms. Jody, Shirley Brown, and dozens of others. During the 1980s, blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1986, the album Strong Persuader revealed Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording, Texas Flood, was released in 1983, and the Texas-based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. 1989 saw a revival of John Lee Hooker's popularity with the album The Healer. Eric Clapton, known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar. However, beginning in the 1990s,digital multitrack recording and other technological advances and new marketing strategies that include video clip production have increased costs, and challenge the spontaneity and improvisation that are an important component of blues music. In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began to be distributed, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged. In the 1990s, largely ignored hill country blues gained minor recognition in both

Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan

blues and alternative rock music circles with North Mississippi artists R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Blues performers explored a range of musical genres, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W. C. Handy Awards or of the Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and Traditional Blues Album. The Bilboard Blues Album chart monitors and therefore provides an overview over the current blues production. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as: Alligator Records, Ruf Records, Severn Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, Northern Blues Music, Fat Possum Records and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for their rediscovering and remastering of blues rarities such as Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records) and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records).

British

♪ Introduction British blues is a form of music derived from American blues that originated in the late 1950s and which reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1960s, when it developed a distinctive and influential style dominated by electric guitar and made international stars of several proponents of the genre including The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin. A number of these moved into mainstream rock music and as a result British blues helped to form many of the sub-genres of rock. Since then direct interest in the blues in Britain has declined, but many of the key performers have returned to it in recent years, new acts have emerged and there has been a renewed interest in the genre.

♪ Origins American blues became known in Britain from the 1930s onwards through a number of routes, including records brought to Britain, particularly by African-American GIs stationed there in the Second World War and Cold War, merchant seamen visiting ports such as London, Liverpool ,Newcastle on Tyne and Belfast, and through a trickle of (illegal) imports. Blues music was relatively well known to British Jazz musicians and fans, particularly in the works of figures like female singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and the blues influenced Boogie Woogie of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. From 1955 major British record labels HMV and EMI, the latter, particularly through their subsidiary Decca Records, began to distribute American jazz and increasingly blues records to what was an emerging market. Many encountered blues for the first time through the skiffle craze of the second half of the 1950s, particularly the songs of Lead belly covered by acts like Lonnie Donegan. As skiffle began to decline in the late 1950s, and British Rock and Roll began to dominate the charts, a number of skiffle musicians moved towards playing purely blues music. Among these were guitarist and blues harpist Cyril Davies, who ran the London Skiffle Club at the Roundhouse public house in London’s Soho and guitarist Alexis Korner, both of whom worked for jazz band leader Chris Barber, playing in the R&B segment he introduced to his show. The club served as a focal point for British skiffle acts and Barber was responsible for bringing over American folk and blues performers, who found they were much better known and paid in Europe than America. The first major artist was Big Bill Broonzy, who visited England in the mid-1950s, but who, rather than his electric Chicago blues, played a folk

Alexis Korner, often called the father of British blues

blues set to fit in with British expectations of American blues as a form of folk music. In 1957 Davies and Korner decided that their central interest was the blues and closed the skiffle club, reopening a month later as The London Blues and Barrelhouse Club. To this point British blues was acoustically played emulating Delta blues and country blues styles and often part of the emerging second British folk revival. Critical in changing this was the visit of Muddy Waters in 1958, who initially shocked British audiences by playing amplified electric blues, but who was soon playing to ecstatic crowds and rave reviews. Davies and Korner, having already split with Barber, now plugged in and began to play high powered electric blues that became the model for the sub-genre, forming the band Blues Incorporated. Blues Incorporated became something of a clearing house for British blues musicians in the later 1950s and early 1960s, with many joining, or sitting in on sessions. These included future Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Brian Jones; as well as Cream founders Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker; beside Graham Bond and Long John Baldry. Blues Incorporated were given a residency at the Marquee Club and it was from there that in 1962 they took the name of the first British Blues album, R&B from the Marquee for Decca, but split before its release. The culmination of this first movement of blues[6] came with John Mayall, who moved to London in the early 1960s, eventually forming the Bluesbreakers, whose members at various times included, Jack Bruce, Aynsley Dunbar and Mick Taylor.

â&#x2122;Ş British rhythm and blues While some bands focused on blues artists, particularly those of Chicago electric blues, others adopted a wider interest in rhythm and blues, including the work of Chess Records' blues artists like Muddy Waters and Howl in' Wolf, but also rock and roll pioneers Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Most successful were the Rolling Stones, who abandoned blues purism before their line-up solidified and they produced their first eponymously titled album in 1964, which largely consisted of rhythm and blues standards. Following in the wake of the Beatles' national and then international success, the Rolling Stones soon established themselves as the second most popular UK band and joined the British Invasion of the American record charts as leaders of a second wave of R&B orientated bands. In addition to Chicago blues numbers, the Rolling Stones also covered songs by Chuck Berry and Bobby and Shirley Womack, with the The Rolling Stones, the most successful act to emerge latter's "It's All Over Now", giving them from the British R&B scene, in 1965 their first UK number one in 1964. Blues

songs and influences continued to surface in the Rolling Stones' music, as in their version of "Little Red Rooster" went to number 1 on the UK singles chart in December 1964. Other London-based bands included the Yard birds (who would number their ranks three key guitarists Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page), the Kinks (with the pioneer songwriter Ray Davies and rock-guitarist Dave Davies) and, Manfred Mann (considered to have one of the most authentic sounding vocalists in the scene in Paul Jones) and the Pretty Things, beside the more jazz-influenced acts like the Graham Bond Organization, Georgie Fame and Zoot Money. Bands to emerge from other major British cities included The Animals from Newcastle (with the keyboards of Alan Price and vocals of Eric Burdon), The Moody Blues and Spencer Davis Group from Birmingham (the latter largely a vehicle for the young Steve Win wood), and Them from Belfast (with their vocalist Van Morrison). None of these bands played exclusively rhythm and blues, often relying on a variety of sources, including Brill Building and girl group songs for their hit singles, but it remained at the core of their early albums. The British Mod subculture was musically centred on rhythm and blues and later soul music, Georgie Fame, one of the major figures of the British R&B performed by artists that were movement in 1968 not available in small London clubs around which the scene was based. As a result a number of mod bands emerged to fill this gap. These included The Small Faces, The Creation, The Action and most successfully The Who. The Who's early promotional material tagged them as producing "maximum rhythm and blues", but by about 1966 they moved from attempting to emulate American R&B to producing songs that reflected the Mod lifestyle. Many of these bands were able to enjoy cult and then national success in the UK, but found it difficult to break into the American market. Only the Who managed, after some difficulty, to produce a significant US following, particularly after their appearances at the Monterey Pop Festival (1967) and Woodstock (1969). Because of the very different circumstances from which they came, and in which they played, the rhythm and blues these bands produced was very different in tone from that of African American artists, often with more emphasis on guitars and sometimes with greater energy. They have been criticized for exploiting the massive catalogue of African American music, but it has also been noted that they both popularized that music, bringing it to British, world and in some cases American audiences, and helping to build the reputation of existing and past rhythm and blues artists. Most of these bands rapidly moved on from recording and performing American standards to writing and recording their own music, often leaving their R&B roots behind, but enabling several to enjoy sustained careers that were not open to most of the more pop-oriented beat groups of the first wave of the invasion, who (with the major exception of the Beatles) were unable to write their own material or adapt to changes in the musical climate.

â&#x2122;Ş The pinnacle of British Blues The blues boom overlapped, both chronologically and in terms of personnel, with the earlier, wider rhythm and blues phase, which had begun to peter out in the mid-1960s leaving a nucleus of instrumentalists with a wide knowledge of blues forms and techniques, which they would carry into the pursuit of more purist blues interests. Blues Incorporated and Mayall's

Blues breakers were well known in the London Jazz and emerging R&B circuits, but the Blues breakers began to gain some national and international attention, particularly after the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings. Produced by Mike Vernon, who later set up the Blue Horizon record label, it was notable for its driving rhythms and Clapton's rapid blues licks with a full distorted sound derived from a Gibson Les Paul and a Marshallamp. This sound became something of a classic combination for British blues (and later rock) guitarists, and also made clear the primacy of the guitar, seen as a distinctive characteristic of the sub-genre. Clapton stated, "I spent most of my teens and early twenties studying the blues - the geography of it and the chronology of it, as well as how to play it". Peter Green started what is called "second great epoch of British blues", as he replaced Clapton in the Blues breakers after his departure to form Cream. In 1967, after one record with the Blues breakers, Green, with the Blues breaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, produced by Mike Vernon on the Blue Horizon label. One key factor in developing the popularity of the music in the UK and across Europe in the early 1960s was the success of the American Folk Blues Festival tours, organized by German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau. The rise of electric blues, and its eventual mainstream success, meant that British acoustic blues was completely overshadowed. In the early 1960s, folk guitar pioneers Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and particularly Davy Graham (who played and recorded with Korner), played blues, folk and jazz, developing a distinctive guitar style known as folk baroque. British acoustic blues continued to develop as part of the folk scene, with figures like Ian A. Anderson and his Country Blues Band, and Al Jones. Most British acoustic Cream, one of the most influential bands blues players could achieve little commercial success and, of to emerge from the movement, c. 1966 with a few exceptions, found it difficult to gain any recognition for their "imitations" of the blues in the US. In contrast, the next wave of bands, formed from about 1967, like Cream, Fleetwood Mac,Ten Years After and Free, pursued a different route, retaining blues standards in their repertoire and producing original material that often shied away from obvious pop influences, placing an emphasis on individual virtuosity. The result has been characterized as bluesrock and arguably marked the beginnings of a separation of pop and rock music that was to be a feature of the record industry for several decades. Cream, is often seen as the first super group, combining the talents of Clapton, Bruce and Baker, they have also been seen

as the first groups to exploit the power trio. Although only together for a little over two years, from 1966-9, they were highly influential and it was in this period that Clapton became an international superstar. Fleetwood Mac are often considered to have produced some of the finest work in the sub-genre, with inventive interpretations of Chicago Blues. They were also the most commercially successful group, with their eponymous dĂŠbut album reaching the UK top five in early 1968 and as the instrumental "Albatross" reached number one in the single charts in early 1969. This was, as Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz put it, "The commercial apex of the British blues Boom". Free, with the guitar talents of Paul Kossoff, particularly from their self-titled second album (1969), produced a stripped down form of blues that would be highly influential on hard rock and later heavy metal. Ten Years After, with guitarist Alvin Lee, formed in 1967, but achieved their breakthrough in 1968 with their live album Undead and in the US with their appearance at Woodstock the next year. Among the last British blues bands to gain mainstream success were Jethro Tull, formed from the amalgamation of two blues bands, the John Evan Band and the Mcgregor's Engine in 1967, their second album Stand UP, reached number one in the UK in 1969.

â&#x2122;Ş Decline A rapid decline began at the end of 1960s. Surviving bands and musicians tended to move into other expanding areas of rock music. Some, like Jethro Tull followed bands like the Moody Blues away from 12-bar structures and harmonicas into complex, classicalinfluenced progressive rock. Some played a loud version of blues rock, that became the foundation for hard rock and heavy metal. Led Zeppelin, formed by former Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page, on their first two albums, both released in 1969, fused heavy blues and amplified rock to create what has been seen as a watershed in the development of hard rock and nascent heavy metal. Later recordings would mix in elements of folk and mysticism, which would also be a major influence on heavy metal music. Deep Purple developed a sound based on "squeezing and stretching" the blues, and achieved their commercial breakthrough with their fourth and distinctively heavier album, In Rock (1970), which has been seen as one of one of heavy Members of Jethro Tull, in 1973, by which time they metal's defining albums. Black had already begun to move away from a blues sound Sabbath was the third incarnation of a group that started as the Polka Truck Blues Band in 1968. Their early work in included blues standards, but by the time of their second album Paranoid (1970), they had added elements of modality and the occult that would largely define modern heavy metal. Some, like Korner and Mayall, continued to play a "pure" form of the blues, but largely outside of mainstream notice. The structure of clubs, venues and festivals that had grown up in the early 1950s in Britain virtually disappeared in the 1970s.

â&#x2122;Ş Survival and resurgence Although overshadowed by the growth of rock music the blues did not disappear in Britain, with American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker, Eddie Taylor, and Freddie King continuing to be well received in the UK and an active home scene led by figures including Dave Kelly and his sister Jo Ann Kelly, who helped keep the acoustic blues alive on the British folk circuit. Dave Kelly was also a founder of The Blues Band with former Manfred Mann members Paul Jones and Tom McGuinness, Hughie Flint and Gary Fletcher. The Blues Band was credited with kicking off a second blues boom in Britain, which by the 90s led to festivals all around the country, including The Swanage Aynsley Lister, one of the major figures in another Blues Festival, The Burnley National generation of British blues musicians Blues Festival, The Gloucester Blues and Heritage Festival and The Great British Rhythm and Blues Festival at Colne. The twenty-first century has seen an upsurge in interest in the blues in Britain that can be seen in the success of previously unknown acts like Seasick Steve, in the return to the blues by major figures who began in the first boom, including Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, Chris Rea and Eric Clapton, as well as the arrival of younger artists like Matt Schofield and Aynsley Lister.

â&#x2122;Ş Impact Besides giving a start to many important blues, pop and rock musicians, in spawning bluesrock it also ultimately gave rise to a host of sub-genres of rock, including particularly psychedelic rock, progressive rock. Hard rock and ultimately heavy metal. Perhaps the most important contribution of British blues was the surprising re-exportation of American blues back to America, where, in the wake of the success of bands like the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac, white audiences began to look again at black blues musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker, who suddenly began to appeal to middle class white Americans. The result was a re-evaluation of the blues in America which enabled white Americans much more easily to become blues musicians, opening the door to Southern rock and the development of Texas blues musicians like Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Boogie-woogie

â&#x2122;Ş Introduction Boogie-woogie is a style of piano-based blues that became popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but originated much earlier, and was extended from piano, to three pianos at once, guitar, big band, and country and western music, and even gospel. While the blues traditionally depicts a variety of emotions, boogie-woogie is mainly associated with dancing. The lyrics of one of the earliest hits, "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie", consist entirely of instructions to dancers:

Now, when I tell you to hold yourself, don't you move a peg. And when I tell you to get it, I want you to Boogie Woogie!

It is characterized by a regular bass figure, in the left hand. The bass figure is transposed according to the chord changes:

It is not strictly a solo piano style, but is also used to accompany singers and as a solo part in bands and small combos. It is sometimes called"eight to the bar", as much of it is written in common time (4/4) time using eighth notes (quavers) (see time signature). The chord progressions are typically based on I - IV - V - I (with many formal variations of it, such as I/i - IV/iv - v/I, as well as chords that lead into these ones. For the most part, boogie-woogie tunes are twelve-bar blues, although the style has been applied to popular songs such as "Swanee River" and hymns such as "Just a Closer Walk with Thee".

Typical boogie woogie bassline

♪ History 1870s to 1930s The origin of the term boogie-woogie is unknown, according to Webster's Third New International Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word is a reduplication of boogie, which was used for rent parties as early as 1913. However, Dr. John Tennison, a San Antonio psychiatrist, pianist, and musicologist has suggested some interesting linguistic precursors. Among them are four African terms, including the Hausa word "Boog" and the Mandingo word "Booga", both of which mean "to beat", as in beating a drum. There is also the West African word "Bogi", which means "to dance", and the Bantu term "Mbuki Mvuki", which means, "Mbuki—to take off in flight" and Mvuki—"to dance wildly, as if to shake off ones clothes". The meanings of all these words are consistent with the percussiveness, dancing, and uninhibited behaviors historically associated with boogie-woogie music. Their African origin is also consistent with the evidence that the music originated among newly emancipated African Americans. In the sheet music literature prior to 1900, there are at least three examples of the use of the word "Bogie" in titles of music in the archives of the Library of Congress. In 1901, "Hoogie Boogie" appeared in the title of published sheet music. This is the first known instance where a redoubling of the word "Boogie" occurs in the title of published music. (In 1880, "The Boogie Man" had occurred as the title of published music.) As far as audio recordings are concerned, the first appearance of "Boogie" in the title of a recording appears to be a "blue cylinder" recording made by Edison of the "American Quartet" performing "That Synchopated Boogie Boo" in 1913. "Boogie" next occurs in the title of Wilbur Sweatman's April 1917 recording of "Boogie Rag". However none of these sheet music or audio recording examples contain the musical elements that would identify them as boogie-woogie. The 1919 recordings (two takes) of "Weary Blues" by the Louisiana Five contained the same boogiewoogie bass figure as appears in the 1915 "Weary Blues" sheet music by Artie Matthews. Dr. John Tennison has recognized these 1919 recordings as the earliest sound recordings which contain a boogie-woogie bass figure. Blind Lemon Jefferson used the term "Booga Rooga" to refer to a guitar bass figure that he used in "Match Box Blues". Jefferson may have heard the term from Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, who played frequently with Jefferson. Lead Belly, who was born in Mooring sport, La. and grew up in Harrison County, Texas in the

community of Leigh, said he first heard Boogie Woogie piano in the Caddo Lake Area of northeast Texas in 1899. He said it influenced his guitar-playing. Lead Belly also said he heard boogie-woogie piano in the Fannin Street district of Shreveport, Louisiana. Some of the players he heard were Dave "Black Ivory King" Alexander, or possibly another Dave Alexander known as "Little Dave Alexander" and a piano player called Pine Top (not Pine Top Smith, who was not born until 1904, but possibly Pine Top Williams or Pine Top Hill.) Lead Belly was among the first guitar-players to adapt the rolling bass of boogiewoogie piano. Texas, as the state of origin, became reinforced by Jelly Roll Morton who said he heard the boogie piano style there early in the 20th century; so did Leadbelly and so did Bunk Johnson, according to Rosetta Reitz. The first time the modern-day spelling of "boogie-woogie" was used in a title of a published audio recording of music appears to be Pine Top Smith's December 1928 recording titled, "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie", a song whose lyrics contain dance instructions to "boogiewoogie".

♪ Earliest attempts to determine a geographical origin for boogie-woogie

The earliest documented inquiries into the geographical origin of boogie-woogie occurred in the late 1930s when oral histories from the oldest living Americans of both African and European descent, revealed a broad consensus that boogie-woogie piano was first played in Texas in the early 1870s. Additional citations place the origins of boogie-woogie in the Piney Woods of northeast Texas. "The first Negroes who played what is called boogie-woogie, or house-rent music, and attracted attention in city slums where other Negroes held jam sessions, were from Texas. And all the Old-time Texans, black or white, are agreed that boogie piano players were first heard in the lumber and turpentine camps, where nobody was at home at all. The style dates from the early 1870s."

♪ "Fast Western" connection to Marshall & Harrison County, Texas

Max Harrison (in the book Jazz edited by Hentoff and McCarthy in 1959) and Mack McCormick (in the liner notes to his Treasury of Field Recordings, VOL. 2) concluded that "Fast Western" was the first term by which boogie-woogie was known. Also, "In Houston, Dallas, and Galveston — all Negro piano players played that way. This style was often referred to as a 'fast western' or 'fast blues' as differentiated from the 'slow blues' of New Orleans and St. Louis. At these gatherings the ragtime and blues boys could easily tell from what section of the country a man came, even going so far as to name the town, by his interpretation of a piece." According to Dr. John Tennison, when he interviewed Lee Ree Sullivan in Texarkana in 1986, Sullivan told him that he was familiar with "Fast Western" and "Fast Texas" as terms to refer to boogie-woogie in general, but not to denote the use of any specific bass figure used in boogie-woogie. Sullivan said that "Fast Western" and "Fast Texas" were terms that derived from the "Texas Western" Railroad Company of Harrison County. The company was formed on February 16, 1852, but did not build track from Swanson's Landing at Caddo Lake to Marshall, Texas, until after changing its name to "Southern Pacific" on August 16, 1856. This Texas-based "Southern Pacific" was the first "Southern Pacific" railroad, and was not connected to the more well known "Southern Pacific" originating in San Francisco, California. The Texas-based Southern Pacific Railroad was bought out by the newly-formed Texas and Pacific Railway on March 21, 1872.

Although the "Texas Western" Railroad Company changed its name to "Southern Pacific", Sullivan said the name "Texas Western" stuck among the slaves who constructed the first railway hub in northeast Texas from Swanson's Landing to the city of Marshall

♪ Railroad connection to Marshall & Harrison County, Texas

A key to identifying the geographical area in which boogie-woogie originated is understanding the relationship of boogie-woogie music with the steam railroad, both in the sense of how the music might have been influenced by sounds associated with the arrival of steam locomotives as well as the cultural impact the sudden emergence of the railroad might have had on newly emancipated African Americans. The railroad did not "arrive" in northeast Texas as an extension of track from existing lines from the north or the east. Rather, the first railroad locomotives and iron rails were brought to northeast Texas via steamboats from New Orleans via the Mississippi and Red Rivers and Caddo Lake to Swanson's Landing, located on the Louisiana/Texas state line. Beginning with the formation of the Texas Western Railroad Company in Marshall, Texas, through the subsequent establishment in 1871 of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company, which located its headquarters and shops there, Marshall was the only railroad hub in the Piney Woods of northeast Texas at the time the music developed. The sudden appearance of steam locomotives and the building of mainline tracks and tap lines to serve logging operations was pivotal to the creation of the music in terms of its sound and rhythm. It was also crucial to the rapid migration of the musical style from the rural barrel house camps to the cities and towns served by the Texas and Pacific Railway Company. "Although the neighboring states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri would also produce boogie-woogie players and their boogie-woogie tunes, and despite the fact that Chicago would become known as the center for this music through such pianists as Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons, and Meade "Lux" Lewis, Texas was home to an environment that fostered creation of boogie-style: the lumber, cattle, turpentine, and oil industries, all served by an expanding railway system from the northern corner of East Texas to the Gulf Coast and from the Louisiana border to Dallas and West Texas."[16] Alan Lomax, wrote: "Anonymous black musicians, longing to grab a train and ride away from their troubles, incorporated the rhythms of the steam locomotive and the moan of their whistles into the new dance music they were playing in jukes and dance halls. Boogie-woogie forever changed piano playing, as ham-handed black piano players transformed the instrument into a polyrhythmic railroad train." In the 1986 television broadcast of Britain's The South Bank Show about boogie-woogie, music historian Paul Oliver, noted: "Now the conductors were used to the logging camp pianists clamoring aboard, telling them a few stories, jumping off the train, getting into another logging camp, and playing again for eight hours, barrel house. In this way the music got around—all through Texas—and eventually, of course, out of Texas. Now when this new form of piano music came from Texas, it moved out towards Louisiana. It was brought by people like George W. Thomas, an early pianist who was already living in New Orleans by about 1910 and writing "New Orleans Hop Scop Blues", which really has some of the characteristics of the music that we came to know as Boogie." Paul Oliver also wrote that George W. Thomas "composed the theme of the New Orleans Hop Scop Blues – in spite of its title – based on the blues he had heard played by the pianists of East Texas." On February 12, 2007, Paul Oliver confirmed to John Tennison that it was Sippie Wallace who told Oliver that performances by East Texas pianists had formed the basis for George Thomas's "Hop Scop Blues".

George Thomas and his brother Hersal Thomas migrated from Texas to Chicago, and brought boogie-woogie with them. They were an immense influence on other pianists, including Jimmy Yancey, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and many others. Many elements that we now know as elements of boogie-woogie are present in Hersal and George Thomas' "The Fives". According to Dr. John Tennison, "although some Boogie Woogie bass figures were present in prior sheet music, the thing that made 'The Fives' so special was the greater amount and variety of Boogie Woogie bass figures that were present in the music as compared to Boogie Woogie bass figures that had been present in previously published sheet music, such as the 1915 "Weary Blues" by Artie Matthews. "Albert Ammons and Meade 'Lux' Lewis claim that 'The Fives,' [copyrighted in 1921 and published in 1922] the Thomas brothers' musical composition, deserves much credit for the development of modern boogie-woogie. During the 1920s, many pianists featured this number as a 'get off' tune and in the variations played what is now considered boogiewoogie." Indeed, all modern boogie-woogie bass figures can be found in "The Fives", including swinging, walking broken-octave bass, shuffled (swinging) chord bass (of the sort later used extensively by Ammons, Lewis, and Clarence "Pine Top" Smith), and the ubiquitous "oompah" ragtime stride bass.

♪ T&P stops associated with names for boogie-woogie left-hand bass lines

Early generation boogie-woogie players recognized basic boogie-woogie bass lines by geographical locations with which they associated them. Lee Ree Sullivan identified a number of these left hand bass lines for Dr. John Tennison in 1989. From the primitive to the complex, those identifications indicate that the most primitive form of the music was associated with Marshall, Texas – and that the left-hand bass lines grew more complex as the distance from Marshall increased. The most primitive of these left hand bass lines is the one that was called "the Marshall". It is a simple, four-beats-to-the-bar figure The second-most primitive bass-line, called "the Jefferson", is also four-beats-to-the-bar, but goes down in pitch on the last note in each four-note cycle. It has been suggested that this downturn in pitch reveals a possible New Orleans influence. Jefferson, Texas, about 17 miles north of Marshall, was the westernmost port of a steamboat route that connected to New Orleans via Caddo Lake, the Red River, and the Mississippi River. The remaining bass lines rise in complexity with distance from Marshall, Texas as one would expect variations and innovations would occur as the territory in which the music has been introduced expands.

♪ Indications that Marshall & Harrison County Texas is the most likely point of origination of boogie-woogie

In January 2010, Dr. John Tennison summarized his research into the origins of boogiewoogie with the conclusion that Marshall, Texas is "the municipality whose boundaries are most likely to encompass or be closest to the point on the map which is the geographic center of gravity for all instances of Boogie Woogie performance between 1870 and 1880". Dr. Tennison states: "Given the account of Elliot Paul, and given that Lead Belly witnessed boogie-woogie in 1899 in the Arklatex; and given the North to South migration of the Thomas family; and given the Texas & Pacific headquarters in Marshall in the early 1870s; and given that Harrison County had the largest slave population in the state of Texas; and given the fact that the best-documented and largest-scale turpentine camps in Texas did not

occur until after 1900 in Southeast Texas, it is most probable that boogie-woogie spread from Northeast to Southeast Texas, rather than from Southeast to Northeast Texas, or by having developed diffusely with an even density over all of the Piney Woods of East Texas. It would not be surprising if there was as yet undiscovered evidence of the earliest boogie-woogie performances buried (metaphorically or literally) in Northeast Texas." On May 13, 2010, the Marshall City Commission enacted an official declaration naming Marshall as the "birthplace" of boogie-woogie music, and embarked on a program to encourage additional historical research and to stimulate interest in and appreciation for the early African-American culture in northeast Texas that played a vital role in creating boogiewoogie music. The City of Marshall, Texas is committed to cooperating with any and all efforts to unearth boogie-woogie history and to honor, celebrate, and re-create the vibrant environment that was catalytic to the creation of the most entertaining, revolutionary, and influential of all American musical forms.

♪ Development of modern boogie-woogie A song titled "Tin Roof Blues" was published in 1923 by the Clarence Williams Publishing Company. Compositional credit is given to Richard M. Jones. The Jones composition uses a boogie bass in the introduction with some variation throughout. In February 1923 Joseph Samuels' Tampa Blue Jazz Band recorded the George W. Thomas number "The Fives" for Okeh Records, considered the first example of jazz band boogie-woogie. Jimmy Blythe's recording of "Chicago Stomps" from April 1924 is sometimes called the first complete boogie-woogie piano solo record. The first boogie-woogie hit was "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" by Pinetop Smith, recorded in 1928 and first released in 1929. Smith's record was the first boogie-woogie recording to be a commercial hit, and helped establish "boogie-woogie" as the name of the style. It was closely followed by another example of pure boogie-woogie, "Honky Tonk Train Blues" by Meade Lux Lewis, recorded by Paramount Records; (1927), first released in March 1930. The performance emulated a railroad trip, perhaps lending credence to the 'train theory'.

♪ Late 1930s: Carnegie Hall Boogie-woogie gained further public attention in 1938 and 1939, thanks to the From Spirituals to Swing concerts in Carnegie Hall promoted by record producer John Hammond. The concerts featured Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson performing Turner's tribute to Johnson, "Roll 'Em Pete", as well as Meade Lux Lewis performing "Honky Tonk Train Blues" and Albert Ammons playing "Swanee River Boogie". "Roll 'Em Pete" is now considered to be an early rock and roll song. These three pianists, with Turner, took up residence in the Café Society night club in New York City where they were popular with the sophisticated set. They often played in combinations of two and even three pianos, creating a richly textured piano performance.

♪ 1930s–1940s: Swing After the Carnegie Hall concerts, it was only natural for swing bands to incorporate the boogie-woogie beat into some of their music.Tommy Dorsey's band had a hit with an updated version of "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" in 1938, which was the swing era's second best seller, only second to Glenn Miller's "In the Mood". From 1939, the Will Bradley orchestra had a string of boogie hits such as the original versions of "Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar)" and "Down the Road A-Piece", both 1940, and "Scrub Me Mamma with a

Boogie Beat", in 1941. The Andrews Sisters sang some boogies, and after the floodgates were open, it was expected that every big band should have one or two boogie numbers in their repertoire, as the dancers were learning to jitterbug and do the Lindy Hop, which required the boogie-woogie beat.

â&#x2122;Ş Key figures. Amongst the many pianists who have been exponents of this genre, there are only a few who have had a lasting influence on the music scene. Perhaps the most well known boogiewoogie pianist is Albert Ammons. His "Boogie Woogie Stomp" released in 1936 was a pivotal recording, not just for boogie-woogie but for music. Some of the flattened sevenths in the right hand riffs are similar to licks used by early rock and roll guitarists. Ammons' two main compatriots were Meade 'Lux' Lewis and Pete Johnson. Before these three were playing piano, the two leading pianists were Jimmy Yancey and 'Pine-Top' Smith. Both of these pianists used bass patterns similar to ragtime and stride piano, but the distinctive BoogieWoogie right hand licks were already in use. Today, Boogie-Woogie is being taken forward by such pianists as Michael Kaeshammer, Rob Rio, Silvan Zingg and particularly Axel Zwingenberger, whose records and performances have a great influence on the contemporary scene.

Derivative forms In 1939 country artists began playing boogie-woogie when Johnny Barfield recorded "Boogie Woogie". "Cow Boogie" was written for, but not used in, the 1942 movie "Ride 'em Cowboy". This song by Benny Carter, Gene DePaul, and Don Raye successfully combined boogiewoogie and Western, or cowboy music. The lyrics leave no doubt that it was a Western boogie-woogie. It sold over a million records in its original release by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack, and has now been recorded many times. The trickle of what was initially called hillbilly boogie, or Okie boogie (later to be renamed country boogie), became a flood beginning around late 1945. One notable country boogie from this period was the Delmore Brothers "Freight Train Boogie", considered to be part of the combined evolution of country music and blues towards rockabilly. In 1948 Arthur Smith achieved Top 10 US country chart success with his MGM Records recordings of "Guitar Boogie" and "Banjo Boogie", with the former crossing over to the US pop chart, introducing many people to the potential of the electric guitar. The hillbilly boogie period lasted into the 1950s, the last recordings of this era were made by Tennessee Ernie Ford with Cliffie Stone and his orchestra with the great guitar duo Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West. Bill Haley and the Saddlemen recorded two boogies in 1951. The boogie beat continued in country music through the end of the 20th century. The Charlie Daniels Band (whose earlier tune "The South's Gonna Do It Again" uses boogiewoogie influences) released "Boogie Woogie Fiddle Country Blues" in 1988, and three years later in 1991 Brooks & Dunn had a huge hit with "Boot Scootin' Boogie". More representative examples can be found in some of the songs of Western swing pioneer Bob Wills, and subsequent tradition-minded country artists such as Asleep At The Wheel, Merle Haggard, and George Strait. The popularity of the Carnegie Hall concerts meant work for many of the fellow boogie players and also led to the adaptation of boogie-woogie sounds to many other forms of music. Tommy Dorsey's band had a hit with "T.D.'s Boogie Woogie" as arranged by Sy Oliverand soon there were boogie-woogie songs, recorded and printed, of many different stripes. Most famously, in the big-band genre, the ubiquitous "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", which was revamped recently by Christina Aguilera as her 2006 hit, "Candyman".

In the many styles of blues, especially Chicago blues and (more recently) West Coast blues, most pianists were influenced by, and employed, the traditional boogie-woogie styles. Some of the earliest and most influential were Big Maceo Merriweather and, later,Sunnyland Slim. Otis Spann and Pinetop Perkins, two of the best known blues pianists, are heavily boogie-woogie influenced, with the latter taking both his name and signature tune from Pinetop Smith. The boogie-woogie fad lasted from the late 1930s into the early 1950s, and made a major contribution to the development of jump blues and ultimately to rock and roll, epitomized by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Boogie-woogie is still to be heard in clubs and on records throughout Europe and North America. Big Joe Duskin displayed on his 1979 album, Cincinnati Stomp, a command of piano blues and boogie-woogie, which he had absorbed at first hand in the 1940s from Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. In classical music, the composer Conlon Nancarrow was also deeply influenced by boogiewoogie, as many of his early works for player piano demonstrate. "A Wonderful Time Up There" is a boogie-woogie gospel song. Povel Ramel's first hit in 1944 was Johanssons boogie-woogie-vals where he mixed boogie-woogie with waltz. John Lee Hooker took the Boogie-woogie style over to guitar from piano, creating the Boogie song "Boogie Chillen". Beginning in the 1970s, and continuing to this day, artists such as George Frayne (Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen), keep (mostly) traditional boogie style alive with songs such as "Rock That Boogie", "Too Much Fun", "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar", and others. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Jools Holland has been instrumental in keeping the boogie-woogie tradition alive. Also, multi-instrumentalist Shawn Lee experimented with boogie-woogie in his 2006 soundtrack for the game Bully, in the song "Fighting Johnny Vincent". The Grateful Dead took part in the boogie woogie rhythmic style, they played a dance hall sort of music as they emerged. Over the years there are many examples of them jamming, when they just playin' Boogie Woogie.

Chicago Blues Introductions The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums, piano and sometimes saxophone and trumpet. The music developed in the first half of the twentieth century as a result of the Great Migration (African American), when Black workers moved from the South into the industrial cities of the North such as Chicago. Originally, the Chicago blues was street corner-based music. But after the music quickly gained popularity, it became a giant commercial enterprise. Soon the new style of music reached out and touched Europe, which led many famous English rock n' roll bands to get their inspiration from the Chicago blues. At first, the blues clubs in Chicago were filled with black performers, and the music itself was aimed for black audiences. Most of the blues clubs were on the far south side of Chicago, so white people did not visit them. Later, however, more and more white audiences visited the clubs and listened to the music. This caused clubs to open up on the north side. In addition, more white men started playing the blues after it became popular.

Chicago blues has a more extended palette of notes than the standard six-note blues scale; often, notes from the major scale and dominant 9th chords are added, which gives the music a more of a "jazz feel" while remaining in the confines of the blues genre. Chicago blues is also known for its heavy rolling bass.

Notable musicians Well-known Chicago blues players include singer/songwriters such as Muddy Waters,Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, and Koko Taylor; guitar players such as Freddie King, Otis Rush,Luther Allison, Magic Sam, Syl Johnson, Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Guy, Robert Lockwood Jr.,McKinley Mitchell, Bo Diddley, Mike Bloomfield and Elmore James; harmonica players such as Big Walter Horton, Little Walter, Charlie Musselwhite, Paul Butterfield, Junior Wells andJimmy Reed; and keyboardists such as Marty Sammon.

Country Blues Country blues otherwise known as acoustic blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitardriven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and Dixieland jazz. After blues' birth in the southern United States, it quickly spread throughout the country (and elsewhere), giving birth to a host of regional styles. These include Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, Texas, Piedmont, Louisiana, West Coast, Atlanta, St. Louis, East Coast, Swamp, New Orleans, Delta, Hill country and Kansas City blues. When African-American musical tastes began to change in the early 1960s, moving toward soul and rhythm and blues music, country blues found renewed popularity as "folk blues" and was sold to a primarily white, college-age audience. Traditional artists like Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Boy Williamson II reinvented themselves as folk blues artists, while Piedmont bluesmen like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee found great success on the folk festival circuit.

Delta Blues â&#x2122;Ş Introduction The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The Mississippi Delta area is famous both for its fertile soil and its poverty. Guitar, harmonica and cigar box guitar are the dominant instruments used, with slide guitar (usually on the steel guitar) being a hallmark of the style. The vocal styles range from introspective and soulful to passionate and fiery. Delta blues is also regarded as a regional variation of country blues.

â&#x2122;Ş Origin Although Delta blues certainly existed in some form or another at the turn of the 20th century, it was first recorded in the late 1920s, when record companies realized the potential African American market in Race records. The earliest recordings were by the 'major' labels and consist mostly of one person singing and playing an instrument, though the use of a band was more common during live performances. Freddie Spruell is reckoned to be the first Delta blues artist to record, as he waxed "Milk Cow Blues" in Chicago in June 1926. Some of these early recordings were made on 'field trips' to the South by record company talent scouts, but some Delta blues performers were invited to travel to northern cities to record. According to Dixon & Godrich [1981], Tommy Johnson and Ishman Bracey were recorded by Victor on that company's second field trip to Memphis, in 1928. Robert Wilkins was first recorded by Victor in Memphis in 1928, andBig Joe Williams and Garfield Akers also in Memphis (1929) by Brunswick/Vocation. Son House first recorded in Grafton, Wisconsin (1930) for Paramount. Charley Patton also recorded for Paramount in Grafton, in June 1929 (and again, at the same location in May 1930). In January and February 1934 Patton visited New York City for further recording sessions. Robert Johnson traveled to San Antonio (1936) and Dallas (1937) for his ARC, and only, sessions. Subsequently, the early Delta blues (as well as other genres) were extensively recorded by John Lomax and his son Alan Lomax, who criss-crossed the Southern US recording music played and sung by ordinary people helping establish the canon of genres we know today as American folk music. Their recordings number in the thousands, and now reside in the Smithsonian Institution. According to Dixon & Godrich (1981) and Leadbitter and Slaven (1968), Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress researchers did not record any Delta bluesmen (or women) prior to 1941, when he recorded Son House and Willie Brown near Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, and Muddy Waters at Stovall, Mississippi; however, this claim is disputed as John and Alan Lomax did record Bukka White in 1939, Lead Belly in 1933 and most likely others.

â&#x2122;Ş Themes The Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm was an important influence on several blues musicians who were imprisoned there, and was referenced in songs such as Bukka White's 'Parchman Farm Blues' and the folk song 'Midnight Special'. Delta Bluesmen also typically sang songs in the first person about sexuality, the travelling lifestyle and the tribulations resulting from leading this lifestyle.

â&#x2122;Ş Women performers in Delta Blues

In big city blues women dominated the musical landscape; i.e. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. However, in Delta Blues and other rural or folk style blues women rarely recorded the blues. In Delta Blues often female performers had some romantic connection to more notable male delta blues performers; such as Geeshie Wiley attached to Papa Charlie McCoy. McCoy's brother Kansas Joe McCoy was attached to the arguably more notable Memphis Minnie and the seminal Charlie Patton sometimes played and recorded with his wife Bertha Lee. It was not until late in the 1960s that women began to be heard in recorded performances at the level they had previously enjoyed. It was then that Janis Joplin arrived as both the first female performer to achieve both accolades from her peers as a blues performer and a "crossover" commercial success who reached diverse audiences with a powerful and emotive vocal delivery. Other women to followed later (among many) were both influenced by Delta blues, and who learned from some of the most notable of the original artists alive include Bonnie Raitt, and Susan Tedeschi.

Dallas Blues "Dallas Blues", written by Hart Wand, was the first true blues song ever published. "Oh, You Beautiful Doll", a Tin Pan Alley song whose first verse is twelve-bar blues, had been published a year earlier. Also, two other songs with blues in their titles were published in 1912; "Baby Seals Blues" (August 1912), a vaudeville tune written by Arthur "Baby" Seales, and "The Memphis Blues", written by W.C. Handy (September 1912). Neither, however, were genuine blues songs. The song, although written for standard blues tempo (Tempo di Blues. Very slowly), is often performed as Ragtime or Dixieland. In 1918, Lloyd Garrett added lyrics to reflect the singer's longing for Dallas:

There's a place I know, folks won't pass me by, Dallas, Texas, that's the town, I cry, oh hear me cry. And I'm going back, going back to stay there 'til I die, until I die.

No date is found for the actual composition of "Dallas Blues" but Samuel Charters, who interviewed Wand for his book, The Country Blues (1959), states that Wand took the tune to a piano playing friend, Annabelle Robbins, who arranged the music for him. Charters adds that the title came from one of Wand's father's workmen who remarked that the tune gave him the blues to go back to Dallas. Since Wand's father died in 1909, the actual composition must have predated that. In any case, within weeks of its publication it was heard the length of the Mississippi River, and its influence on all the blues music that followed is well documented.

â&#x2122;Ş Jump Blues Jump evolved from big bands such as those of Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder. These early 1940s bands produced musicians such as Louis Jordan, Jack McVea, Earl Bostic, and Arnett Cobb. Blues and jazz were part of the same musical world, with many accomplished musicians straddling both genres. Jump blues, or simply "jump," was an extension of the boogiewoogie craze. Jump bands such as the Tympany Five, which came into being at the same time as the boogie-woogie revival, achieved maximum effect with an eight-to-the-bar boogie-woogie style. Lionel Hampton recorded a stomping big band blues, "Flying Home," in 1942. Featuring a choked, screaming tenor sax performance, the song was a hit in the "race" category. When released, however, Billboard described the tune as "an unusually swingy side" "with a bright bounce in the medium tempo and a steady drive maintained, it's a jumper that defies standing still". Billboard also noted that Benny Goodman had a hand in writing the tune "back in the old Goodman Sextet Days". Billboard went on to state that "Apart from the fact that it is Lionel Hampton's theme, "Flying Home" is a sure-fire to make the youngsters shed their nickels-and gladly." Five years later Billboard noted inclusion of "Flying Home" in a show that was "strictly for hipsters who go for swing and boogie, and beats in loud, hot unrelenting style a la Lionel Hampton." "...the Hampton band gave with everything, practically wearing itself out with such numbers as Hey Bop a Re Bop, Hamp Boogie and Flying Home..." Both Hampton and Jordan combined the popular boogie-woogie rhythm, a grittier version of swing-era saxophone styles as exemplified by Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, and playful, humorous lyrics or verbal asides laced with jive talk. As this urban, jazz-based music became more popular, both bluesmen and jazz musicians who wanted to "play for the people" began favoring a heavy, insistent beat. This music appealed to black listeners who no longer wished to be identified with "life down home." Jump accomplishes with three horns and a rhythm section what a big band does with an ensemble of sixteen. The tenor saxophone is the most prominent instrument in jump. Jump groups, employed to play for jitterbugs at a much lower cost than big bands, became popular with agents and ballroom owners. Saxophonist Art Chaney said "[w]e were insulted" when an audience wouldn't dance. Jump was especially popular in the late 1940s and early 1950s, through artists such as Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Charles Brown, T-Bone Walker, Roy Milton, Billy Wright and Wynonie Harris.

Memphis blues ♪ Introduction The Memphis blues is a style of blues music that was created in the 1910s – 1930s by Memphis-area musicians like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows, and was associated with Memphis' main entertainment area, Beale Street. W.C. Handy, the "Father of the Blues" published The Memphis Blues. In lyrics, the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. Memphis played an important role in the development of electric blues, rock and roll, blues rock, and heavy metal music.

♪

History

In addition to guitar-based blues, jug bands, such as Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers and the Memphis Jug Band, were extremely popular practitioners of Memphis blues. The jug band style emphasized the danceable, syncopated rhythms of early jazz and a range of other archaic folk styles. It was played on simple, sometimes homemade, instruments such as harmonicas, violins, mandolins, banjos, and guitars, backed by washboards, kazoo, guimbarde and jugs blown to supply the bass. After World War II, as African-Americans left the Mississippi Delta and other impoverished areas of the south for urban areas, many musicians gravitated to Memphis' blues scene, changing the classic Memphis blues sound. Musicians such as Howlin' Wolf, Willie Nix, Ike Turner, and B.B.King performed on Beale Street and in West Memphis, and recorded some of the classic electric blues, rhythm and blues and rock & roll records for labels such as Sun Records. Sam Phillips' Sun Records company recorded musicians such as Howlin' Wolf (before he moved to Chicago), Willie Nix, Ike Turner, and B.B.King. These players had a strong influence on later musicians in these styles, notably the early rock & rollers and rockabillies, many of whom also recorded for Sun Records. After Phillips discovered Elvis Presley in 1954, the Sun label turned to the rapidly expanding white audience and started recording mostly rock 'n' roll.

New Orleans Blues Characteristics As a style New Orleans blues is primarily driven by piano and horn, enlivened by Caribbean rhythms and Dixieland music. It is generally cheerful in delivery regardless of the subject matter, with a laid back tempo and complex rhythms falling just behind the beat. Vocals range from laid-back crooning to full-throated gospel shouting.

History New Orleans is generally credited as the birthplace of jazz music, but has attracted less attention as a centre of the blues. Although it has drawn to it and produced fewer blues musicians than other major US urban centers with large African-American populations, it has been the center of a distinctive form of blues music, which has been pursued by some notable musicians and produced important recordings. In the period after World War II a very large number of recordings were produced in the city that were informed by the blues, but had strong R&B and pop influences that anticipated rock and roll and are difficult to classify. Among these artists among the most highly regarded and most influenced by the blues was piano-player Professor Longhair, whose signature song "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" (1949) and other recordings like "Tipitina" (1959) were major R&B hits and who remained a central figure in New Orleans music through to his death in 1980. Other significant figures playing keyboard-based blues include James Booker, whose organ instrumental "Gonzo" reached the top fifty in the Billboard chart in 1960 and was followed by a series of minor single hits. The most significant blues guitarist to emerge from the city in the postWorld War II period was Guitar Slim. Originally from the Delta, his "The Things That I Used to Do", which combined gospel, blues and R&B, was a major R&B hit in 1954 and may have influenced the development of later soul music. It also had an impact on the development of rock music, having been included in the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, featuring an electric guitar solo with distorted overtones. Other important blues guitarists from the city include Snooks Eaglin, who recorded both acoustic folk and electric-based R&B, and Earl King, who composed blues standards including "Come On" (covered by Jimi Hendrix) and Professor Longhair's "Big Chief". Also among the major figures of the genre was Dr John, who began as a guitarist and enjoyed regional success with the Bo Diddley influenced "Storm Warning" in 1959 and a highly successful career from the 1960s after moving to Los Angeles, mixing R&B with psychedelic rock and using New Orleans themed aesthetics. The careers of many New Orleans bluesmen declined in the 1960s as rock and roll and soul began to dominate popular music, but revived in the 1970s as there was renewed interest in their recordings. In 2011 actor and singer Hugh Laurie's album of New Orleans music Let Them Talk helped renew interest in the genre once again.

Punk Blues Introduction Punk blues (or blues punk) denotes a fusion genre of punk rock and blues. Punk blues musicians and bands usually incorporate elements of related styles, such as protopunk and blues rock. Its origins lie strongly within the garage rock sound of the 1960s and 1970s. Punk blues can be said to favor the common rawness, simplicity and emotion shared between the punk and blues genres. Chet Weise, singer/guitarist of The Immortal Lee County Killers stated, "Punk and blues are both honest reactions to life. It's blues, it's our blues. It's just a bit turned up and a bit faster."

Origins Before the beginning of the punk movement of the late 1970s, several important forerunners such as The MC5, The Stooges, The Who, The Sonics, Captain Beefheart and the New York Dolls displayed a fascination with American blues. Allmusic states that punk blues draws on the influence of the "garage rock sound of the mid'60s, the primal howl of early Captain Beefheart, and especially in the raw and desperate sound of the Gun Club's landmark Fire of Love LP from 1981." Also according to Allmusic.com, "...punk blues really came to life in the early '90s with bands like the seminal Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Oblivians, The Gories and the Gibson Brothers", and "continued into the 2000s with even more visibility thanks to the popularity of The White Stripes". John Doe of L.A. punk band X claims that front man Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club invented a completely new style of music by mixing punk and blues.

Related Bands Beginning with their 1988 album Prison Bound, the punk band Social Distortion began incorporating rockabilly, country and blues influences into their music. In the same time period, Rollins Band performed punk-inflected blues jams. In the early 1990s, British musician PJ Harvey also explored an avant-garde variant of the style. The Detroit garage rock scene that bore bands such as The White Stripes continues to thrive with punk blues musicians and bands that can be tied to the style, such as The Detroit Cobras, Geraldine, Mystery Girls, The Reigning Sound, Soledad Brothers, The Von Bondies, and countless others. The Boston band Mr. Airplane Man also plays in this style. The indie rock bands The Gossip, The Kills, Deadboy & the Elephantmen, and Big John Bates have been associated by the media with a punk/blues sound. Cage the Elephant is also a known band that includes songs like "In One Ear", "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked", and "Back against the Wall."

Swamp blues ♪ Introduction Swamp blues, sometimes the Excello sound, is a sub-genre of blues music and a variation of Louisiana blues that developed around Baton Rouge in the 1950s and which reached a peak of popularity in the 1960s. It generally has a slow tempo and incorporates influences from other genres of music, particularly the regional styles of zydeco and Cajun music. Its most successful proponents included Slim Harpo and Lightnin' Slim, who enjoyed a number of rhythm and blues and national hits and whose work was frequently covered by bands of the British Invasion.

♪ Characteristics Swamp blues is a laid-back, slow tempo, and generally more rhythmic variation of Louisiana blues, that incorporates influences from New Orleans blues, zydeco, soul music and Cajun music. It is characterized by simple but effective guitar work and is heavily influenced by the boogie patterns used on Jimmy Reed records and the work of Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters. The sound of swamp blues was characterized by "eerie echo, shuffle beats, tremolo guitars, searing harmonica and sparse percussion".

♪ History The origins of swamp blues were based around the Louisiana state capital of Baton Rougeand particularly associated with the record producer J. D. "Jay" Miller. In the 1950s Miller realized that many blues artists around the city had not been recorded and rectified this, distributing the results through Excello Records in Nashville, Tennessee. The most successful and influential artist with whom he worked was guitarist and harmonica player Slim Harpo. His tracks included "I'm a King Bee" (1957), "I Got Love If You Want It" (1957) and "Rainin' In My Heart" (1961), which were all hits on the R&B Chart. His biggest hit was a version of "Baby Scratch My Back" which reached the Billboard Top 20 in 1966. Other major artists included Lightnin' Slim, Lazy Lester, Silas Hogan, Lonesome Sundown and piano player Katie Webster. A number of their tracks, particularly those of Slim Harpo, were covered by British Invasion bands, including the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and the Yardbirds. The popularity of the genre faded in the 1970s, with many swamp bluesmen turning to zydeco which remained popular with black audiences.

Texas Blues â&#x2122;Ş Introduction Texas blues is a subgenre of blues. It has had various style variations but typically has been played with more swing than other blues styles. Texas blues differs from styles such as Chicago blues in its use of instruments and sounds, especially the heavy use of the guitar. Musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughan contributed by using various types of guitar sounds like southern slide guitar and different melodies of blues and jazz. Texas blues also relies on guitar solos or "licks" as bridges in songs.

â&#x2122;Ş History Texas Blues began to appear in the early 1900s among African Americans who worked in oilfields, ranches and lumber camps. In the 1920s, Blind Lemon Jefferson innovated the style by using jazz-like improvisation and single string accompaniment on a guitar; Jefferson's influence defined the field and inspired later performers, like Lightnin' Hopkins, Lil' Son Jackson, and T-Bone Walker. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, many bluesmen moved to cities like Galveston, Houston and Dallas. It was from these urban centers that a new wave of popular performers appeared, including slide guitarist and gospel singer Blind Willie Johnson and legendary vocalist Big Mama Thornton. T-Bone Walker relocated to Los Angeles to record his most influential work in the 1940s. His R&B influenced backing and saxophone imitating lead guitar sound would become an influential part of the electric sound that would be perfected in Chicago by artists like Muddy Waters. He also influenced Goree Carter, whose "Rock Awhile" (1949) featured an overdriven electric guitar style and has been cited as a strong contender for the "first rock and roll record" title. The state R&B recording industry was based in Houston with labels like Duke/Peacock, which in the 1950s provided a base for artists who would later pursue the electric Texas blues sound, including Johnny Copeland and Albert Collins. Freddie King, a major influence on electric blues, was born in Texas, but moved to Chicago as a teenager. His instrumental number "Hide Away" (1961) was emulated by British Blues artists including Eric Clapton. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the Texas electric blues scene began to flourish, influenced by country music and blues-rock, particularly in the clubs of Austin. The diverse style often featured instruments like keyboards and horns, but placed particular emphasis on powerful lead guitar breaks. The most prominent artists to emerge in this era were the brothers Johnny and Edgar Winter, who combined traditional and southern styles. In the 1970s, Jimmie Vaughan formed The Fabulous Thunderbirds and in the 1980s his brother Stevie Ray Vaughan broke through to mainstream success with his virtuoso guitar playing, as did ZZ Top with their brand of Southern rock.

The Electric Blues started mainly in the interwar period, when large masses of black workers began to move from the southern states (predominantly agricultural) U.S. toward big cities in search of better living conditions, since these were in industrial development. How is this period that begins the electrification technology tools, would not take long for that effect also came to the Blues - from there, to the emergence of new genres like Rock and Blues Rythm'n would be just a matter of time . The main town "pole" of this genre is Chicago, although several others also have their proper amounts. The electric blues is characterized mainly by the expansion of the guitar, bass, drums, and often the harmonica, and continues to be a great blues style and has enjoyed a revival in popularity since the 1990s. At the end of 1940 various artists based in Chicago Blues had begun to use amplification, including John Lee Williamson and Johnny Shines. The first recordings were made in the new style in 1947 and 1948 by young musicians like Johnny, Floyd Jones, Snooky Pryor and. The format has been improved by Muddy Waters, who used various small groups that provided a strong rhythm section and powerful harmonica. Your "I can not be satisfied" (1948) was followed by a series of innovative recordings. The distinction between the electric Blues and Blues-rock is very hard and many artists were ranked in both fields. With some notable exceptions, blues-rock has been widely interpreted by white musicians, bringing a sensitivity of rock to blues standards and forms and which played an important role in broadening the appeal of the blues to white American public. Early blues-rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long improvisations involved and about 1967 bands like Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience began moving into psychedelia.

“The blues are the roots and the other music’s are the fruits. It's good to keep the roots alive, because it means better fruits for the future.” Willie Dixon

The blues has exerted great influence on Western popular music, influencing and defining the emergence of most musical styles including jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and country music as well as ska, rock steady, soul music, and also influencing pop music conventional and even modern classical music. See some of the genres that had influences from blues :

Rhythm and blues or R & B : Was a commercial term introduced in the United States in the late 1940s by Billboard magazine. Had a lot of changes in its meaning. Beginning in the 1960s, after this style of music contribute to the development of rock and roll, the term R & B became used - particularly by white groups - to refer to music styles that developed from the blues and the associated electric blues as well as gospel and soul music. Since the 1990s, the term contemporary R & B is mainly used to refer to a subgenre with influences of soul and funk in pop music. In its earliest manifestations, called rhythm and blues was a black version of a predecessor of the rock. It was heavily influenced by the blues.

The rock and roll (known as rock'n'roll) Is a style of music that emerged in the United States in the late 40s and early 50s , with roots in country music, blues, R & B and gospel music and quickly spread to the rest of the world. The beat is essentially a blues boogie-woogie with sharp setback, the latter provided by almost a light box . The massive popularity and eventual worldwide view of rock and roll gave it a unique social impact. Beyond being simply a musical genre as seen in movies and on television and in accordance with the media that was developed at the time - influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes and language.

Elvis Presley : The blues is the beginning of everything. The singing of slaves Americans left the southern United States, won the city of Chicago and has spread worldwide. The Blues led the R & B that originated the Rock and Roll. Actually the rock was called R & B but as one who touched was black was not very well accepted on the radio white U.S., especially the South, and there was a concern to bring a white to sing the blues, which later would be Elvis Presley. Elvis brought the blues to the homes of white families and was widely accepted and praised by many important people, one of the most notable acclaim of his life came from President Jimmy Carter, in which he said "His music and his personality fusion of styles white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture."

Jazz

The Jazz blues (blues or jazz) is any musical style that combines jazz and blues. However, jazz is considered to have some of its roots in blues, often containing notes of blues and blues riffs. Therefore, the terms are generally used to refer to bands or musicians that have a distinctive style of blues, while also making use of harmony and melody usually associated with jazz. The term jazz blues is also used by musicianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lies to refer specifically to the tone that follows the standard chord progression Twelve-bar blues, while changing the chord progression and improvisation to adapt to the style jazz. These tones are extremely common in the jazz repertoire.

Bossa Nova Derived from samba and jazz with a strong influence of bossa nova is a movement of Brazilian popular music from the end of year 50 posted by Jo達o Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes and young singers and / or songwriters middle class area south of Rio. Some music critics highlight a certain influence that American culture postwar, musicians such as Stan Kenton, combined with classical impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, bossa nova had, especially the cool jazz and bebop. Although little influence of foreign music such as blues, bossa nova has elements of syncopated samba. In addition, there was a fundamental dissatisfaction with the format of musical time.

The Classic Blues or Classic Female Blues were an Urban Blues form that originated with the mixing of commercial compositions with authentic folk material and nascent jazz in the acts of southern stage performers and Black vaudeville artists, primarily women, who toured widely. The first recording was Mamie Smith’s landmark, “Crazy Blues” in 1920, also the first blues of any kind recorded by an African-American. By 1923 songs like Bessie Smith’s “Gulf Coast Blues” / “Down Hearted Blues” were selling close to 800,000 copies. Other major Classic Blues artists included “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and Trixie Smith. Ma Rainey claimed to have first heard this ‘strange

When a woman gets the blues she hangs her head and cries, When a woman gets the blues she hangs her head and cries, But when a man gets the blues, he grabs a train and flies. sound’ in 1902, and that she offhandedly named it ‘the blues.’ With the increased use of instrumental accompaniment, the evolution towards "performance," and the spreading of local versions of songs over a wider area as the singers traveled from place to place, a standardization of the songs began to occur.

It was during this time that the country shouts and "ballits" were formalized into the 12-bar, three-line, repetitive stanza structure now recognized as the "classic" blues form. Accompaniment was piano driven, sometimes with a jazz combo having brass, woodwind and kit drum. Bessie Smith’s accompanists were the cream of the jazz crop, including Fletcher Henderson, Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong. The vocal delivery in a classic blues was strong and full voiced, lyrics usually about a man “who done her wrong” or a tide-turning woman-incontrol theme, usually humorous and littered with double entendres. These sophisticated Classic Blues recordings by dance band orchestras and female vocalists actually precede their source material, as the folk male blues were not actively recorded until 1926 beginning with Texan Blind Lemon Jefferson. By 1932 the depression ostensibly ended the recording of both Southern Country and Classic Blues artists. The era for ‘race’ records ended as fewer and fewer people had money to spend, and musicians joined a general migration North in search of work. Some Classic Blues vocalists, like Alberta Hunter, lived long enough to reach new audiences through the folk revival of the 1960s.

James Brown Early Life James Brown was born in Barnwell, South Carolina on May 3, 1933, to Susie (nĂŠe Behlings) Brown (August 8, 1916 - February 26, 2004) and Joseph ("Joe") Gardner (March 29, 1911 July 10, 1993) (who changed his surname to Brown after Mattie Brown who raised him). Although Brown was to be named after his father Joseph, his first and middle names were mistakenly reversed on his birth certificate. He therefore became James Joseph Brown, Jr. As a young child, Brown was called Junior. When he later lived with his aunt and cousin, he was called Little Juniorsince his cousin's nickname was also Junior. Later as an adult, Brown legally changed his name to remove the "Jr." designation. As a young child, Brown and his family lived in extreme poverty in nearby Elko, South Carolina, which at the time was an impoverished town in Barnwell County. When Brown was two years old, his parents separated after his mother left his father for another man. After his mother abandoned the family, Brown continued to live with his father and his father's live-in girlfriends until he was six years old. His father then sent him to live with an aunt, who ran a house of prostitution. Even though Brown lived with relatives, he spent long stretches of time on his own, hanging out on the streets and hustling to get by. Brown managed to stay in school until he dropped out in the seventh grade. During his childhood, Brown earned money shining shoes, sweeping out stores, selling and trading in old stamps, washing cars and dishes and singing in talent contests. Brown also performed buck dances for change to entertain troops from Camp Gordon at the start of World War II as their convoys traveled over a canal bridge near his aunt's home. Between earning money from these adventures, Brown taught himself to play a harmonica given to him by his father. He learned to play some guitar from Tampa Red, in addition to learning to play piano and drums from others he met during this time. Brown was inspired to become an entertainer after watching Louis Jordan, a popular jazz and R&B performer during the 1940s, and Jordan's Tympany Five performing "Caldonia" in a short film. Brown began his performing career at the age of 12, forming his first vocal group, the Cremona Trio in 1945, where they won local talent shows at Augusta concert halls such as the Lenox and Harlem theaters. As a result of this success, the group would later gig at several high schools and local army bases. At the age of sixteen, he was convicted

of armed robbery and sent to a juvenile detention center upstate in Toccoa in 1949. While in prison, he formed a gospel quartet with fellow cell mates Johnny Terry, "Hucklebuck" Davis and a person named "Shag", and made homemade instruments - a comb and paper, a washtub bass, a drum kit made from lard tubs and for Brown, what he called "a sort of mandolin [made] out of a wooden box." Due to the latter instrument, Brown was given his first nickname, "Music Box". In 1952, while still in reform school, Brown met future R&B legend Bobby Byrd, who was there playing baseball against the reform school team. Byrd saw Brown perform there and admired his singing and performing talent. As a result of this friendship, Byrd's family helped Brown secure an early release on June 14, 1952 after serving three years of his sentence. The authorities agreed to release Brown on the condition that he would get a job and not return to Augusta or Richmond County and also under the condition he find a decent job and sing for the Lord as he had promised in his parole letter. After stints as a boxer and baseball pitcher in semi-professional baseball (a career move ended by a leg injury), Brown turned his energy toward music.

Career 1954â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1960: The Famous Flames By 1954, Brown had tried to get a deal with his gospel group, the Ever Ready Gospel Singers after recording a version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow", but returned to Toccoa when they failed to get a deal. Returning, his friend Bobby Byrd asked Brown to join his R&B group, the Avons, who had previously gone under the name the Gospel Starlighters to avoid controversy with church leaders. Brown replaced another vocalist, Troy Collins, who died in a car crash. The group, which included alongside Byrd and Brown; Sylvester Keels, Doyle Oglesby, Fred Pulliam and Johnny Terry, modeled themselves after the R&B groups of the day including The Orioles, The Five Keys, and Billy Ward and His Dominoes. Gigging through Georgia and South Carolina, they again changed their name to the Toccoa Band to avoid confusion with two other groups who shared the Avons moniker. Under this name, Brown recruited guitarist Nafloyd Scott and, under their manager Barry Tremier, added assorted percussion. While performing in Macon, Georgia, having now changed their name to the Flames, a club promoter, Clint Brantley (then agent of one of Brown's idols, Little Richard), suggested the band add "Famous" in front of their name to draw more people to his club. The group began composing and performing their own songs during this time including a Brown composition called "Goin' Back to Rome" and a ballad Brown co-wrote with Terry titled "Please, Please, Please". After Little Richard left Macon for Los Angeles after the release of "Tutti Frutti", Brantley included the band at every venue Richard had performed, leading to the growth of the group's success. Before Christmas 1955, Brantley had the group record a demo of "Please, Please, Please" for a local Macon radio station. Different accounts on how "Please, Please, Please" came together vary, one story from Etta James stated that during her first meeting with Brown in Macon, Brown "used to carry around an old tattered napkin with him, because Little Richard had written the words, 'please, please, please' on it and James was determined to make a song out of it...". Another version of the story was that the group had gotten inspiration for writing the song after hearing The Orioles' rock 'n' roll version of Big Joe Williams' hit, "Baby Please Don't Go", taking its melody from the song. Federal Records president Ralph Bass signed the Famous Flames to his label in February 1956 and had them record the song in Cincinnati's King Studios. Released the following

March, the song became the Famous Flames' first R&B hit, selling over a million copies. Despite the song's success, other songs such as "I Don't Know", "No No No", "Just Won't Do Right", and "Chonnie-On-Chon" failed to chart. By March 1957, a full year after the release of "Please, Please, Please", most members of the Famous Flames had left the group after the group's new manager, Universal Attractions Agency Chief Ben Bart, insisted that the group's billing be "James Brown and The Famous Flames". After Little Richard left show business for the ministry, Brown was asked to fill in leftover dates leading to an increase in his concert success and the eventual recruitment of members of the vocal group, the Dominions, to replace the Famous Flames. The first single under this new lineup, "That Dood It", failed to chart. In late 1958, Brown financed the demo of the ballad, "Try Me". Released that October, it returned the Famous Flames to the charts and reached #1 on the R&B chart in February 1959 becoming the first of 17 chart-topping hits on the R&B chart which were credited to Brown over the next 15 years with six of them credited to the Famous Flames. Bolstered by this success, Brown recruited a new band that consisted of saxophonist J. C. Davis, guitarist Bobby Roach, bassist Bernard Odum, trumpeter Roscoe Patrick, saxophonist Albert Corley, drummer Nat Kendrick and his old band mate Bobby Byrd, who had rejoined Brown's band on organ. This resulted in the next Brown hit, "I Want You So Bad", which peaked in the Top 20 on the Billboard R&B chart. The newly hailed "James Brown Band" debuted at the Apollo Theater on April 24, 1959, opening for Little Willie John. Following his dismissal of the 1957-58 Famous Flames lineup, he hired "Baby" Lloyd Stallworth, Bobby Bennett as replacements with Byrd and Johnny Terry returning as members. The confusion of the band was that for years, the Famous Flames were often mistaken for Brown's backing band; fellow Famous Flame Byrd was also a member of the backing band at one point. Initially a vocal and instrumental group, the group, after signing with Federal, developed into a mainly vocal act. In early 1960, Brown's band recorded the top ten R&B hit, "(Do the) Mashed Potatoes" on Dade Records, owned by Henry Stone, under the pseudonym "Nat Kendrick & The Swans" because Brown's label refused to release it. As a result of this, Syd Nathan decided to shift Brown's contract from Federal to Federal's parent label, King Records.

1960â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1966: Commercial breakthrough By 1960, having been influenced more by jazz music than blues, Brown began incorporating jazz styled arrangements in his music, with Brown naming the Famous Flames hits "I'll Go Crazy" and "Think" as examples of his changing style away from more traditional forms of R&B and rock 'n' roll. Following the two "albums", Please, Please, Please and Try Me under the name James Brown and The Famous Flames, Think! was Brown's first full-length 'solo' album, . Brown's next albums displayed a range from vocal performances to instrumentals. Brown's band recorded the instrumental hit, "Night Train", which was among the first to credit Brown as composer, and which became a Top 5 R&B hit and even briefly crossed over into the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. The ballad "Lost Someone" became, along with "Please, Please, Please", an early show-stopper during Brown's performances, while the recording of the Joe Tex composition, "Baby You're Right" (which Brown altered substantially), increased his reputation with R&B audiences. On 24 October 1962, Brown financed a live recording of a midnight performance at the Apollo and convinced Syd Nathan to release the album. Nathan felt that, because everyone

had already brought the singles Brown performed live on this recording, no one would be interested in an album that contained no new material, and he warned Brown that live albums usually were bad sellers. Brown refused to listen, and thus the album, Live at the Apollo came out. The album was a great success, reaching #2 on the pop chart and selling a million copies; it stayed on the charts for fourteen months. Influenced by the crossover success of Ray Charles, Brown began to perform pop standards and succeeded with his first Top 20 single, "Prisoner of Love". That year, Brown also launched Try Me Records, releasing records by Tammy Montgomery and Johnny & Bill and the Poets (the latter composed of members of Brown's backing band). In 1964, figuring his deal with King was at an end, Brown and fellow Famous Flame Bobby Byrd formed the production company, Fair Deal, linking the operation to a new label, Mercury imprint Smash Records. However, King Records fought Brown's departure and was granted an injunction preventing Brown from releasing any vocal recordings for his new label. Prior to this injunction, Brown had already released three vocal singles, including a cover of Louis Jordan's "Caldonia", and the 12-bar blues rock and roll number, "Out of Sight", which further indicated the direction his sound was going to take. Touring throughout 1964, Brown and The Flames soon grabbed more national attention when they performed at The T.A.M.I. Show, where Brown's energetic dance moves together with the polished choreography and timing of the Famous Flames let them upstage the show's closing act, The Rolling Stones. In June 1965, King and Brown signed a new recording contract and released "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", which became his first Top 10 hit single, winning Brown his first Grammy. Later in 1965, King released the up tempo rock 'n' roll song, "I Got You (I Feel Good)", which, in late 1965, reached #1 on the R&B charts and, in early 1966, reached the mainstream Top 10, peaking at #3. Later in 1966, Brown's reputation as a hit maker was confirmed with the release of the blues-inspired soul ballad, "It's a Man's Man's Man's World".

1967â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1969: Soul Brother No. 1 Brown's success on the charts continued vastly in 1967. His #1 R&B hit that year, "Cold Sweat", sometimes cited as the first true funk song, was the first of his recordings to contain a drum break and the first that featured a harmony that was reduced to a single chord The instrumental arrangements on tracks such as "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose" and "Licking Stick-Licking Stick" (both recorded in 1968) and "Funky Drummer" (recorded in 1969) featured a more developed version of Brown's midBrown (middle) & The Famous Flames (far 1960s style, with the horn section, left to right, Bobby Bennett, Lloyd Stallworth, guitars, bass and drums meshed andBobby Byrd), performing live at the Apollo together in intricate rhythmic patterns based Theaterin New York City, 1964 on multiple interlocking riffs. Changes in Brown's style that started with "Cold Sweat" also established the musical foundation for Brown's later hits, such as "I Got the Feelin'" (1968) and "Mother Popcorn"

(1969). By this time Brown's vocals frequently took the form of a kind of rhythmic declamation, not quite sung but not quite spoken, that only intermittently featured traces of pitch or melody. This would become a major influence on the techniques of rapping, which would come to maturity along with hip hop music in the coming decades. Brown's style of funk in the late 1960s was based on interlocking syncopated parts: funky bass lines, drum patterns, and iconic guitar riffs. The main guitar ostinatos for "Ain't it Funky"

Guitar part for "Ain't it Funky" by James Brown

Guitar part for "Give it Up or Turn it Loose" by James Brown (1969)

(c. late 1960s), and "Give it Up or Turn it Lose" (1969), are examples of Brown's refinement of New Orleans funk; irresistibly danceable riffs, stripped down to their rhythmic essence. On "Ain't it Funky" (c. late 1960s), and "Give it Up or Turn it Lose" (1969), the tonal structure is bare bones. The pattern of attack-points is the emphasis, not the pattern of pitches. It's as if the guitar is an African drum, or idiophone. Alexander Stewart states that this popular feel was passed along from "New Orleansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;through James Brown's music, to the popular music of the 1970s." Those same tracks were later resurrected by countless hip-hop musicians from the 1970s onward. As a result, James Brown remains to this day the world's

Guitar part for "Bring it Up" by James Brown (1967)

most sampled recording artist, with "Funky Drummer" itself becoming the most sampled individual piece of music.

"Bring it Up" has an Afro-Cuban guajeo-like structure. In fact, on a 1976 version, Cuban bongos are used. All three of these guitar riffs are based on an on beat/offbeat structure. Stewart states: "This model, it should be noted, is different from a time line (such as clave and tresillo) in that it is not an exact pattern, but more of a loose organizing principle."

It was around this time as the musician's popularity increased that he acquired the nickname, "Soul Brother No. 1", after failing to win the title "King of Soul" from Solomon Burke during a Chicago gig two years prior. Brown's recordings during this period influenced musicians across the industry, most notably groups such as Sly and the Family Stone, Funkadelic, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s as well as vocalists such as Edwin Starr, David Ruffin and Dennis Edwards from The Temptations, and Michael Jackson, who, throughout his career, cited Brown as his ultimate idol. Brown's band during this period employed musicians and arrangers who had come up through the jazz tradition. He was noted for his ability as a bandleader and songwriter to blend the simplicity and drive of R&B with the rhythmic complexity and precision of jazz. Trumpeter Lewis Hamlin and saxophonist/keyboardist Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis (the successor to previous bandleader Nat Jones) led the band. Guitarist Jimmy Nolen provided percussive, deceptively simple riffs for each song, and Maceo Parker's prominent saxophone solos provided a focal point for many performances. Other members of Brown's band included stalwart Famous Flames singer and sideman Bobby Byrd, drummers John "Jabo" Starks, Clyde Stubblefield and Melvin Parker, saxophonist St. Clair Pinckney, trombonist Fred Wesley, guitarist Alphonso "Country" Kellum and bassist Bernard Odum. During this period, Brown's music empire also expanded along with his influence on the music scene. As Brown's music empire grew, his desire for financial and artistic independence grew as well. Brown bought radio stations during the late 1960s, including radio station WRDW in Augusta, Georgia where he shined shoes as a boy. In November 1967, James Brown purchased radio station WGYW in Knoxville, Tennessee for a reported $75,000, according to the January 20, 1968 Record World magazine. The call letters were changed to WJBE reflecting his initials. WJBE began on January 15, 1968 and broadcast a Rhythm & Blues format. The station slogan was "WJBE 1430 Raw Soul". At the time it was mentioned "Brown has also branched out into real estate and music publishing in recent months". Brown also branched out to make several recordings with musicians outside his own band. In an attempt to appeal to the older, more affluent, and predominantly white adult contemporary audience, Brown recorded Gettin' Down To It (1969) and Soul on Top (1970)-two albums consisting mostly of romantic ballads, jazz standards, and homologous reinterpretations of his earlier hits--with the Dee Felice Trio and the Louie Bellson Orchestra. In 1968, he recorded a number of funk-oriented tracks with The Dapps, a white Cincinnatibar band, including the hit "I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)". He also released three albums of Christmas music with his own band.

1970â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1976: Godfather of Soul In March 1970, most of the members of Brown's mid-to-late 1960s road band walked out on him due to money disputes. Additionally, The Famous Flames disbanded for the same reason, with only original and founding member Bobby Byrd electing to remain with Brown. Brown and Byrd subsequently recruited several members of the Cincinnati-based The Pacemakers, which included Bootsy Collins and his brother Phelps "Catfish" Collins; augmented by the remaining members of the 1960s road band (including Fred Wesley, who

rejoined Brown's outfit in December 1970) and other newer musicians, they would form the nucleus of The J.B.'s, Brown's new backing ensemble. Shortly following their first performance together, the band entered the studio to record the Brown-Byrd composition, "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine"; the song and other contemporaneous singles would further concretize Brown's influence in the nascent genre of funk music. This iteration of The J.B.'s dissolved after a March 1971 European tour (documented on the 1991 archival release Love Power Peace) due to additional money disputes and Bootsy Collins' use of LSD; the Collins brothers would soon become integral members of Parliament-Funkadelic, while a new lineup of The J.B.'s coalesced around Wesley, St. Clair Pinckney, and drummer John Starks. In 1971, Brown began recording for Polydor Records which also took over distribution of Brown's King Records catalog. Many of his sidemen and supporting players, including Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s, Bobby Byrd, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson and former rival Hank Ballard, released records on the People label, an imprint founded by Brown that was purchased by Polydor as part of Brown's new contract. The recordings on the People label, almost all of which were produced by Brown himself, exemplified his "house style". Songs such as "I Know You Got Soul" by Bobby Byrd, "Think (About It)" by Lyn Collins and "Doing It to Death" by Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s are considered as much a part of Brown's recorded legacy as the recordings released under his own name. That year, he also began touring African countries and was received well by audiences there. During the 1972 presidential election, James Brown openly proclaimed his support of Richard Nixon for reelection of the presidency over Democrat candidate George McGovern. The decision led to a boycott of his records being played on radio and concert ticket drops. As a result Brown's record sales and concerts in the United States reached a lull in 1973 as he failed to land a number-one R&B single that year. Brown relied more on touring outside the United States where he continued to perform for sold-out crowds in cities such as London, Paris and Lausanne. That year, Brown also faced problems with the IRS for failure to pay back taxes, charging he hadn't paid upwards of $4.5 million, five years Brown after a concert in Tampa on Jan. 29, 1972 earlier, the IRS claimed he owed nearly $2 million. In 1973, Brown provided the score for the Blaxploitation film Black Caesar. He also recorded another soundtrack for the film, Slaughter's Big Rip-Off. Following the release of these soundtracks, Brown acquired a self-styled nickname, "The Godfather of Soul", which remains his most popular nickname. In 1974, he returned to the #1 spot on the R&B charts with "The Payback", with the parent album reaching the same spot on the album charts; he would reach #1 two more times in 1974 including "My Thang" and "Papa Don't Take No Mess". Later that year, he returned to Africa and performed in Kinshasa as part of the buildup to The Rumble in the Jungle fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Admirers of Brown's music, including Miles Davis and other jazz musicians, began to cite Brown as a major influence on their own styles. However, Brown, like others who were influenced by his music, also "borrowed" from other musicians. His 1976 single "Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved, Loved)" (R&B #31) used the main riff from "Fame" by David Bowie, not the other way around as was often believed. The riff was provided to "Fame" cowriters John Lennon and Bowie by guitarist Carlos Alomar, who had briefly been a member of Brown's band in the late 1960s. Brown's "Papa Don't Take No Mess" would be his final single to reach the #1 spot on the R&B charts and his final Top 40 pop single of the 1970s, though Brown continued to occasionally have Top 10 R&B recordings. Among his top ten R&B hits during this latter period included "Funky President (People It's Bad)" and "Get Up Offa That Thing", the latter song released in 1976 and aimed at musical rivals such as Barry White, The Ohio Players and K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Brown credited his then-second wife and two of their children as writers of the song to avoid concurrent tax problems with the IRS.

1977â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1988: Decline and resurgence By 1977, Brown was no longer a dominant force in R&B. After "Get Up Offa That Thing", thirteen of Brown's late 1970s recordings for Polydor, failed to reach the Top 10 of the R&B chart, with only "Body Heat" in 1976 and the disco-oriented "It's Too Funky in Here" in 1979 reaching the R&B Top 15 and the ballad "Kiss in '77" reaching the Top 20. After 1976's "Bodyheat", he also failed to appear on the Billboard Hot 100. As a result, Brown's concert attendance began dropping and reported disputes with the IRS caused Brown's empire to collapse. In addition, Brown's former band mates, including Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and the Collins brothers, had found bigger success as members of George Clinton's ParliamentFunkadelic collective. The emergence of disco also stopped Brown's success on the R&B charts as its slicker commercial style had superseded his rawer funk productions. Brown recorded disco material on his albums starting with 1975's Sex Machine Today, producing less than favorable results. By the release of 1979's The Original Disco Man, Brown wasn't providing much production or writing, leading most of it to producer Brad Shapiro, resulting in the song "It's Too Funky in Here" becoming Brown's most successful single in this period. After two more albums failed to chart, Brown left Polydor in 1981. It was right along this time that Brown changed the name of his band from The J.B.'s to the Soul Generals (or Soul G's). This band's name remained that way until his death. Despite a fallout from record sales, Brown enjoyed something of a resurgence in this period starting with cameo roles in the feature films The Blues Brothers, Doctor Detroit and Rocky IV, as well as guest starring in the Miami Vice episode "Missing Hours" (1988). In 1984, Brown teamed with rap musicianAfrika Bambaattaa on the song, "Unity". A year later he signed with Scotti Brothers Records and issued the moderately successful album, Gravity, in 1986, which included Brown's final Top 10 pop hit, "Living in America", marking his first Top 40 entry since 1974 and his first Top 10 pop entry since 1968. Produced and written by Dan Hartman, it was also featured prominently on the Rocky IV film and soundtrack. Brown performed the song in the film at Apollo Creed's final fight, shot in the Ziegfeld Room at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and

was credited in the film as "The Godfather of Soul." In 1987, Brown won the Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for "Living in America." In 1988, Brown worked with the production team Full Force on the new jack swing-influenced album I'm Real, which spawned his final two Top 10 R&B hits, "I'm Real" and "Static", which peaked at #2 and #5, respectively, on the R&B charts. Meanwhile, the drum break from the second version of the original 1969 hit "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose" (the recording included on the compilation album In the Jungle Groove) became so popular at hip hop dance parties (especially for breakdance) during the late 1970s and early 1980s that hip hop founding father Kurtis Blow called the song "the national anthem of hip hop".

1991â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2006: Final years After his stint in prison during the late 1980s, Brown returned with the album, Love Overdue, in 1991, which included the single, "(So Tired Of Standing Still We Got To) Move On", which peaked at #48 on the R&B chart. His former record label Polydor also released the four-CD box set, Star Time, featuring nearly all of Brown's hit recordings. Brown's release from prison also sparked Brown's former record labels to reissue the musician's albums on CD, featuring additional singles and commentary by experts on Brown's music. That same year, Brown guest appeared on rapper MC Hammer's video for "Too Legit to Quit". Hammer had been noted, alongside Big Daddy Kane, for bringing Brown's unique stage shows and their own energetic dance moves to the hip-hop generation, with both Hammer and Kane listing Brown as their idol. Both musicians also sampled Brown's work, with Hammer having sampled the rhythms from "Super Bad" for his song, "Here Comes the Hammer", from his best-selling work, Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. Before the year was over, Brown, who had immediately returned to work with his band following his release, organized a pay-per-view concert following a show at Los Angeles' Wiltern Theatre, that was well received. Brown continued releasing recordings: in 1993, he issued the album, Universal James, which included Brown's final Billboard charted single, "Can't Get Any Harder", which peaked at #76 on the US R&B chart and #59 on the UK chart. Its brief charting in the UK was probably due to the success of a remixed version of "I Feel Good" featuring Dakeyne. Brown also released the singles, "How Long" and "Georgia-Lina", these songs failed to chart. In 1995, Brown returned to the Apollo, and released the live album, Live at the Apollo

1995, which included a studio track titled "Respect Me", which was released as a single; again it failed to chart. He followed that song by releasing the megamix, "Hooked on Brown", in 1996. Brown's final studio albums, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m Back and The Next Step, were released in 1998 and 2002 respectively. I'm Back featured Brown's final charted single to date, "Funk On Ah Roll", which peaked at #40 in the UK but didn't chart in his native America. The Next Step issued Brown's final single, "Killing is Out, School is In". Both albums were produced by Derrick Monk. Brown's concert success, however, remained unabated and Brown kept up with a grueling schedule throughout the remainder of his life, living up to his previous nickname, "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business", in spite of his advanced age. In 2003, Brown participated in the PBS American Masters television documentary James Brown: Soul Survivor, which was directed by Jeremy Marre. Brown celebrated his status as an icon by appearing in a variety of entertainment and sports events, including an appearance on the WCW pay-per-view event, SuperBrawl X, where he danced alongside wrestler Ernest "The Cat" Miller, who based his character on Brown, during his in-ring skit with The Maestro. Brown was then featured in Tony Scott's short film, Beat the Devil, in 2001. Brown was featured alongside Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, Danny Trejo and Marilyn Manson. Brown also made a cameo appearance in the 2002 Jackie Chan film The Tuxedo, in which Chan was required to finish Brown's act after Brown was accidentally knocked out by Chan. In 2002, Brown appeared in Undercover Brother, playing himself. Brown appeared at Edinburgh 50,000 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Final Push, the final Live 8 concert on July 6, 2005, where he performed a duet with British pop star Will Young on "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag". He also performed a duet with another British pop star, Joss Stone, a week earlier on the United Kingdom chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Before his death, Brown was scheduled to perform a duet with singer Annie Lennox on the song "Vengeance" for her new album Venus, which was released in 2007. In 2006, Brown continued his "Seven Decades Of Funk World Tour", his last concert tour where he performed all over the world. His final U.S. performance was in San Francisco on August 20, 2006, as headliner at the Festival of the Golden Gate (Foggfest) on the Great Meadow at Fort Mason. His last shows were greeted with positive reviews, and one of his final concert appearances at the Irish Oxegen festival in Punchestown in 2006 was performed for a record crowd of 80,000 people. Brown's last televised appearance was at his induction into the UK Music Hall of Fame in November 2006, before his death the following month.

Bertha “Chippie” Hill Bertha "Chippie" Hill (March 15, 1905 – May 7, 1950), was an American blues and Vaude Ville Singer and dancer, best known for her recordings with Louis Armstrong. Hill was born in Charleston, South Carolina, one of sixteen children, but in 1915 the family moved to New York. She began her career as a dancer in Harlem, and by 1919 was working with Ethel Waters. At age 14, during a stint at Leroy's, a noted New York nightclub, Hill was nicknamed "Chippie" because of her young age. She also performed with Ma Rainey as part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, before establishing her own song and dance act and touring on the TOBA circuit in the early 1920s. She settled in Chicago in about 1925, and worked at various venues with King Oliver's Jazz Band. She first recorded in November 1925 for Okeh Records, backed by the cornet player Louis Bertha "Chippie" Hill in New York, between Armstrong and pianist Richard M. Jones, on 1946 and 1948. (William P. Gottlieb) songs such as "Pratt City Blues", "Low Land Blues" and "Kid Man Blues" that year, and on "Georgia Man" and "Trouble in Mind" with the same musicians in 1926. She also recorded in 1927, with Lonnie Johnson on the vocal duet, "Hard Times Blues", plus "Weary Money Blues", "Tell Me Why" and "Speedway Blues". In 1928, came the Tampa Red vocal duets, "Hard Times Blues" and "Christmas Man Blues", and in 1929 with "Scrapper" Blackwell & The Two Roys, with Leroy Carr on piano, the song "Non-skid Tread". Hill recorded 23 titles between 1925 to 1929. In the 1930s she retired from singing to raise her seven children. Hill staged a comeback in 1946 with Lovie Austin's Blues Serenades, and recorded for Rudi Blesh's Circle label. She began appearing on radio and in clubs and concerts in New York, including in 1948 the Carnegie Hall concert with Kid Ory, and she sang at the Paris Jazz Festival, and worked with Art Hodes in Chicago. She was back again in 1950, when she was run over by a car and killed in New York at the age of 45. She is buried at the Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island, Cook County, Illinois.

Several instruments are used in Blues today. For every style of blues certain instruments are applied. We can say that the most popular, which came to characterize the Blues in their various styles are: harmonica (mouth organ), and electric or acoustic guitar. These essences are considered instruments to the beat, harmony and melody can be executed. In the hall of instruments that comprise the orchestra, or a band of Blues are the following instruments: wind (trumpet, trombone, harmonica, saxophone), string (bass, electric guitar or acoustic 6 or 12 string, banjo, guitar, cello), keys (piano and keyboards), percussion (drums among others). It is pertinent to emphasize that in the early days, the instrumentalization of work-songs and spirituals were made only with banjo, harmonica and percussion instrument of African origin called djamb茅. Only later, and brought by Spanish influence in Mexico is that it was built the guitar or acoustic guitar in Blues. After inclusion of the acoustic guitar came the oldest style of Blues, Folk Blues called, where did Bluesman based on acoustic guitar and harmonica arrangements. Often the foundation and the soil were made only with acoustic guitar applying a revolutionary technique called slide, widely used today, which consists of sliding on the strings of the guitar or the guitar a metal tube producing a sound exotic, but very enjoyable. This technique has become traditional and characteristic of Blues. After creating the socalled Chicago Urban Blues or Blues, the Bluesmans and Blues bands began using the electric guitar along with piano, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, harmonica, bass and drums on the instrumental songs. Generally the Blues, takes place more emphasis on the harmonica and guitar, especially in soils and arrangements. Not all colors follow this principle, such as the Jump Blues where soils are made with saxophone.

Harm么nica The harmonica or harmonica, harmonica chops, harmonica, or simply harmonica (also known as organ in some parts of Northeast Brazil), is blowing musical uminstrumento whose sounds are produced by a set of free reeds. The harmonica in his mouth has a set of holes through which the player blows or sucks air. Due to its small size, the harmonica has no sounding board. The harmonica player can use his hands cupped to produce intensity variations. When performed in conjunction with other instruments, it is common for it to be electronically amplified. The harmonica is widely used in blues, rock and roll, jazz and classical music. They are also very common sets composed only of bagpipes, called Harmonic Orchestra, which usually play traditional music or folk. etymology The harmonica is one of the oldest musical instruments, and has been described, with different names, by Greeks, Romans and Germanic peoples. Made with skin decabra, the Romans identified with a skin (sort of bag made of skin) and called utriculus (small bottle), Suetonius says that Nero offered on one occasion to present itself as utricularius, is small player wineskin as punishment for not having won a tournament of poetry. The Germanic invaders who conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the sixth century of the Common Era, led the harmonica, they called gaits, a word which in their language meant "goat." This name remained in other languages as Gayda in Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian and

harmonica gainda in Portuguese. In some regions of Spain prefers the term Latin bagpipe, also used in France (corn muse).

Story The harmonica has its origins in an ancient Chinese instrument, the sheng, which was invented more than five thousand years and works on the principle of free reeds. This technique of sound production spawned a large family of instruments powered by bellows or air pumps such as the accordion and melodic. In organs is common that some tubes are flautados and others use free reeds to produce sounds with different timbres. In 1821 a German watchmaker named Christian Ludwig Buschmann invented an instrument similar to the current harmonics with 15 blades and 10 cm in length, but this instrument was seen as a toy and was not considered suitable for musical performance. In 1857 another German clockmaker, Matthias Hohner, founded a company and started making calls harps mouth or mouth organ with 10 holes. The instrument went on to sell well in Germany, France, Italy and the United States. In Europe the harmonica became a very popular and folk music arose in bands and orchestras specializing in this instrument. In the United States it was widely used in country music. With the emergence of the blues in the early twentieth century, the harmonica peaked and then secured the participation in other musical genres such as jazz, folk music, rock and roll and even classical music. Today with the popularity of the instrument there are several manufacturers of bagpipes around the world: in Brazil Hering, Hohner and Seydel in Germany, Japan and a Suzuki Lee Oskar in the U.S.

Types of bagpipes In principle, the vane plate could be mounted with any combination of notes, so there are various types of pipes which vary according to the amount of holes, scale, or the extension record (set of notes that can be produced by the instrument) and disposition of the notes in the holes (layout).

Diatonic harmonica Also called the blues harmonica has 10 holes and an extension of three octaves. The vanes are arranged in the holes in order to allow the execution of individual notes of the diatonic major scale. It also allows you to play chords if more than one hole is used simultaneously (harmonica player controls how many holes play at a time by the position of the lips or blocking the holes with your tongue). In the default layout diatonic harmonica, you can get the fundamental note of the chord (I) and the dominant (V). The figure below shows the arrangement of notes in a diatonic harmonica in Do (C).

hole:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -----------------------------

blow: |C |E |G |C |E |G |C |E |G |C | suction: |D |G |B |D |F |A |B |D |F |A | -----------------------------

Note that only the holes between 4:07 you can get all the notes of the diatonic scale. The range between the first and third holes and between holes 7 and 10 are complete, but notes that are missing can be obtained by the use of bending. The layout below shows all the notes that can be obtained in the same harmonics, bends and overblows including:

|A# |D# |G# |C |D# |F# |A# | |D# |F# |B hole:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ---------------------------------------

blow: |C |E |G |C |E |G |C |E |G |C | suction: |D |G |B |D |F |A |B |D |F |A | --------------------------------------C# |F# |A# |C# | |G# |C# |F |G# |C | |F |A | |G# |

The holes 1 to 4 and 6 is obtained by bending and suction holes 8, 9 and 10 by blowing. In the opposite direction of the air, are the overblows, which can be raised to more than a semitone. To allow execution of any music there harmonicas for each of the twelve existing major diatonic scales. The distribution of intervals is always the same, varying only the fundamental note. This layout is designed to play melodies in the same key of the harmonica using the diatonic scale greater. This is called the first position. However, many players prefer to use the scale mixolydian that exists between the hole 2 - sucking and blowing hole 6, which is a fundamental tone above the fifth harmonics. This position, called cross harp or second position allows you to use more efficiently the bends of holes 1 to 6 and is therefore more used in blues. Thus, it is used in a harmonica From (C) to perform a song to Sol (G) and so on. Throughout the development of the instrument, several manufacturers have created bagpipes with alternative distributions of notes. Among them, we have the pipes in minor melodic, harmonic minor and major mode with altered distribution, such as the Lee Oskar Melody Maker that allows the execution of the chords of the most common chord progressions in popular music. There are also tuned harmonicas and augmented chords in miniature. A new revolutionary model of harmonics produced by Hohner diatonic called XB-40 (extreme bender 40) allows, through a complex system of vanes pairs, perform bends in all the holes, increasing greatly the range harmonic instrument.

Chromatic Harmônica A gaita cromática é uma evolução da diatônica, criada para permitir a execução melódica de músicas em qualquer tonalidade, com modulações e acidentes eventuais e sem as variações de afinação produzidas pelobend. Para isso ela possui duas palhetas de sopro e duas de sucção em cada furo e uma chave que o músico aciona com o indicador da mão direita para direcionar o ar para cada par sopro/sucção. Quando a chave está solta, a gaita produz as notas naturais (sem acidentes - correspondentes às teclas brancas do piano). Quando a chave é acionada são produzidas as notas com acidentes (bemóis e sustenidos correspondentes às teclas pretas do piano). Além disso, todas as palhetas possuem válvulas para impedir que as palhetas de sopro e sucção soem simultaneamente. Por isso não é possível executar bends em uma gaita cromática a não ser que estas válvulas sejam removidas. Mas há exceções, alguns artistas conseguem executar "meios bends", ou efeitos de bends. As gaitas cromáticas normalmente possuem 12 ou 16 furos para uma extensão de três ou 4 escalas completas, sendo que atualmente já se fabricam gaitas cromáticas com 10 e 14 furos. A figura abaixo mostra a disposição das notas em uma gaita cromática de 12 furos.

With the key loose: hole:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 -----------------------------------------------

blow: | C | E | G | C | C | E | G | C | C | E | G | C | suction: | D | F | A | B | D | F | A | B | D | F | A | B | ----------------------------------------------With the added key: hole:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 -----------------------------------------------

blow: |C# |E# |G# |C# |C# |E# |G# |C# |C# |E# |G# |C# | suction: |D# |F# |A# |B# |D# |F# |A# |B# |D# |F# |A# |B# | -----------------------------------------------

Note that Mi # (E #) is the same as F (F) and Si # (B #) is the same note as From (C), so these notes can be performed with the key tossed or thrown. This is necessary so that no holes "dumb" and allows the musician greater flexibility in implementation. It is common to use chromatic pipes in Do for nearly all cases, but they also exist in other colors, particularly to allow execution records when more severe or acute more are required. Why allow greater ease in carrying melodic, chromatic harmonica is often a soloist in orchestras harmonics. It is also widely used in genres that require a larger extent as jazz, classical music and crying. It is also common on soundtracks, especially Italian cinema, such as Ennio Morricone. Other types of harmonics Besides the diatonic and chromatic there are many other settings used mainly in ensembles or orchestras. tremolo harmonica This has two harmonics in each hole vanes that are slightly detuned with respect to one another. This produces the sensation of tremolo, a kind of vibration in pitch. She has 16 holes and there is no correct way to play - apparently.

Gaita in eighth It has two reeds in each hole tuned an octave interval between them.

Chord Harmonica For each tone, allows the execution of 48 different types of chords, 12 major chords, 12 minor, 12 seventh, 6 and 6 increased miniature. The German factory Hohner and Suzuki are the only Japanese to produce this type of harmonica.

Bass The bass or contrabass, also known as the bass guitar and bass guitar in Portugal, is a melodic musical instrument, specifically designed to perform the bass part of a musical line. It can be acoustic or electric. The name bass guitar can be given also to specific models of guitars, but have pitch a little more serious than the traditional classical guitar, this classic bass guitar is tuned a fourth below the traditional guitar, and does not belong to the family of low. Varieties Among the most commonly found are low the following variations: Bass Guitar The bass or electric bass, which can be found in most rock bands, pop, progressive jazz, has solid body and pickups to amplify their sound. The electric bass is a relatively new instrument compared to the acoustic bass. Launched in late 1951, the creation of Leo Fender helped solve many existing problems of bassists until then. The most revolutionary musical instrument of the twentieth century was inspired by the Telecaster electric guitar. Fender electric bass christened the first of Precision.

Acoustic More compact version of the bass, similar to a classical guitar quite large, and its performance is in the same posture acoustic guitar, where the musician remains with the acoustic bass resting on his legs in a horizontal position and the musician sitting. A character who stands out in this business is, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden is known by many as the greatest bassist in history.

Fretless Is the name of fretless bass without frets, these "triangles" that divide the neck of the instrument in semitones. Without fret bass is common among both basses classics (which are part of the section of string instruments in an orchestra), but can also be found among electric basses (the models of this matter), as well as the orchestral version of the basses that are electrified (with speaker electrified with Pickups).

Ropes The bass has four to six strings (basically) that are generally an octave guitar. The most common tuning in low 4 strings is Sol (G), D (D), A (A) and E (E), representing the sequence from 1st to 4th string, the more acute the more serious. The 5-string has two tunings very common that vary with the rope added being the 1st or 5th which are C (C), G (G), D (D), A (A) and Mi (E) or Sol (G), D (D), A (A), E (E) and Si (B) representing the sequence of the 1st to the 5th string, the more acute the more serious. The most common tuning in lower 6-string is C (C), G (G), D (D), A (A), E (E) and Si (B), representing the sequence from 1st to 6th string, the more acute the more serious.

Trumpet The horn is a trumpet or wind musical instrument, a aerophone family of metals (the trumpet is what produces higher pitch family) , characterized by instruments nozzle, generally made of metal. It is also known as piston (piston, by metonymy). Who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player. It consists of body, water key, pump tuning, pistons, elbows and nozzle, and finished pavilion. It is used in various musical genres and is very commonly found namĂşsica classical, jazz, marching bands and mariachis. It is also found in more accelerated styles such as frevo, ska and Latin mambo and salsa as well as in rural maracatu, the forest area north of Pernambuco.

Description Basically, the trumpet is cylindrical metal tube into three quarters of their length, becoming then terminating in a conical bell. The nozzle located on the opposite side of the bell can have different shapes, and the more shallow, the more easily the higher records may be played. The distance traveled by the air inside the instrument is controlled using keys or pistons, controlling the distance to be traveled by the air inside the instrument. Besides controlled by the pistons, notes are also controlled by the pressure of the lips of the trumpet and the speed with which the air is blown into the instrument. The trumpet is often confused with its "nearest relative" - the bugle. However, the cornet has a more conical tube, and the trumpet is more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives this one a little more mellow tone. They have the same length of pipe, and thus the same step, so the music written for the bugle and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn (often used in jazz and popular music, and the hottest music, expressing another timbre), has tapered pipe more than the traditional trumpet, and a richer tone. Is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower grades. Since the mid-nineteenth century (1815) the trumpet is provided with three pistons, allowing you to produce chromatically all sounds within your extension. Nozzle has a hemispherical or cup-shaped. Most modern designs trumpet has three piston valves, each increasing the length of the tube, in consequence lowering the height of the note played. The first valve lowers the note a

tone (two semitones), the second valve by a half step (one semitone) and the third in a tone and a half (three semitones). Used alone and in combination, the valves make the instrument fully chromatic trumpet, that is capable of playing the twelve notes of the chromatic scale.

Guitar The name guitar refers to a number of plucked string instruments, having generally 6 to 12 strings tensioned over the instrument and having a body with approximate shape of an 8 (although there are several other formats), and an arm, over which the strings pass, allowing the performer to control the pitch of the note produced. There are acoustic versions, which possuemcaixa resonance and power, which may or may not have a sounding board (see: semiacĂşstica guitar), but using pickups and amplifiers to increase the loudness of the instrument. The guitars, and most stringed instruments are built by luthier. The mĂşsicoque the guitarist performs is called.

Structure Guitar

1st. Head, hand or palette. 2nd. eyelash 3rd. Pegs or Tuners 4th. lumber 5th. Lifter or Tensor

Every guitar, electric or acoustic, is basically composed of the same parts. The main difference between them is in the body. The figures below show an electric guitar and an acoustic, with parts listed. The construction is similar to the low electric guitar. For additional information, see the articles for each party. For constructive differences, see the articles for each variety of guitar.

6th. marking 7th. arm 8th. TrĂłculo (joint arm) 9th. body 10. pickups 11. pots 12. Trestle (or bridge) 13. Protector lid (or shell) 14. background 15. cover 16. Lateral or tracks 17. Opening or mouth 18. ropes 19. fuse 20. scale

Arm The fretboard is made up primarily of a massive bar of wood attached to the rigid body. The wood used is typically of a type different from that used in the body. Woods great tensile strength are preferred and the most used is mahogany. It is responsible for fixing one end of the strings and also to allow execution of banknotes by varying the length of the strings. They are part of the arm: the "hand", the nut, the scale, the frets and some decorative elements (usually mother of pearl, ivory or ebony) used in marking. In acoustic and semi-acoustic, the arm is glued to the body. The tr贸culo is the wider end of the arm used to attach it to the body and to give mechanical rigidity to the assembly. In general tr贸culo is slotted in the same part of the arm, but may also be a separate part and attached to the arm and the body. In electric guitars, the arm can be attached by screws to the body. In some cases, a tether is used to oppose the curvature caused by the string tension. The clamping arm is critical to the pitch of the instrument, because the change in the angle of the arm relative to the body may cause variations in the height of the notes. Although undesirable in classical guitar, this effect can be used purposely for certain inflections in height (bends), especially in blues.

Head and taps The head or palette is responsible for setting the tuning pegs, used to tune the instrument. The head is attached to the end of the arm forming a small angle to facilitate positioning of the cords on the eyelash. It is generally made of the same wood and carved arm with various decorative motifs. The tarracha is a mechanism consisting of an axis about which the rope is wound and a gear which allows rotating it with his fingers until the correct tension of each string. The gears ensure a balance of power that it prevents loosening the strings at runtime. In most of the guitars are three taps on each side of the head. In some electric guitars is used to configure six pegs on-line on one side of the head. Other configurations are possible, such as 4 +2, 4 +3 in 7-string guitars. 6 +6 in 12-string guitars and 2 +2 or 4 online for bass and other instruments with four strings. The nut is a small bar of bone, plastic or mother of pearl, set between the top of the arm and head. It has a small groove notched for the passage of each string. This allows the correct positioning of the strings. The flap serves to support the ropes at the end of the arm. It is the origin point of the length of the strings and many consider it as the zero fret. Today, in some models of electric guitars, no lashes that have special latches, screws, preventing the instrument is in tune executing leveraged (vibratos artificial).

Scale Made of a timber different from the rest of the arm, such as ebony, the scale is the part of the instrument where the strings are supported when the musician wants to divide the rope. It is on the scale that the frets are mounted. Also has several brands in a circle, triangles or diamonds, inlaid with marquetry. Tags are usually pearl, ivory or ebony. In some cases they are simply painted and serve to help the performer to identify houses the scale. It is usually used a mark in the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15 th, 17 th, 19 th, 21 th and 24 th houses and two marks in 12th, sometimes in the 7th and the 24th (when existing) homes. In some electric guitars these marks may be bright, LED or fiber optics.

Lever Guitar part used to make an effect called vibrato. This effect is to change the pitch of the notes so they transpacem the idea of a wave flowing. This effect is widely used in some hectic pace, but is mainly used in rock rhythm.

Lumber The frets are small frets or bars (usually nickel alloy or alpaca) mounted on the scale and defining the exact points where the rope should be divided for each of the notes. When the musician puts his finger on a rope she lands on the scale and is supported on the fret. The length of the vibrating string becomes one between the fret and the fuse. The frets are mounted on modern instruments to allow the guitars have equal temperament. Consequently the ratio between the distances of two consecutive frets is, whose numeric value is about 1.059463. As this ratio is applied successively at each interval, it explains why the houses near the eyelash are wider than those near the body of the instrument. The 12th fret divides the string exactly in half, and 24 (if present) divides the string in a quarter of the total length (between the nut and the fuse). Every twelve frets represents an interval of exactly one octave. The distance between the fuse and the nth fret, ie the length of the vibrating string when the string rests on the fret n is given by: Where d is the pitch of the string (total length of rope between the fuse and eyelash). Body On acoustic guitar and also in some varieties semi-acoustic, the body has the functions of a sounding board and fixing the ropes. The body is a hollow box made of various woods. Generally has an opening (mouth call) at the top needed to amplify the sound of the strings and allow air vibration. Below the mouth is glued the easel, used to attach the strings to the body. The rack has holes for fixing the strings. On the easel, the fuse is mounted, a bar of pearl, bone or plastic that serves to distance the strings and body scale. In flamenco guitars, used in flamenco, a guard is mounted on the top of the lid below the mouth so that the musician can make percussive sounds with his fingers. Various decorative elements are present in the body, such as tiles or strips of different colors. Some folk instruments can also be painted in various colors. On electric guitar and bass, the body is a solid piece of wood, usually massive or in most popular models, laminated wood because it produces light and very rigid instruments, besides having better sound. The most common Brazilian woods are cedar, mahogany,

ivory, caxeta or ash. In other countries are employed as wood ash, alder, basswood, rosewood, ebony or maple and others. In general, these instruments are coated by thin sheets of wood or painted noblest, often quite elaborate and multicolored motifs. The body is usually carved or hollowed to allow mounting of electronic equipment, the Bridge (bridge) and other equipment. A worktop saver, called guard nail can be added to protect the body from friction with the paddle.

Stringing The guitar sound is produced by vibration of the strings, which must be for both tensioned and mounted so that they may vibrate freely without hitting any other part of the instrument. The strings of lutes and guitars were made of old tripe (intestines) of sheep cut into very thin and twisted. Currently they are made of nylon or steel. The thinner strings, used for the higher notes, are composed of a single strand. The thicker in fact cords are made of a soul (which may be nylon, silk or steel) wrapped in a spiral of finer wire made of steel. This construction allows higher tensile strength, greater stability tuning and greater flexibility than would be possible if they used simple wire also in thicker strings. Steel cords generally have a small sphere strongly fixed to one end to facilitate attachment to the instrument. The strings are attached to existing holes in the bridge through a node or the ball, which by being wider than the hole can not pass through it, holding the rope. In some guitar or bass strings pass through holes through the instrument body and are fixed on the rear of the body. The fuse is a bar made from bone or plastic which is supported on the bridge and over which the ropes are laid. The height of the fuse is important to set the distance between the strings and scale. The height adjustment is important because the pitch of the instrument can vary the distance of the strings is very large. On the other hand, ropes very close range may about the furniture to vibrate, which produces an unpleasant noise (trastejamento). The other end of the rope passes over the nut and is then spirally wrapped about the axis of taraxas. As the bridge and nut are higher than the arm and the body of the instrument, the strings are stretched and tensioned between these two parts and can vibrate freely when plucked or plucked by a plectrum. Generally guitars are built to be played with the left hand and arm in the right body. In this position, the grooves of the nut are arranged so that the thickest string is on top and the thinner below. The fuse bridge or are not symmetrical. The distance between the strings and the body is greater for the bass strings than for thinner. This is necessary to avoid trastejamento of catchphrases, but causes some tuning problems. When the rope is resting on the scale it is stretched. The increase in voltage slightly increases the pitch of the note. Although very thin this effect can cause detuning in some chords. To compensate this problem, the bridge is glued slightly tilted. Thus, the thicker strings (the ones that will suffer greater tension during execution) are slightly longer than the more acute. The entire assembly of these components is critical and allows to differentiate the quality of tools made by different luthiers. All these asymmetries require the construction of different versions of instruments for righties and lefties. Many guitarists and guitarists, however adapt the instrument to perform inverted. Some musicians just saw the instrument and play with a mirror technique. The problem with this method is that the fillers, usually played by the thumb must be touched by the indicator. Others, like Jimi Hendrix make stringing inverted on a normal guitar. Although functional, this method can lead to glitches tuning. Styles like blues, rock and folk, which use many bends and vibratos not suffer much with these tuning problems, but to perform with classical exchanged hands is essential to use a tool built especially for lefties.

Tuning Many different tunings are possible depending on the range of the instrument. The most common instruments 6 string is the "standard tuning" (EBGDAE). Note that the guitar is a transposing instrument. The notes sound an octave lower than they are written. The notes below correspond to the note produced by the open string:

- Sixth chord (the most serious being that stands above all others): Mi staff (a minor thirteenth below middle C - approx. 82.4 Hz) - Fifth String: There (a tenth below middle C minor - approx. 110 Hz) - Fourth string: D (a minor seventh below middle C - approx. 146.8 Hz) - Third string: Sol (a perfect fifth below middle C - approx. 196.0 Hz) - Second string: Si (a minor second below middle C - approx. 246.92 Hz) - First rope (most acute): Mi (a major third above middle C - approx. 105.6 Hz) The standard pitch allows a simple fingering for most chords and scales also running with minimal movements of the left hand. The acoustic guitars have a hollow body made of wood are used in many genres of music, like rock, bossa nova, country music, jazz, fado and folk styles from different countries. There are also specific versions for classical music and the music of Spain (flamenco). How to have a sounding board, have sound power sufficient to perform without amplification, but can be used microphones or pickups when necessary to increase the sound power. In general, these instruments are played with the fingernails or picks up and enhances your natural timbre undistorted electric.

Piano The piano (pianoforte apocope derived from Italian) is a stringed musical instrument, the rating system Hornbostel-Sachs. The sound is produced by pieces made of wood and covered by a material (often felt) soft designated hammers, and being activated through a keyboard, touch the ropes stretched and secured a rigid frame made of wood or metal. The strings vibrate and produce sound. As for percussive stringed instrument mechanism activated by a keyboard, the piano is similar to the clavichord and the harpsichord. The three instruments differ however the mechanism of sound production. In a harpsichord the strings are plucked. In a clavichord the strings are struck by hammers which remain in contact with the rope. In piano hammer moves away from the rope immediately after leaving play it to vibrate freely. Had his first published reference in 1711, the "Giornale d'Italia dei Litterati" by reason of his presentation in Florence by Bartolomeo Cristofori its inventor. From that moment

happens to be a series of improvements to reach the piano today. The essence of the new invention lay in the ability to give different intensity to sounds and so received the name "pianoforte" (which goes from pianissimo aofortíssimo) and later reduced to just piano. Such arrays of sonic possibilities eventually guide the choice of composers over the clavicémbalo. Modern pianos, although not distinguish the oldest with regard to hues, bring new aesthetical shapes and materials composing the instrument. A piano is common, usually eight LAS eight flats sis, sis eight, eight C's, seven C's sharp, seven defendants, seven flats mis, mis seven, seven Fan products, sharps setefás seven suns and seven suns sharp, giving a total of 88 musical notes. If one of 97 musical notes, like Bösendorfer 290, he will have nine C's, eight C's sharp, eight defendants, eight flats mis, mis eight, eight Fan products, eight sharps Fan products, eight sols, eight suns sharps, eight wool, eight sis and oitosis flats. The piano is widely used in Western music, in jazz, for solo performance and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing. Although not portable and has a high price, the piano is a versatile instrument, one of the characteristics that made him one of the most popular musical instruments in the world.

Mechanism Virtually all modern pianos have 88 keys (seven octaves a minor third, from La0 (27.5 Hz) to DO8 (4,186 Hz)). Many older pianos have 85 keys (exactly seven octaves, from La0 (27.5 Hz) to LA7 (3,520 Hz)). Also there are pianos with eight octaves, brand Austrian Bösendorfer. The keys of the natural notes (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la and you) are white, and the keys of the accident (doh ♯, D ♯, F ♯, ♯ sun and there ♯ in the order of sharps and the corresponding D ♭, E ♭, ♭ sun, there ♭ ♭ itself and the order of flats) are of black color. All are made of wood and are usually covered by the black and white ebony ivory, now in disuse and forbidden in the world, or plastic. Pedals The pianos usually have two or three pedals, being always the right allowing the strings to vibrate freely, giving a prolonged feeling of the sound. Lets you perform a technique called legato, as if the sound of the notes were a continual succession. Composers such as Frédéric Chopin used in his plays this pedal quite often. The left pedal is called the una corda. Triggers on grand pianos a mechanism that deviates very slightly the position of the hammers. This makes a note which is typically performed when the hammer strikes strings sounds simultaneously three more smoothly because the hammer hits only two. The name una corda seems so wrong, but the first pianos, even the inventor Cristofori, the deviation allowed only one string was struck. Upright pianos in the left pedal can get a similar effect by moving the hammers to a resting position closer to the strings. The center pedal, called the sostenuto allows only vibrate freely (s) Note (s) whose keys are activated when the drive pedal. The notes will not sound later attacked freely, stopping as soon as the pianist release the keys. This makes it possible to sustain some notes while the pianist's hands are free to play other notes, which is very useful when performing, for example, passages in basso continuo. The sostenuto pedal was the last to be incremented at the piano. Currently, almost all grand pianos have this type of pedal, while between upright pianos there are still many who have not. Many parts of the twentieth century require the use of this pedal. An example is "Catalogue d'Oiseaux," de Olivier

Messiaen. On many upright pianos, in which the central sostenuto pedal was abolished there in place of the center pedal mechanism of muted, which only serves to muffle the sound of the instrument.

SP Recently the so-called electric pianos have undergone a major evolution. They are called SP (Stage Piano or stage piano). Have exactly the same number of acoustic piano keys and approach more and more of their sound, where the most current, up to have tones of high fidelity recordings of the most famous acoustic pianos in the world, including Steinway, Yamaha, Bosendorfer etc.. Many have even sounds of other musical instruments, such as electronic keyboards. The 'sound' of the electric piano is actually a recording of 'authentic sound' of an acoustic piano with sound samples called "samples". Its keys are 'sensitive', because they mimic the sound intensity of conventional piano. Often, this group set the tone, and function keys, leave nothing to be desired compared to some brands of acoustic pianos. Today the popularity of these SP is very big in the world face the most affordable prices and great power transport.

Drums The battery is a drum set (of various sizes and tones) dishes and placed conveniently with the intention of percurtidos by a single musician, called drums, usually with the aid of a pair of drumsticks or brushes bobbin, although in the case of some performers may also be used their bare hands.

Constitution Its weight varies from 40 to 70 kg. There is no exact pattern about to be mounted all the components of a battery, [4] where the musical style is indicated by many as one of maioresinfluĂŞncias before the drummer with regard to disposition of the elements, and the personal preference of the musician or their logistical or financial conditions; - A deaf (also designated by tĂmbalo ground or floor tom in Portugal). dishes - A cymbal (pair of plates clash in Portugal, or hi-hat, in English), triggered by a pedal; A - drive plate (also known by the English name ride or swish) supported on a support generally in the form of a tripod; - One or more courses of attack (the three most used, with the English name: crash, splash echina), supported on bearings identical to the ride cymbal, placed alongside the other elements. The addition of toms, various dishes, pandeirolas, gongs, wood blocks, mugs, pads (pads) securely attached to electronic samplers, or any other accessory percussion (or not) can also be part of some batteries, so to be produced various sounds that are more in keeping with the tastes of the musicians. Some drummers like Neil Peart or Terry Bozzio, developed battery packs out of the ordinary, using various elements such comorototĂłs, drums, gongs or toms tuned in correspondence with musical notes, allowing the drummer, beyond implementation rhythmic, melodically contribute to the music. The 80 was prolific in the emergence of these unusual sets, appreciated by lovers of battery, all over the world.

Muddy Waters Although in his later years Muddy usually said that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915, he was actually born at Jug's Corner in neighboring Issaquena County, Mississippi, in 1913. Recent research has uncovered documentation showing that in the 1930s and 1940s he reported his birth year as 1913 on both his marriage license and musicians' union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest claim of 1915 as his year of birth, which he continued to use in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920, suggesting that his birth year may have been 1914. The Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid 1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1913. Muddy's gravestone lists his birth year as 1915. His grandmother Della Grant raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth, earning the nickname "Muddy" at an early age, before changing it to "Muddy Water" and finally "Muddy Waters". The shack where Muddy Waters lived in his youth on Stovall Plantation is now located at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He started out on harmonica, but by age seventeen he was playing the guitar at parties, emulating two blues artists who were extremely popular in the south, Son House and Robert Johnson.

Muddy Waters at the opening of Peaches Records & Tapes in Rockville, Maryland

On November 20, 1932, Muddy married Mabel Berry; Robert Nighthawk played guitar at the wedding, and the party reportedly got so wild the floor fell in. Mabel left Muddy three years later when Muddy's first child was born; the child's mother was Leola Spain, sixteen years old (Leola later used her maiden name Brown), "married to a man named Steven" and "going with a guy named Tucker". Leola was the only one of his girlfriends with whom Muddy would stay in touch throughout his life; they never married. By the time he finally cut out for Chicago in 1943, there was another Mrs. Morganfield left behind, a girl called Sallie Ann.

Early Career In 1940, Muddy moved to Chicago for the first time. He played with Silas Green a year later, and then returned to Mississippi. In the early part of the decade he ran a juke joint, complete with gambling, moonshine, and a jukebox; he also performed music there himself. In the summer of 1941, Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress, to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Muddy recalled in Rolling Stone, "and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the

corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, 'I can do it, I can do it.'" Lomax came back in July 1942 to record Muddy again. Both sessions were eventually released as Down On Stovall's Plantation on the Testament label. The complete recordings were re-issued on CD as Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings. The historic 1941-42 Library of Congress field recordings by Chess Records in 1993, and re-mastered in 1997.

In 1943, Muddy headed back to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy, then one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago, helped Muddy break into the very competitive market by allowing him to open for his shows in the rowdy clubs. In 1945, Muddy's uncle, Joe Grant, gave him his first electric guitar, which enabled him to be heard above the noisy crowds. In 1946, he recorded some tunes for Mayo Williams at Columbia but they were not released at the time. Later that year he began recording for Aristocrat Records, a newly-formed label run by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess. In 1947, he played guitar with Sunnyland Slim on piano on the cuts "Gypsy Woman" and "Little Anna Mae." These were also shelved, but in 1948, "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "I Feel Like Going Home" became big hits and his popularity in clubs began to take off. Soon after, Aristocrat changed their label name to Chess Records and Muddy's signature tune "Rollin' Stone" also became a smash hit.

Commercial success Initially, the Chess brothers would not allow Muddy to use his own guitar in the recording studio; instead he was provided with a backing bass by Ernest "Big" Crawford, or by musicians assembled specifically for the recording session, including "Baby Face" Leroy Foster and Johnny Jones. Gradually Chess relented, and by September 1953 he was recording with one of the most acclaimed blues groups in history: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (a.k.a. Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano. The band recorded a series of blues classics during the early 1950s, some with the help of bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon, including "Hoochie Coochie Man" (Number 8 on the R&B charts), "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (Number 4), and "I'm Ready". These three were "the most macho songs in his repertoire," wrote Robert Palmer in Rolling Stone. "Muddy would never have composed anything so unsubtle. But they gave him a succession of showstoppers and an image, which were important for a bluesman trying to break out of the grind of local gigs into national prominence.â&#x20AC;? Along with his former harmonica player Little Walter Jacobs and recent southern transplant Howlin' Wolf, Muddy reigned over the early 1950s Chicago blues scene, his band becoming a proving ground for some of the city's best blues talent. While Little Walter continued a collaborative relationship long after he left Muddy's band in 1952, appearing on most of Muddy's classic recordings throughout the 1950s, Muddy developed a long-running, generally good-natured rivalry with Wolf. The success of Muddy's ensemble paved the way for others in his group to break away and enjoy their own solo careers. In 1952 Little Walter left when his single "Juke" became a hit, and in 1955 Rogers quit to work exclusively with his own band, which had been a sideline until that time. Although he continued working with Muddy's band, Otis Spann enjoyed a solo career and many releases under his own name beginning in the mid1950s. Around that time, Muddy Waters scored hits with the rock songs "Mannish Boy" and "Sugar Sweet" in 1955, followed by the R&B hits "Trouble No More," "Forty Days & Forty Nights" and "Don't Go No Farther" in 1956.

Comeback Muddy's long-time wife Geneva died of cancer on March 15, 1973. A devastated Muddy was taken to a doctor and told to quit smoking, which he did. Gaining custody of some of his "outside kids", he moved them into his home, eventually buying a new house in Westmont, Illinois. Another teenage daughter turned up while on tour in New Orleans; Big Bill Morganfield was introduced to his Dad after a gig in Florida. Florida was also where Muddy met his future wife, the 19-year-old Marva Jean Brooks whom he nicknamed "Sunshine". On November 25, 1976, Muddy Waters performed at The Band's farewell concert at Winterland in San Francisco. The concert was released as both a record and a film, The Last Waltz, featuring a performance of "Mannish Boy" with Paul Butterfield on harmonica.

In 1977 Johnny Winter convinced his label, Blue Sky, to sign Muddy, the beginning of a fruitful partnership. His "comeback" LP, Hard Again, was recorded in just two days and was a return to the original Chicago sound he had created 25 years earlier, thanks to Winter's production. Former sideman James Cotton contributed harmonica on the Grammy Awardwinning album and a brief but well-received tour followed. The Muddy Waters Blues Band at the time included guitarists Sammy Lawhorn, Bob Margolin and Luther "Snake Boy" Johnson, pianist Pinetop Perkins, harmonica player Jerry Portnoy, bassist Calvin "Fuzz" Jones and drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith. On "Hard Again", Winter played guitar in addition to producing; Muddy asked James Cotton to play harp on the session, and Cotton brought his own bassist Charles Calmese. According to Margolin's liner notes, Muddy did not play guitar during these sessions. The album covers a broad spectrum of styles, from the opening of "Mannish Boy", with shouts and hollers throughout, to the oldstyle Delta blues of "I Can't Be Satisfied", with a National Steel solo by Winter, to Cotton's screeching intro to "The Blues Had a Baby", to the moaning closer "Little Girl". Its live feel harks back to the Chess Records days, and it evokes a feeling of intimacy and cooperative musicianship. The expanded reissue includes one bonus track, a remake of the 1950s single "Walking Through the Park". The other outtakes from the album sessions appear on King Bee. Margolin's notes state that the reissued album was remastered but that remixing was not considered to be necessary. Hard Again was the first studio collaboration between Muddy and Winter, who produced his final four albums, the others being I'm Ready, King Bee, and Muddy "Mississippi" Waters - Live, for Blue Sky, a Columbia Records subsidiary. In 1978, Winter recruited two of Muddy's cohorts from the early 1950s, Big Walter Horton and Jimmy Rogers, and brought in the rest of his touring band at the time (harmonica player Jerry Portnoy, guitarist Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, and bassist Calvin Jones) to record I'm Ready which came close to the critical and commercial success of Hard Again. The comeback continued in 1979 with the lauded LP Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live. "Muddy was loose for this one," wrote Jas Obrecht in Guitar Player, "and the result is the next best thing to being ringside at one of his foot-thumping, headMuddy Waters with James Cotton; 1971 nodding, downhome blues shows." On the album, Muddy is accompanied by his touring band, augmented by Johnny Winter on guitar. The set list contains most of his biggest hits, and the album has an energetic feel. King Bee the following year concluded Waters' reign at Blue Sky, and these last four LPs turned out to be his biggest-selling albums ever. King Bee was the last album Muddy Waters recorded. Coming last in a trio of studio outings produced by Johnny Winter, it is also a mixed bag. During the sessions for King Bee, Muddy, his manager and his band were involved in a dispute over money. According to the liner notes by Bob Margolin, the conflict arose from Muddy's health being on the wane and consequently playing fewer engagements. The band members wanted more money for each of the fewer gigs they did play in order to make ends meet. Ultimately a split occurred and the entire band quit. Because of the tensions in the studio preceding the split, Winter felt the sessions had not produced enough solid material to yield an entire album, and filled out King Bee with outtakes from earlier Blue Sky sessions. The cover photograph is by David Michael Kennedy. For the listener, King Bee is a leaner and meaner record. Less of the good-time exuberance present on the previous two outings is present here. The title track, "Mean Old Frisco", "Sad Sad Day", and "I Feel Like Going Home", are all blues with ensemble work. The Sony Legacy issue features completely remastered sound and Margolin's notes, and

also hosts two bonus tracks from the King Bee sessions that Winter did not see fit to release the first time. In 1981, Muddy Waters was invited to perform at Chicago Fest, the city's top outdoor music festival. He was joined onstage by Johnny Winter—who had successfully produced his most recent albums—and played classics like “Mannish Boy,” “Trouble No More” and “Mojo Working” to a new generation of fans. This historic performance was made available on DVD in 2009 by Shout! Factory. Later that year, Waters performed live with the Rolling Stones at the Checkerboard Lounge, with a DVD version of the concert released in 2012. In 1982, declining health dramatically curtailed Muddy's performance schedule. His last public performance took place when he sat in with Eric Clapton's band at a Clapton concert in Florida in autumn of 1982.

Death On April 30, 1983 Muddy Waters died in his sleep from heart failure, at his home in Westmont, Illinois. At his funeral at Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, throngs of blues musicians and fans showed up to pay tribute to one of the true originals of the art form. "Muddy was a master of just the right notes," John P. Hammond, told Guitar World magazine. "It was profound guitar playing, deep and simple... more country blues transposed to the electric guitar, the kind of playing that enhanced the lyrics, gave profundity to the words themselves." Two years after his death, Chicago honored him by designating the one-block section between 900 and 1000 E. 43rd Street near his former home on the south side "Honorary Muddy Waters Drive". The Chicago suburb of Westmont, where Waters lived the last decade of his life, named a section of Cass Avenue near his home "Honorary Muddy Waters Way". Following Waters' death, fellow blues musician B.B. King (who was hugely influenced by Waters) told Guitar World, "It's going to be years and years before most people realize how greatly he contributed to American music". Attesting to the historic place of Muddy Waters in the development of the blues in Mississippi, a Mississippi Blues Trail marker has been placed in Clarksdale, Mississippi, by the Mississippi Blues Commission designating the site of Muddy Waters' cabin to commemorate his importance.

Duke Ellington Early life Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Kennedy Ellington. Daisy and J.E. were both pianists. Daisy primarily played parlor songs and J.E. preferred operatic airs. They lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place (now Ward Place), NW in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His father, James Edward Ellington, was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina on April 15, 1879 and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1886 with his parents. Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D.C. on January 4, 1879, and was the daughter of a former American slave. James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy. At the age of seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him to live elegantly. Ellingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s childhood friends noticed that "his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman", and began calling him Duke. Ellington credited his "chum" Edgar McEntree for the nickname. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke." Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. "President Roosevelt (Teddy) would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play," he recalled.Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C. He got his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games. In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe, he wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag" (also known as the "Poodle Dog Rag"). Ellington created "Soda Fountain Rag" by ear, because he had not yet learned to read and write music. "I would play the 'Soda Fountain Rag' as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot," Ellington recalled. "Listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire." In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress (1973), Ellington said he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent. Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at the age of fourteen. Hearing the poolroom pianists play ignited Ellington's love for the instrument and he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to were Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, and Harvey Brooks. Ellington began listening to, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer months. Dunbar High School music teacher Henry Lee Grant gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P.

Johnson and Luckey Roberts. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. and his attachment grew to be so strong that he turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1916. Three months before graduating he dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training School, where he was studying commercial art. From 1917 through 1919, Ellington launched his musical career, painting commercial signs by day and playing piano by night. Through his day job, Duke's entrepreneurial side came out: when a customer would ask him to make a sign for a dance or party, he would ask them if they had musical entertainment; if not, Ellington would ask if he could play for them. He also had a messenger job with the U.S. Navy and State Departments. Ellington moved out of his parents' home and bought his own as he became a successful pianist. At first, he played in other ensembles, and in late 1917 formed his first group, "The Duke’s Serenaders" ("Colored Syncopators", his telephone directory advertising proclaimed). He was not only a member, but also the booking agent. His first play date was at the True Reformer's Hall, where he took home 75 cents. Ellington played throughout the Washington, D.C. area and into Virginia for private society balls and embassy parties. The band included Otto Hardwick, who switched from bass to saxophone; Arthur Whetsol on trumpet; Elmer Snowden on banjo; and Sonny Greer on drums. The band thrived, performing for both African-American and white audiences, a rarity during the racially divided times.

Early career When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington made the fateful decision to leave behind his successful career in Washington, D.C., and move to Harlem, becoming one of the figures of the Harlem Renaissance. New dance crazes like the Charleston emerged in Harlem, as well as African-American musical theater, including Eubie Blake's Shuffle Along. After the young musicians left the Sweatman Orchestra to strike out on their own, they found an emerging jazz scene that was highly competitive and hard to crack. They hustled pool by day and played whatever gigs they could find. The young band met Willie "The Lion" Smith who introduced them to the scene and gave them some money. They played at rent-house parties for income. After a few months, the young musicians returned to Washington, D.C., feeling discouraged. In June 1923, a gig in Atlantic City, New Jersey, led to a play date at the prestigious Exclusive Club in Harlem. This was followed in September 1923 by a move to the Hollywood Club – 49th and Broadway – and a four-year engagement, which gave Ellington a solid artistic base. He was known to play the bugle at the end of each performance. The group was called Elmer Snowden and his Black Sox Orchestra and had seven members, including James "Bubber" Miley. They renamed themselves "The Washingtonians". Snowden left the group in early 1924 and Ellington took over as bandleader. After a fire, the club was re-opened as the Club Kentucky (often referred to as the "Kentucky Club"), an engagement which set the stage for the biggest opportunities in Ellington's life. Ellington made eight records in 1924, receiving composing credit on three including Choo Choo. In 1925, Ellington contributed four songs to Chocolate Kiddies, an all-AfricanAmerican revue which introduced European audiences to African-American styles and performers. "Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra" grew to a ten-piece organization; they developed their own sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington’s arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members. For a short time soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet played with the group,

imparting his propulsive swing and superior musicianship to the young band members. In 1927, King Oliver turned down a regular booking for his group as the house band at Harlem's Cotton Club; the offer passed to Ellington. With a weekly radio broadcast, famous white clientele nightly poured in to see them. Ellington was joined in New York City by his wife, Edna Thompson, and son Mercer in the late twenties, but the couple soon permanently separated. According to her obituary in Jet magazine, she was "[h]omesick for Washington" and returned (she died in 1967). Although trumpeter Bubber Miley was a member of the orchestra for only a short period, he had a major influence on Ellington's sound. An early exponent of growl trumpet, his style changed the "sweet" dance band sound of the group to one that was hotter, which contemporaries termed "jungle" style. He also composed most of "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "Creole Love Call". An alcoholic, Miley had to leave the band before they gained wider fame. He died in 1932 at the age of 29. He was an important influence on Cootie Williams, who replaced him. In 1927, Ellington made a career-advancing agreement with agent-publisher Irving Mills, giving Mills a 45% interest in Ellington's future. Mills had an eye for new talent and early on published compositions by Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, and Harold Arlen. During the 1930s, Ellington's popularity continued to increase – largely as a result of the promotional skills of Mills – who got more than his fair share of co-composer credits. From the beginning of their relationship, Mills arranged recording sessions on nearly every label including Brunswick, Victor, Columbia, OKeh, Perfect, Pathe, the ARC/Plaza group of labels (Cameo, Romeo, Lincoln, Oriole, Domino, Jewel, Banner), Hit of the Week, and Columbia's cheaper labels (Harmony, Diva, Velvet Tone, Clarion) labels which gave Ellington popular recognition, as well giving Ellington's fans the opportunity of hearing multiple versions of the same song. Ellington ended his association with Mills in 1937, although he continued to record under Mills' banner through to 1940. At the Cotton Club, Ellington's group performed all the music for the revues, which mixed comedy, dance numbers, vaudeville, burlesque, music, and illegal alcohol. The musical numbers were composed by Jimmy McHugh and the lyrics by Dorothy Fields (later Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler), with some Ellington originals mixed in. Weekly radio broadcasts from the club gave Ellington national exposure. In 1929, Ellington appeared in his first movie, a nineteen-minute all-African-American RKO short, Black and Tan, in which he played the hero "Duke". In the same year, the Cotton Club Orchestra appeared on stage for several months in Florenz Ziegfeld's Show Girl, along with vaudeville stars Jimmy Durante, Eddie Foy, Jr., Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Gus Kahn. That feverish period also included numerous recordings, under the pseudonyms "Whoopee Makers", "The Jungle Band", "Harlem Footwarmers", and the "Ten Black Berries". In 1930, Ellington and his Orchestra connected with a whole different audience in a concert with Maurice Chevalier and they also performed at the Roseland Ballroom, "America's foremost ballroom". Noted composer Percy Grainger was also an early admirer and supporter. He wrote "The three greatest composers who ever lived are Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington. Unfortunately Bach is dead, Delius is very ill but we are happy to have with us today The Duke". In 1929, when Ellington conducted the orchestra for Show Girl, he met Will Vodery, Ziegfeld’s musical supervisor. In his 1946 biography, Duke Ellington, Barry Ulanov wrote: From Vodery, as he (Ellington) says himself, he drew his chromatic convictions, his uses of the tones ordinarily extraneous to the diatonic scale, with the consequent alteration of the harmonic character of his music, its broadening, The deepening of his resources. It has become customary to ascribe the classical influences upon Duke – Delius, Debussy and Ravel – to direct contact with their music. Actually his serious appreciation of those and other modern composers, came after his meeting with Vodery. As the Depression worsened, the recording industry was in crisis, dropping over 90% of its artists by 1933. Ellington and his orchestra survived the hard times by taking to the road in a series of tours. Radio exposure also helped maintain popularity. Ivie Anderson was hired as their featured vocalist. Sonny Greer had been providing occasional vocals and continued to do in a cross-talk feature with Anderson. Ellington, however, later had many different vocalists, including Herb Jeffries (until 1943) and Al Hibbler (who replaced Jeffries in 1943 and continued until 1951).

Ellington led the orchestra by conducting from the keyboard using piano cues and visual gestures; very rarely did he conduct using a baton. As a bandleader, Ellington was not a strict disciplinarian; he maintained control of his orchestra with a crafty combination of charm, humor, flattery, and astute psychology. A complex, private person, he revealed his feelings to only his closest intimates and effectively used his public persona to deflect attention away from himself. While the band's United States audience remained mainly African-American in this period, the Cotton Club had a near-exclusive white clientele and the Ellington orchestra had a huge following overseas, exemplified by the success of their trip to England in 1933 and their 1934 visit to the European mainland. The English visit saw Ellington win praise from members of the "serious" music community, including composer Constant Lambert, which gave a boost to Ellington's aspiration to compose longer works. For agent Mills it was a publicity triumph, as Ellington was now internationally known. On the band's tour through the segregated South in 1934, they avoided some of the traveling difficulties of African-Americans by touring in private railcars. These provided easy accommodations, dining, and storage for equipment while avoiding the indignities of segregated facilities.

The death of Ellington's mother in 1935 led to a temporary hiatus in his career. Competition was also intensifying, as African-American and white swing bands began to receive popular attention, including those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Carter, Earl Hines, Chick Webb, and Count Basie. Swing dancing became a youth phenomenon, particularly with white college audiences, and "danceability" drove record sales and bookings. Jukeboxes proliferated nationwide, spreading the gospel of "swing". Ellington's band could certainly swing, but their strengths were mood and nuance, and richness of composition; hence his statement "jazz is music; swing is business". Ellington countered with two developments. He made recordings of smaller groups (sextets, octets, and nonets) drawn from his then-15-man orchestra and he composed pieces intended to feature specific instrumentalist, as with "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Yearning for Love" forLawrence Brown, "Trumpet in Spades" for Rex Stewart, "Echoes of Harlem" for Cootie Williams and "Clarinet Lament" for Barney Bigard. In 1937, Ellington returned to the Cotton Club which had relocated to the mid-town theater district. In the summer of that year, his father died, and due to many expenses, Ellington's finances were tight. Things improved in 1938 and he met and moved in with Cotton Club employee Beatrice "Evie" Ellis. After splitting with agent Irving Mills, he signed on with the William Morris Agency. The 1930s ended with a very successful European tour just as World War II loomed. Ellington delivered some huge hits during the 1930s, which greatly helped to build his overall reputation. Some of them include: "Mood Indigo" (1930), "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933), "Solitude" (1934), "In a Sentimental Mood" (1935), "Caravan" (1937), "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" (1938). "Take the "A" Train" which hit big in 1941, was written by Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn, originally hired as a lyricist, began his association with Ellington in 1939. Nicknamed "Swee' Pea" for his mild manner, Strayhorn soon became a vital member of the Ellington Organization. Ellington showed great fondness for Strayhorn and never failed to speak glowingly of the man and their collaborative working relationship, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine". Strayhorn, with his training in classical music, not only contributed his original lyrics and music, but also arranged and polished many of Ellington's works, becoming a second Ellington or "Duke's doppelganger". It was not uncommon for Strayhorn to fill in for Duke, whether in conducting or rehearsing the band, playing the piano, on stage, and in the recording studio.

Pre-War II Recordings Ellington was the most prolific jazz orchestra of the era. After recording a handful of acoustic titles during 1924-1926, his signing with Irving Mills allowed him to record for nearly every label, often recording different versions of the same tune for numerous labels. In the main, during November, 1926 and 1930, he recorded concurrently for Brunswick-Vocalion, OKeh, and Victor, along with a handful of sessions for Columbia and the dime store labels (Cameo, Lincoln, Romeo, Perfect). On OKeh, his records were usually issued as The Harlem Footwarmers, while the Brunswick's were usually issued as The Jungle Band. Besides recording his own compositions, Ellington also recorded a handful of current hits, as well as a number of specially written songs by Dorothy Fields-Jimmy McHugh and Fats WallerAndy Razaf for various Cotton Club Revues. This continued until Ellington basically signed exclusively to Brunswick in 1932 and stayed with them through late 1936 (with a short 1933-34 temporary switch to Victor), when Irving Mills moved him from Brunswick to Mills' new Master label, and various small groups within Ellington's band recorded on Mills' Variety label 'fronted' by his 4 main soloists, Barney Bigard, Rex Stewart, Johnny Hodges and Cootie Williams. After the Master and Variety labels collapsed in late 1937, Mills placed Ellington back on Brunswick and those small group units on Vocalion through 1940, when Ellington signed back to Victor (and the small groups were placed on Bluebird).

Career revival Ellington's appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 returned him to wider prominence and exposed him to new audiences. The feature "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" comprised two tunes that had been in the band's book since 1937 but largely forgotten until Ellington, who had abruptly ended the band's scheduled set because of the late arrival of four key players, called the two tunes as the time was approaching midnight. Announcing that the two pieces would be separated by an "interlude" played by tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, Ellington proceeded to lead the band through the two pieces, with Gonsalves' 28-chorus marathon solo whipping the crowd into a frenzy, leading the Maestro to play way beyond the curfew time despite urgent pleas from Festive organizer George Wein to bring the program to an end. The concert made international headlines, led to a Time cover story (Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk are the only other jazz musicians featured on the cover the magazine), and resulted in an album that would become the best-selling long-playing recording of Ellington's career. Ironically, much of the music on the vinyl LP was, in effect, "simulated." Due to

unfortunate mic placement, much of the band's set proved too poorly recorded for commercial release. The band assembled the next day to re-record several of the numbers with the addition of artificial crowd noise, none of which was disclosed to purchasers of the album. Not until 1999 with the digital restoration supervised by jazz historian Phil Schaap was the actual concert not only released in its entirety but, thanks to the discovery of a Voice of America broadcast tape, in authentic stereo sound for the first time: Remastered 1999 CD: "Ellington at Newport" (1956) (Complete). Still, the revived attention should not have surprised anyone –-star soloist Johnny Hodges had returned to the fold the previous year, and Ellington's collaboration with Strayhorn had been renewed around the same time, under terms more amenable to the younger man. Such Sweet Thunder (1957), based on Shakespeare's plays and characters, and The Queen's Suite, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II, were products of the renewed impetus which the Newport appearance helped to create. A new record contract with Columbia produced Ellington's best-selling LP Ellington at Newport and yielded six years of recording stability under producer Irving Townsend, who coaxed both commercial and artistic productions from Ellington. In 1957, CBS (Columbia's parent corporation) aired a live television production of A Drum Is a Woman, an allegorical suite which received mixed reviews. Festival appearances at the new Monterey Jazz Festival and elsewhere provided venues for live exposure, and a European tour in 1958 was well received.

Last years Ellington was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1965, but was turned down. His reaction at 67 years old: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young. “In September of the same year, the first of his Sacred Concerts was given its premiere. It was an attempt to fuse Christian liturgy with jazz, and even though it received mixed reviews, Ellington was proud of the composition and performed it dozens of times. This concert was followed by two others of the same type in 1968 and 1973, known as the Second and Third Sacred Concerts. This caused controversy in what was already a tumultuous time in the United States. Many saw the Sacred Music suites as an attempt to reinforce commercial support for organized religion, though Ellington simply said it was, "the most important thing I've Ellington receiving the Presidential Medal of done." The Steinway piano upon Freedom fromPresident Nixon, 1969. which the Sacred Concerts were composed is part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Like Haydn and Mozart, Ellington conducted his orchestra from the piano – he always played the keyboard parts when the Sacred Concerts were performed. Ellington continued to make vital and innovative recordings, including The Far East Suite (1966), the New Orleans Suite (1970), and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), much of it inspired by his world tours. It was during this time that Ellington recorded his only album with Frank Sinatra, entitled Francis A. & Edward K. (1967). Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, an Honorary PhD from the Berklee College of Music in 1971, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country.

Miles Davis Biography What is cool? At its very essence, cool is all about what’s happening next. In popular culture, what’s happening next is a kaleidoscope encompassing past, present and future: that which is about to happen may be cool, and that which happened in the distant past may also be cool. This timeless quality, when it applies to music, allows minimalist debate – with few exceptions, that which has been cool will always be cool. For nearly six decades, Miles Davis has embodied all that is cool – in his music (and most especially jazz), in his art, fashion, romance, and in his international, if not intergalactic, presence that looms strong as ever today. 2006 – The year in which Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on March 13th – is a landmark year, commemorating the 80th anniversary of his birth on May 26, 1926, and the 15th anniversary of his death on September 28, 1991. In between those two markers is more than a half-century of brilliance – often exasperating, brutally honest with himself and to others, uncompromising in a way that transcended mere intuition. In carrying out what always seemed like a mission, Miles Dewey Davis III – musician, composer, arranger, producer, and band leader – was always in the right place at the right time, another defining aspect of cool. Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, where his father was a dentist, Miles was given his first trumpet at age 13. A child prodigy, his mastery of the instrument accelerated as he came under the spell of older jazzmen Clark Terry, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and others who passed through. He accepted admission to the Juilliard School in 1944, but it was a ruse to get to New York and hook up with Bird and Diz. Miles was 18. Cool. Within a year, he accomplished his goal. He can be heard on sessions led by Parker that were released on Savoy in 1945 (with Max Roach), ’46 (with Bud Powell), ’47 (with Duke Jordan and J.J. Johnson), and ’48 (with John Lewis). In 1947, the Miles Davis All-Stars (with Bird, Roach, Lewis, and Nelson Boyd) debuted on Savoy. His years on 52nd Street during the last half of the 1940s brought him into the bop orbit of musicians whose legends he would share before he was 25 years old. At the turn of the decade into 1950, as Miles led his first small groups, an association with Gerry Mulligan and arranger Gil Evans ushered in The Birth of the Cool (Capitol), a movement that challenged the dominance of bebop and hard-bop. Miles’ subsequent record dates as leader in the early ’50s (on Blue Note, then Prestige) helped introduce Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Horace Silver, and Percy Heath, among many others, establishing Miles’ role as the premier jazz talent scout for the rest of his career. An historic set at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955 resulted in George Avakian signing Miles to Columbia Records, and led to the formation of his so-called “first great quintet,” featuring John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones (the ’Round About Midnight sessions). Miles’ 30 years at Columbia was one of the longest exclusive

signings in the history of jazz, and one that spanned at least a half-dozen distinct generations of changes in the music – virtually all of which were anticipated or led by Miles or his former sidemen. Over the course of those 30 years, service with Miles became an imprimatur for the Who’s Who of jazzmen. Kind Of Blue, undisputedly the coolest jazz album ever recorded, was done in 1959 with the second edition of Miles’ “first great quintet” – principally Coltrane, Chambers, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, and Jimmy Cobb – who stayed together until 1961. After several intermediate groups (which featured such giants as Hank Mobley, Wynton Kelly, Victor Feldman, and George Coleman), Miles’ “second great quintet” slowly coalesced over 1963-64, into the lineup of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams (who was 17 years old when he joined Miles). They recorded with producer Teo Macero and toured around the world together until 1968, achieving artistic and commercial success that was unprecedented in modern jazz. 1968 was a cataclysmic year of sea change for Miles and for America, a year of upheaval – the escalation of the war in southeast Asia, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the rise of the Black Power movement were among the factors that pushed Miles’ music toward a more insistent electric (amplified) pulse. At the same time, Miles dug the triple-whammy he heard in the music of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone. What began in 1968 with Miles’ quintet quietly adopting electric piano and guitar, blew up into a full-scale rock band sound on 1969’s breakthrough doubleLP Bitches Brew (which landed him on the cover of Rolling Stone, the first jazzman to appear on the magazine’s front-page. Very cool.) At the core of Bitches Brew, whose sessions took place the week after the Woodstock festival in August 1969, there was the final small group known as the “third great quintet” – Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette – augmented by John McLaughlin, Larry Young, Joe Zawinul, Bennie Maupin, Steve Grossman, Billy Cobham, Lenny White, Don Alias, Airto Moreira, Harvey Brooks, and former quintet members Hancock and Carter. Six months later in February 1970, Miles kicked off the Jack Johnson sessions, shuffling many of those same players over the next two months, plus Sonny Sharrock, Steve Grossman, Michael Henderson, Keith Jarrett and others. In no uncertain terms, the jazzrock fusion movement had been launched full-tilt, and the spirit of Miles permeated the three dominant bands who rocked the stages (as he did) of the Fillmores East and West (et alia) through the ’70s and beyond – Weather Report, Return To Forever, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. His freewheeling lifestyle and high-energy forays into funk and R&B grooves somehow dovetailed with a period of declining health in the early ’70s, until Miles finally went underground in 1975, after playing (what turned out to be) his final gig at New York’s Central Park Music Festival that summer. A series of live LPs (domestic and imported from Japan) and other archival releases from the ’50s and ’60s were made available over the next five years to fill the void. Into the ’80s, Miles’ reputation as talent scout extraordinaire went unquestioned. He surfaced stronger than ever in 1981 on The Man With the Horn with a top-tier lineup of young players – Mike Stern, Marcus Miller, Bill Evans (no relation), Al Foster, and Mino Cinelu (all of whom went on to successful careers). It was Miles’ first LP to skirt the Billboard album chart’s Top 50 since Bitches Brew, and the band was recorded live for the follow-up double-LP, 1982’s We Want Miles. They remained stable (abetted by John Scofield) in 1983 on Star People. The lineup then morphed on 1984’s Decoy, as Miller was replaced by Daryll ‘Munch’ Jones, Robert Irving III was added on synthesizers and programming, and Branford Marsalis shared saxophone parts with Evans. Miles’ final album for Columbia Records was released in 1985, the cryptically titled You’re Under Arrest. It (re)-introduced Miles’ nephew Vince Wilburn into the lineup (he played

briefly on The Man With the Horn), as Bob Berg took over the big chair from Evans and Marsalis. The album debuted two ballads that would be staples of Miles’ performances for the rest of his career, Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” The following year, Miles began recording for Warner Bros., a prolific period that yielded one new album every year (the first four co-produced with Marcus Miller): Tutu (1986), Music From Siesta (1987, a film soundtrack collaboration with Miller), Live Around the World (1988), Amandla (1989), Dingo (1990, an orchestral collaboration with Michel Legrand), and his final studio album. the hip-hop informed Doo-Bop (1991), whose title tune gave Miles a posthumous Rap/R&B hit single in 1992. “Miles Dewey Davis III – trumpeter, visionary, and eternal modernist – was a force of nature,” wrote Ashley Kahn (author of Kind Of Blue: The Making Of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, Da Capo, 2000) in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame dinner journal on the occasion of Miles’ induction. “With an ear that disregarded categories of style, he sought out new musical worlds, and generations followed in his footsteps. While the creative rush and experimental charge that come to most musicians in youth eventually run down, Davis held an exploratory edge for most of his 65 years. It had to be fresh, or forget it.” Beyond his defiant stance, his piercing glare, his amorous conquests and one-of-a-kind fashion statements – there was and always will be one eternal truth: the music of Miles Davis. In 1996, five years after his death, Columbia/Legacy issued the first deluxe multi-disc box set in The Miles Davis Series, the 6-CD Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, (collaborations from 1957-’68). It went on to win three Grammy Awards – Best Historical Album, Best Album Notes, and Best Recording Package (Boxed) – the second of only three times in Grammy history that trifecta was ever achieved. Legacy’s Miles Davis Series was unofficially inaugurated in 1997 with five double-CD live digipaks, including Black Beauty: Miles Davis at Fillmore West (April 1970, when Steve Grossman replaced Wayne Shorter) and Miles Davis at Fillmore (at the New York venue, June 1970, with Keith Jarrett in the new lineup), along with In Concert: Live At Philharmonic Hall (New York, September 1972); Dark Magus: Live At Carnegie Hall (New York, March 1974); and Live-Evil (New York, February & June 1970; and Washington, DC, December 1970). 1998 brought the next two box sets: the Grammy Award-winning 6-CD Miles Davis Quintet 1965-’68: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings; and the Grammy Award-winning 4CD Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (of 1969-’70). The fourth box set was issued in 2000, the 6-CD Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961, which won two Grammy Awards, for Best Boxed Recording Package and Best Album Notes.

In 2001, one decade after his death – and in honor of his 75th birthday celebration – Legacy formally (re-)launched The Miles Davis Series, with the original motion picture soundtrack album for Columbia Pictures’ Finding Forrester (starring Sean Connery and directed by Gus Van Sant), consisting almost entirely of Miles Davis music. Five new digitally remastered titles followed: ‘Round About Midnight (with four bonus tracks from the original 1955-56 sessions, not heard on the original 1957 LP); Milestones (with all three known alternate takes from the 1958 LP sessions); Miles Davis At Newport (the full-length performance from the 1958 jazz festival); Jazz At The Plaza (also from 1958, unreleased until 1973, but out-of-print for nearly two decades); and Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Best Of The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961, a single-CD of tracks from the box set. Later on in 2001 came The Essential Miles Davis, the doubleCD 23-track collection gathered from the discographies of the six companies for whom Miles did his most important recordings (Savoy, Capitol, Prestige, Blue Note, Columbia, and Warner Bros.). The Columbia archives then surrendered a live concert treasure long considered to be a crucial ‘missing link’ in the Miles Davis iconography, with the release of the double-CD It’s About That Time: Miles Davis Live At Fillmore East (March 7, 1970). It was followed – on the fateful in-store day of September 11, 2001 – by the tripleCD box set The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions, covering those 1967-’69 dates. In 2002, the three albums that came out of those sessions were restored, the classic In A Silent Way, and expanded editions of Filles De Kilimanjaro and Water Babies. The Miles Davis Series returned in 2003, with the 5-CD box set The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, chronicling those February-June 1970 studio dates that introduced John McLaughlin. (The resulting album, 1971’s A Tribute To Jack Johnson, was reissued in January 2005, in conjunction with the Ken Burns PBS documentary, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise And Fall Of Jack Johnson.) Meanwhile, August 2004 brought the sixth box set, the 7-CD Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings Of Miles Davis 1963-1964, the largest volume ever produced in the series. In 2005, Legacy commemorated the 50th anniversary year of Miles’ original signing to Columbia in 1955, starting with the timely (February) release of My Funny Valentine for the first time on CD in the U.S. (recorded February 1964 at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall in New York). One week later came the ‘DualDisc’ configuration of Kind Of Blue, with the CD side containing the original album plus its only existing alternate take (“Flamenco Sketches”), and the DVD side containing a 25-minute mini-documentary, Made In Heaven.

As with its predecessor, the Seven Steps box set ‘broke out’ several titles as newly expanded editions in March 2005: Seven Steps To Heaven, Miles Davis In Europe, Four & More (the follow-up to My Funny Valentine), and Miles In Tokyo and Miles In Berlin (both issued for the first-time in the U.S.). May brought ’Round About Midnight: Legacy Edition, the deluxe 2-CD version of Miles’ first full-length Columbia LP plus bonus tracks on disc one; with disc two comprising the Newport Jazz Festival performance of “’Round Midnight” (with Thelonious Monk) from 1955, plus the previously unissued 1956 Pasadena concert. 2005 concluded with the September release of the 6-CD box set, The Cellar Door Sessions 1970, six complete performance sets at the Washington, D.C. nightclub in December 1970, by the lineup that starred Miles, Keith Jarrett, Gary Bartz, Michael Henderson, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, and (on the final night) guitarist John McLaughlin. Altogether since 1997, the Miles Davis Series has reissued digitally remastered and restored versions (many of them expanded editions) of: ‘Round About Midnight (1957), Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), Milestones (1958), Miles Davis At Newport (1958), Jazz At The Plaza (1958), Kind Of Blue (1959), Sketches Of Spain (1960), Someday My Prince Will Come (1961), Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall – The Complete Concert (1961), In Person: Friday Night At the Blackhawk (1961), In Person: Saturday Night At the Blackhawk (1961), Quiet Nights (1962), Seven Steps To Heaven (1963), Miles Davis In Europe (1963), Miles In Tokyo (1964), Miles In Berlin (1964), My Funny Valentine (1965), E.S.P. (1965), Miles Smiles (1966), Four & More (1966), Sorcerer (1967), Nefertiti (1967), Miles In the Sky (1968), In A Silent Way (1969), Filles De Kilimanjaro (1969), Bitches Brew (1970), A Tribute To Jack Johnson (1971), On the Corner (1972), Big Fun (1974), Get Up With It (1974), Water Babies (1976), and Aura (1985). Various collections include four packages culled from the respective boxed sets, the single-CD The Best Of Miles Davis & Gil Evans, the double-CD The Best Of the Miles Davis Quintet 1965-’68, the single-CD Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Best Of The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961, and the single-CD The Best Of Seven Steps To Heaven; plus Miles Davis Love Songs (a 1999 Valentine’s Day special) and 2003’s Love Songs 2; the

2-CD The Essential Miles Davis; the Miles Davis/Ken Burns JAZZ compilation; Blue Miles; Blue Moods – Music For You; The Best Of Miles Davis; and Miles Davis Jazz Moods – Cool; and Cool And Collected. The Miles Davis Story, the first major documentary to be produced on Miles in nearly 15 years, was issued in 2002 on VHS and interactive DVD formats.

Louis Armstrong Early Life Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4, 1900, a date that has been noted in many biographies. Although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date of August 4, 1901 was discovered through the examination of baptismal records. Armstrong was born into a very poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana, the grandson of slaves. He spent his youth in poverty, in a rough neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans, known as “Back of the Town”, as his father, William Armstrong (1881–1922), abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and took up with another woman. His mother, Mary "Mayann" Albert (1886– 1942), then left Louis and his younger sister Beatrice Armstrong Collins (1903– 1987) in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong, Louis Armstrong's stage personality matched his and at times, his Uncle Isaac. At five, flashy cornet and trumpet playing. Armstrong is also he moved back to live with his mother known for his raspy singing voice. and her relatives, and saw his father only in parades. He attended the Fisk School for Boys, where he likely had early exposure to music. He brought in some money as a paperboy and also by finding discarded food and selling it to restaurants, but it was not enough to keep his mother from prostitution. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille. For extra money he also hauled coal to Story ville, the famed red-light district, and listened to the bands playing in the brothels and dance halls, especially Pete Lala's where Joe "King" Oliver performed and other famous musicians would drop in to jam. After dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. But he also started to get into trouble. Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong (then 11) to play by ear at Dago Tony's Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. Armstrong hardly looked back at his youth as the worst of times but instead drew inspiration from it, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans... It has given me something to live for.” He also worked for a Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys, who had a junk hauling business and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him as almost a family member, knowing he lived without a father, and would feed and nurture him. He later wrote a memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys titled, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907. In it he describes his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by "other white folks' nationalities who felt that they were

better than the Jewish race... I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the White Folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for." Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live—real life and determination." The influence of Karnofsky is remembered in New Orleans by the Karnofsky Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to accepting donated musical instruments to "put them into the hands of an eager child who could not otherwise take part in a wonderful learning experience.” Armstrong developed his cornet playing seriously in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, where he had been sent multiple times for general delinquency, most notably for a long term after firing his stepfather's pistol into the air at a New Year's Eve celebration, as police records confirm. Professor Peter Davis (who frequently appeared at the Home at the request of its administrator, Captain Joseph Jones) instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Eventually, Davis made Armstrong the band leader. The Home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen year old Louis began to draw attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he was released from the Home, living again with his father and new stepmother and then back with his mother and also back to the streets and their temptations. Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponce’s where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night. He played in the city's frequent brass band parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory, and above all, Joe "King" Oliver, who acted as a mentor and father figure to the young musician. Later, he played in the brass Hand colored etching Louis Armstrong by bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and Adi Holzer 2002. began traveling with the well-regarded band of Fate Marable, which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as, "going to the University," since it gave him a much wider experience working with written arrangements. In 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory's band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band, a society band.

Career On March 19, 1918, Louis married Daisy Parker from Gretna, Louisiana. They adopted a 3year-old boy, Clarence Armstrong, whose mother, Louis' cousin Flora, died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled (the result of a head injury at an early age) and Louis would spend the rest of his life taking care of him. Louis' marriage to Parker failed quickly and they separated. She died shortly after the divorce. Through all his riverboat experience Armstrong’s musicianship began to mature and expand. At twenty, he could read music and he started to be featured in extended trumpet solos, one of the first jazzmen to do this, injecting his own personality and style into his solo turns. He had learned how to create a unique sound and also started using singing and patter in his

performances. In 1922, Armstrong joined the exodus to Chicago, where he had been invited by his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to join his Creole Jazz Band and where he could make a sufficient income so that he no longer needed to supplement his music with day labor jobs. It was a boom time in Chicago and though race relations were poor, the “Windy City” was teeming with jobs for black people, who were making good wages in factories and had plenty to spend on entertainment. Oliver's band was the best and most influential hot jazz band in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of the jazz universe. Armstrong lived like a king in Chicago, in his own apartment with his own private bath (his first). Excited as he was to be in Chicago, he began his career-long pastime of writing nostalgic letters to friends in New Orleans. As Armstrong’s reputation grew, he was challenged to “cutting contests” by hornmen trying to displace the new phenom, who could blow two hundred high C’s in a row. Armstrong made his first recordings on the Gennett and Okeh labels (jazz records were starting to boom across the country), including taking some solos and breaks, while playing second cornet in Oliver's band in 1923. At this time, he metHoagy Carmichael (with whom he would collaborate later) who was introduced by friend Bix Beiderbecke, who now had his own Chicago band. Armstrong enjoyed working with Oliver, but Louis' second wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, urged him to seek more prominent billing and develop his newer style away from the influence of Oliver. Armstrong took the advice of his wife and left Oliver's band. For a year Armstrong played in Fletcher Henderson's band in New York on many recordings. After playing in New York, Armstrong returned to Chicago, playing in large orchestras; there he created his most important early recordings. Lil had her husband play classical music in church concerts to broaden his skill and improve his solo play and she prodded him into wearing more stylish attire to make him look sharp and to better offset his growing girth. Lil’s influence eventually undermined Armstrong’s relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional moneys that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the day. Armstrong switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence upon Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period. Armstrong quickly adapted to the more tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing trumpet and even experimenting with the trombone and the other members quickly took up Armstrong’s emotional, expressive pulse. Soon his act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers.The Henderson Orchestra was playing in the best venues for white-only patrons, including the famed Roseland Ballroom, featuring the classy arrangements of Don Redman. Duke Ellington’s orchestra would go to Roseland to catch Armstrong’s performances and young hornmen around town tried in vain to outplay him, splitting their lips in their attempts. During this time, Armstrong made many recordings on the side, arranged by an old friend from New Orleans, pianist Clarence Williams; these included small jazz band sides with the Williams Blue Five (some of the best pairing Armstrong with one of Armstrong's few rivals in fiery technique and ideas, Sidney Bechet) and a series of accompaniments with blues singers, including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter. Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1925 due mostly to the urging of his wife, who wanted to pump up Armstrong’s career and income. He was content in

New York but later would concede that she was right and that the Henderson Orchestra was limiting his artistic growth. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed him as “the World’s Greatest Trumpet Player”. At first he was actually a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He began recording under his own name for Okeh with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, producing hits such as "Potato Head Blues", "Muggles", (a reference to marijuana, for which Armstrong had a lifelong fondness), and "West End Blues", the music of which set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come. The group included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), wife Lil on piano, and usually no drummer. Armstrong’s bandleading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted, "One felt so relaxed working with him, and he was very broad-minded . . . always did his best to feature each individual." His recordings soon after with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines (most famously their 1928 Weatherbird duet) and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to "West End Blues" remain some of the most famous and influential improvisations in jazz history. Armstrong was now free to develop his personal style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as "whip that thing, Miss Lil" and "Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, do that clarinet, boy!" Armstrong also played with Erskine Tate’s Little Symphony, actually a quintet, which played mostly at the Vendome Theatre. They furnished music for silent movies and live shows, including jazz versions of classical music, such as “Madame Butterfly,” which gave Armstrong experience with longer forms of music and with hosting before a large audience. He began to scat sing (improvised vocal jazz using non-sensical words) and was among the first to record it, on "Heebie Jeebies" in 1926. The recording was so popular that the group became the most Armstrong getting fitted for a hat, about 1955. famous jazz band in the United States even though they had not performed live to any great extent. Young musicians across the country, black or white, were turned on by Armstrong’s new type of jazz. After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone's associate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was soon renamedLouis Armstrong and his Stompers, though Hines was the music director and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends as well as successful collaborators. Armstrong returned to New York, in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra of the successful musical Hot Chocolate, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist/composer Fats Waller. He also made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of "Ain't Misbehavin'", his version of the song becoming his biggest selling record to date. Armstrong started to work at Connie's Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong also had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of famous songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the 'crooning' sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong's famous interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards.

Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's "Lazy River" (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is stated by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh" ..."Sure" ... "Way down, way down." In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong "scat singing". As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong's vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gritty coloration of his voice became a musicalarchetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated. His scat singing style was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lowerregister tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as "Lazy River" exerted a huge influence on younger white singers such as Bing Crosby. The Depression of the early Thirties was especially hard on the jazz scene. The Cotton Club closed in 1936 after a long downward spiral and many musicians stopped playing altogether as club dates evaporated. Bix Beiderbecke died and Fletcher Henderson’s band broke up. King Oliver made a few records but otherwise struggled. Sidney Bechet became a tailor and Kid Ory returned to New Orleans and raised chickens. Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in LA with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish night life, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame. Armstrong was convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans, got a hero’s welcome and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as “Armstrong’s Secret Nine” and got a cigar named after himself. But soon he was on the road again and after a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, Armstrong decided to go to Europe to escape. After returning to the States, he undertook several exhausting tours. His agent Johnny Collins’ erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. Finally, he hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer, who began to straighten out his legal mess, his mob troubles, and his debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, which were aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result he branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. He appeared in movies again, including Crosby's 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast. He finally divorced Lil in 1938 and married longtime girlfriend Alpha. After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing. He recorded Hoagy Carmichael's Rockin' Chair for Okeh Records. During the subsequent thirty years, Armstrong played more than three hundred gigs a year. Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes: ballrooms closed, and there was competition from television and from other types of music becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to support and finance a 16-piece touring band.

The All Stars Following a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden, Armstrong's manager Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947 and established a six-piece small group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and dixieland musicians, most of them ex-big band leaders. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club. This group was called Louis Armstrong and his All Stars and included at various times Earl "Fatha" Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden,Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems, Joe Darensbourg and the FilipinoAmericanpercussionist, Danny Barcelona. During this period, Armstrong made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films. He was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time Magazine on February 21, 1949. In 1964, he recorded his biggest-selling record, "Hello, Dolly!" The song went to No. 1 on the pop chart, making Armstrong (age 63) the oldest person to ever accomplish that feat. In the process, Armstrong dislodged The Beatles from the No. 1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs. Armstrong kept up his busy tour schedule until a few years before his death in 1971. In his later years he would sometimes play some of his numerous gigs by rote, but other times would enliven the most mundane gig with his vigorous playing, often to the astonishment of his band. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname "Ambassador Satch." While failing health restricted his schedule in his last years, within those limitations he continued playing until the day he died.

Death Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a month before his 70th birthday, and 11 months after playing a famous show at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City. His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson andDavid Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.

Sonny Boy Willianson Aleck "Sonny Boy Williamson" Miller (possibly December 5, 1912 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; May 25, 1965 was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, from Mississippi. He is acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, with considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills. He recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s, and had a direct influence on later blues and rock performers. He should not be confused with another leading blues performer, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, who died in 1948.

Life and career Born as Alex Miller (pronounced "Aleck") on the Sara Jones Plantation in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, his date and year of birth are a matter of uncertainty. He claimed to have been born on December 5, 1899, but Dr. David Evans, professor of music and an ethnomusicologist at the University of Memphis, claims to have found census record evidence that he was born around 1912, being seven on February 2, 1920, the day of the census. His gravestone, set up by record company owner Lillian McMurry twelve years after his death, gives his date of birth as March 11, 1908, but the birth date on that stone is most likely incorrect. He lived and worked with his sharecropper stepfather, Jim Miller, whose last name he soon adopted, and mother, Millie Ford, until the early 1930s. Beginning in the 1930s, he traveled around Mississippi and Arkansas and encountered Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Robert Lockwood, Jr., also known as Robert Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar on his later Checker Records sides. He was also associated with Robert Johnson during this period. Miller developed his style and raffish stage persona during these years. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood and Miller playing for tips in Greenville, Mississippi in the 1930s. He entertained audiences with novelties such as inserting one end of the harmonica into his mouth and playing with no hands. In 1941 Miller was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show, advertising the King Biscuit brand of baking flour on radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas with Lockwood. It was at this point that the radio program's sponsor, Max Moore, began billing Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson, apparently in an attempt to capitalize on the fame of the well known Chicago-based harmonica player and singer Sonny Boy Williamson (birth name John Lee Williamson, died 1948). Although John Lee Williamson was a major blues star who had already released dozens of successful and widely influential records under the name "Sonny Boy Williamson" from 1937 onward, Aleck Miller would later claim to have been the first to use the name, and some blues scholars believe that Miller's assertion he was born in 1899 was a ruse to convince audiences he was old enough to have used the name before John Lee Williamson, who was born in 1914 (seeyear of birth section above). Whatever the methodology, Miller became commonly known as "Sonny Boy Williamson," (universally distinguished by blues fans and musicians as "Sonny Boy Williamson number two" or "Sonny Boy Williamson the second") and Lockwood and the rest of his band were billed as the King Biscuit Boys.

Radio show in Memphis In 1949 he relocated to West Memphis, Arkansas and lived with his sister and her husband, Howlin' Wolf. (Later, for Checker Records, he did a parody of Howlin' Wolf entitled "Like Wolf.") Sonny Boy started his own KWEM radio show from 1948 to 1950 selling the elixir Hadacol. Sonny Boy also brought his King Biscuit musician friends to West Memphis, Elmore James, Houston Stackhouse, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Robert Nighthawk and others to perform on KWEM Radio. In the 1940s Williamson married Mattie Gordon, who remained his wife until his death.

Recording career Trumpet Records Williamson's first recording session took place in 1951 for Lillian McMurry of Jackson, Mississippi's Trumpet Records, three years after the death of John Lee Williamson, which for the first time allowed some legitimacy to Miller's carefully worded claim to being "the one and only Sonny Boy Williamson". McMurry later erected Williamson's headstone, near Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1977.

Checker Records When Trumpet went bankrupt in 1955, Sonny Boy's recording contract was yielded to its creditors, who sold it to Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. Sonny Boy had begun developing a following in Chicago beginning in 1953, when he appeared there as a member of Elmore James's band. It was during his Chess years that he enjoyed his greatest success and acclaim, recording about 70 songs for Chess subsidiary Checker Records from 1955 to 1964. Sonny Boy's first LP record was titled Down and Out Blues and was released by Checker Records in 1959.

Ace Records One single, "Boppin' With Sonny" b/w "No Nights By Myself" was released with Ace Records in 1955

Ray Charles Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American musician known as Ray Charles (to avoid confusion with champion boxer Sugar Ray Robinson.) He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums. While with ABC, Charles became one of the firstAfricanAmerican musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company. Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.” The influences upon his music were mainly jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and country artists of the day such as Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Louis Armstrong. His playing reflected influences from country blues and barrelhouse, and stride piano styles. Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004, and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?"

Early life – 1930 – 1945 Ray Charles Robinson was the son of Aretha Robinson, a sharecropper, and Bailey Robinson, a railroad repair man, mechanic and handyman. Aretha Robinson was a devout Christian and the family attended the New Shiloh Baptist Church. When Ray was an infant, his family moved from Albany, Georgia, where he was born, to the poor black community on the western side ofGreenville, Florida. In his early years, Charles showed a curiosity for mechanical things and he often watched the neighborhood men working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was sparked at Mr. Wiley Pit's Red Wing Cafe when Pit played boogie woogie on an old upright piano. Pit would care for George, Ray's brother, so as to take the burden off Williams. However, George drowned in the Williams' bath tub when he was four years old. After witnessing the death of his brother, Ray would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt later on in life. Charles started to lose his sight at the age of five. He went completely blind by the age of seven, apparently due to glaucoma. He attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945, where he developed his musical talent. During this time he performed on WFOY radio in St. Augustine. His father died when he was 10, and his mother died five years afterward. In school, Charles was taught only classical music, but he wanted to play the jazz and blues he heard on the family radio. While at school, he became the school's premier musician. On

Fridays, the South Campus Literary Society held assemblies where Charles would play piano and sing popular songs. On Halloween and Washington's birthday, the Colored Department of the school had socials where Charles would play. It was here he established "RC Robinson and the Shop Boys" and sang his own arrangement of "Jingle Bell Boogie."He spent his first Christmas at the school, but later the staff pitched in so that Charles could return to Greenville, as he did each summer. Henry and Alice Johnson, who owned a store not unlike Mr. Pit's store in Greenville, moved to the French town section of Tallahassee, just west of Greenville; and they, as well as Freddy and Margaret Bryant, took Charles in. He worked the register in the Bryants' store under the direction of Lucille Bryant, their daughter. It's said he loved Tallahassee and often used the drug store delivery boy's motorbike to run up and down hills using the exhaust sound of a friend's bike to guide him. Charles found Tallahassee musically exciting too and sat in with the Florida A&M University student band. He played with the Adderley brothers, Nat and Cannonball, and began playing gigs with Lawyer Smith and his Band in 1943 at the Red Bird Club and Deluxe Clubs in Frenchtown and roadhouse theaters around Tallahassee, as well as the Governor's Ball.

Career Early career: 1946–1952 When his mother died in 1946, Charles was 15 years old and didn't return to school. He lived in Jacksonville with a couple who were friends of his mother. For over a year, he played the piano for bands at the Ritz Theatre in LaVilla, earning $4 a night. Then he moved to Orlando, and later Tampa, where he played with a southern band called The Florida Playboys. This is where he began his habit of always wearing sunglasses, made by designer Billy Stickles. Charles had always played for other people, but he wanted his own band. He decided to leave Florida for a large city, but Chicago and New York City were too big. After asking a friend to look in a map and note the city in the United States that was farthest from Florida, he moved to Seattle in 1947 (where he first met and befriended, under the tutelage of Robert Blackwell, a 14-year-oldQuincy Jones) and soon started recording, first for the Down Beat label as the Maxin Trio with guitarist G.D. McKee and bassist Milton Garrett, achieving his first hit with "Confession Blues" in 1949. The song soared to No. 2 on the R&B charts. He joined Swing Time Records and under his own name ("Ray Charles" to avoid being confused with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson) recorded two more R&B hits, "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand" (No. 5) in 1951 and "Kissa Me Baby" (No. 8) in 1952. The following year, Swing Time folded and Ahmet Ertegün signed him toAtlantic Records.

Atlantic Records: 1953–1958 Charles laid low from recording until early 1953 as Atlantic executives cleared out Charles' contract with Swingtime. Charles began recording jump blues and boogie-woogie style recordings as well as slower blues ballads where he continued to show the vocal influences of Nat "King" Cole and Charles Brown. "Mess Around" became Charles' first Atlantic hit in 1953 and he later had hits the following year with "It Should Have Been Me" and "Don't You Know". He also recorded the songs, "Midnight Hour" and "Sinner's Prayer". Some elements of his own vocal style showed up in "Sinner's Prayer", "Mess Around" and "Don't You Know". Late in 1954, Charles recorded his own composition, "I Got a Woman", and the song became Charles' first number-one R&B hit in 1955 and brought him to national prominence. The elements of "I Got a Woman" included a mixture of gospel, jazz and blues elements that would later prove to be seminal in the development of rock 'n' roll and soul music. He repeated this pattern throughout 1955 continuing through 1958 with records such as "This Little Girl of Mine", "Drown in My Own Tears", "Lonely Avenue", "A Fool For You" and "The Night Time (Is the Right Time)".

While still promoting his R&B career, Charles also recorded instrumental jazz albums such as 1957's The Great Ray Charles. During this time, Charles also worked with jazz vibraphonist Milt Jackson, releasing Soul Brothers in 1958 and Soul Meeting in 1961. By 1958, Charles was not only headlining black venues such as The Apollo Theater and The Uptown Theater but also bigger venues such as The Newport Jazz Festival. It was at the Newport festival where he cut his first live album. In 1956, Charles recruited a young allfemale singing group named the Cookies, and reshaped them as The Raelettes. Before then, Charles had used his wife and other musicians to back him up on recordings such as "This Little Girl of Mine" and "Drown In My Own Tears". The Raelettes' first recording session with Charles was on the bluesy-gospel inflected "Leave My Woman Alone".

Crossover success: 1959â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1967 Charles reached the pinnacle of his success at Atlantic with the release of "What'd I Say", a complex song that combined gospel, jazz, blues and Latin music and a song that Charles would later say he composed spontaneously as he was performing in clubs and dances with his small band. Despite some radio stations banning the song because of its sexually suggestive lyrics, the song became a crossover top ten pop record, Charles' first record to do so. Later in 1959, and released his first country song, a cover of Hank Snow's "Movin' On", and had recorded three more albums for the label including a jazz record (later released in 1961 as The Genius After Hours), a blues record (released in 1961 as The Genius Sings the Blues) and a traditional pop/big band record (The Genius of Ray Charles). The Genius of Ray Charles provided his first top 40 album entry where it peaked at No. 17 and was later held as a landmark record in Charles' career but Charles saw a bigger opportunity following his Atlantic contract expiring in the fall of 1959 when several big labels offered him record deals. Choosing not to renegotiate his contract with Atlantic, Ray Charles signed with ABCParamount Records in November 1959, obtaining a much more liberal contract than other artists had at the time. Following the success of "What'd I Say" and The Genius of Ray Charles, ABC offered Charles a $50,000 annual advance, higher royalties than previously offered and eventual ownership of his masters â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a very valuable and lucrative deal at the time. During his Atlantic years, Charles was heralded for his own inventive compositions, however, by the time of the release of the instrumental jazz LP Genius + Soul = Jazz (1960) for ABC's subsidiary label Impulse!, Charles had virtually given up on writing original material and had begun to follow his eclectic impulses as an interpreter. With his first hit single for ABC-Paramount, Charles received national acclaim and a Grammy Award for the Sid Feller-produced "Georgia on My Mind", originally written by composers Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael, released as a single by Charles in 1960. The song served as Charles' first work with Feller, who arranged and conducted the recording. Charles also earned another Grammy for the follow-up "Hit the Road Jack", written by R&B singer Percy Mayfield. By late 1961, Charles had expanded his small road ensemble to a full-scale big band, partly as a response to increasing royalties and touring fees, becoming one of the few black artists to crossover into mainstream pop with such a level of creative control. This success, however, came to a momentary halt in November 1961, as a police search of Charles' hotel room in Indianapolis, Indiana during a concert tour led to the discovery of heroin in his medicine cabinet. The case was eventually dropped, as the search lacked a proper warrant by the police, and Charles soon returned his focus on music and recording. The 1962 album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and its sequel Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2, helped to bring country into the mainstream of music. His version of the Don Gibson song, I Can't Stop Loving You topped the Pop chart for five weeks and stayed at No. 1 R&B for ten weeks in 1962. It also gave him his only number one record in the UK. In 1962, he founded his own record label, Tangerine Records, which ABC-Paramount promoted and distributed. He also had major pop hits in 1963 with "Busted" (US No. 4) and Take These Chains From My Heart (US No. 8). With the rise of younger soul performers such as James Brown, Otis Redding and Motown singers such as Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and its own blind artist, Stevie Wonder, Charles' successes on the pop and R&B charts peaked after 1964 though he remained a huge concert draw.

In 1965, Charles' career after being arrested for a third time for heroin halted after he agreed to go to rehab to avoid jail time. Charles kicked his habit at a clinic in Los Angeles. After spending a year on parole, Charles reemerged on the charts in 1966 with a series of hits composed with the fledgling team of Ashford & Simpson including the dance number, "I Don't Need No Doctor" (later covered in a hard rock style by British supergroup Humble Pie), "Let's Go Get Stoned", which became his first No. 1 R&B hit in several years, and "Crying Time", which reached No. 6 on the pop chart and later helped Charles win a Grammy Award the following March. In 1967, he had a top twenty hit with another ballad, "Here We Go Again".

Commercial decline: 1968-1981 Charles' renewed chart success, however, proved to be short lived and by the late 1960s his music was rarely played on radio stations. The rise of psychedelic rock and harder forms of rock and R&B music reduced Charles' radio appeal, as did his choosing to record pop standards and covers of then-modern day rock and soul hitsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his earnings from owning his own masters taking away motivation to write new material. Most of his recordings between 1968 and 1973 1972 meeting of President Nixon and Ray Charles taken evoked strong reactionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;people by Oliver F. Atkins either liked them a lot or disliked them a lot. Nonetheless, Charles continued to have an active recording career. Charles' 1972 album, Message from the People, included his unique gospel-influenced version of "America the Beautiful". In 1974, he left ABC Records and recorded several albums on his own Crossover Records label. His 1975 recording of Stevie Wonder's hit, "Living for the City" later helped Charles win another Grammy. In 1977, he reunited with Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler and re-signed to Atlantic Records where he recorded the album, True to Life. However, the label had now begun focusing on rock acts and some of the label's prominent soul artists such as Aretha Franklin were starting to be neglected. Charles stayed with his old label until 1980. In November 1977 he appeared as the host of NBC's Saturday Night Live. In April 1979, Charles' version of "Georgia On My Mind" was proclaimed the state song of Georgia. An emotional Charles performed the song on the floor of the state legislature.Though he notably supported the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960s, Charles would be criticized for performing at South Africa's Sun City resort in 1981 during an international boycott of its apartheid policy.

Later years: 1983-2004 In 1983, Charles signed a contract with Columbia Records and recorded a string of country albums. Charles also began having a string of country hits often with duet singers such as George Jones, Chet Atkins, B.J. Thomas, Mickey Gilley, Hank Williams, Jr. and lifelong friendWillie Nelson, for which he recorded the No. 1 country duet, "Seven Spanish Angels". After 1987, his Columbia contract ended and Charles returned to recording pop music after signing with Warner Bros. Records. Prior to the release of his first Warner release, Would You Believe, Charles made a return on the R&B charts with a cover of The Brothers Johnson's "I'll Be Good to You", a duet with his lifelong buddy Quincy Jones and singer Chaka Khan. The song hit number-one on the R&B charts in 1990 and won Charles

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and Khan a Grammy for their dual work. Prior to this, Charles returned on the pop charts in another duet, with singer Billy Joel on the song, "Baby Grand" and in 1989, recorded a cover of the Southern All Stars' "Itoshi no Ellie", releasing it as "Ellie My Love" for a Japanese TV ad for Suntory releasing it in Japan where it reached No. 3 on its Oricon chart. Charles' 1993 album, My World became his first album in some time to reach the Billboard 200 and his cover of Leon Russell's "A Song for You" gave him a charted hit on the adult contemporary chart as well as his twelfth and final Grammy he would receive in his lifetime. By the beginning of the 1980s, Charles would reach younger audiences by appearances in various films and TV shows. In 1980, he appeared on the film, The Blues Brothers. While he never appeared on the show, Charles' version of "Night Time is the Right Time" was played during the popular Cosby Show episode "Happy Anniversary". In 1985, he appeared Charles with President Ronald Reagan and First among a slew of other popular LadyNancy Reagan in 1984 musicians in the USA for Africacharity recording, "We Are the World". Charles' popularity increased among younger audiences in 1991 after he appeared where he popularized the catchphrase "You Got the Right One, Baby" The catchphrase came from a song that was composed by Kenny Ascher, Joseph C. Caro and Helary Jay Lipsitz. Charles also appeared at two Presidential inaugurations in his lifetime. In 1985, he performed for Ronald Reagan's second inauguration, and in 1993 for Bill Clinton's first. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, Charles made appearances on the Super Dave Osbourne TV show, where he performed and appeared in a few vignettes where he was somehow driving a car, often as Super Dave's chauffeur. During the sixth season of Designing Women, Charles sang "Georgia on My Mind", instead of the song being rendered instrumentally by other musicians as in the previous five seasons. He also appeared in 4 episodes of the popular TV comedy The Nanny in Seasons 4 & 5 (1997 & 1998) as 'Sammy', in one episode singing "My Yiddish Mamma" to December romance and later fiancee of character Gramma Yetta, played by veteran actressAnn Guilbert. From 20012002, Charles appeared in commercials for the New Jersey Lottery to promote its "For every dream, there's a jackpot" campaign. In 2003, Ray Charles headlined the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C. where the President, First Lady, Colin Powelland Condoleezza Rice attended. He also presented one of his greatest admirers, Van Morrison, with his award upon being inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the two sang Morrison's song "Crazy Love". This performance appears on Morrison's 2007 album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3. In 2003 Charles performed "Georgia On My Mind" and "America the Beautiful" at a televised annual electronic media journalist banquet held in Washington, D.C. His final public appearance came on April 30, 2004, at the dedication of his music studio as a historic landmark in the city of Los Angeles.

Death His final album, Genius Loves Company, released two months after his death, consists of duets with various admirers and contemporaries: B.B. King,Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, James Taylor, Gladys Knight, Michael McDonald, Natalie Cole, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, andJohnny Mathis. The album won eight Grammy Awards, including five for Ray Charles for Best Pop Vocal Album, Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Here We Go Again" with Norah Jones, and Best Gospel Performance for "Heaven Help Us All" with Gladys Knight; he also received nods for his duets with Elton John and B.B. King. The album included a version of Harold Arlen's "Over the Rainbow", sung as a duet by Charles and Johnny Mathis; this record was played at his memorial service.

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Two more posthumous albums, Genius & Friends (2005) and Ray Sings, Basie Swings (2006), were released. Genius & Friends consisted of duets recorded from 1997 to 2005 with his choice of artists. Ray Sings, Basie Swings consists of archived vocals of Ray Charles from live mid-1970s performances added to new instrumental tracks specially recorded by the contemporary Count Basie Orchestra and other musicians. Charles's vocals recorded from the concert mixing board were added to new accompaniments to create a "fantasy concert" recording.

John Lee Hooker John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; June 21, 2001) was a highly influential American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist. Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally a unique brand of country blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was metrically free. John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his blues guitar playing and singing. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "I'm in the Mood" (1951) and "Boom Boom" (1962), the first two reaching R&B #1 in the Billboard charts.

Early Life There is some debate as to the year of Hooker's birth in Coahoma County, Mississippi, the youngest of the eleven children of William Hooker (1871â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1923), a sharecropper and Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (born 1875, date of death unknown); according to his official website, he was born on August 22, 1917. Hooker and his siblings were home-schooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs, with his earliest exposure being the spirituals sung in church. In 1921, his parents separated. The next year, his mother married William Moore, a blues singer who provided Hooker with his first introduction to the guitar (and whom John would later credit for his distinctive playing style). John's stepfather was his first outstanding blues influence. William Moore was a local blues guitarist who learned in Shreveport, Louisiana to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time. Around 1923 his natural father died. At the age of 15, John Lee Hooker ran away from home, reportedly never seeing his mother or stepfather again. Throughout the 1930s, Hooker lived in Memphis, Tennessee where he worked on Beale Street at The New Daisy Theatre and occasionally performed at house parties. He worked in

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factories in various cities during World War II, drifting until he found himself in Detroit in 1948 working at Ford Motor Company. He felt right at home near the blues venues and saloons on Hastings Street, the heart of black entertainment on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce. Performing in Detroit clubs, his popularity grew quickly and, seeking a louder instrument than his crude acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.

Career Hooker's recording career began in 1948 when his agent placed a demo, made by Hooker, with the Bihari brothers, owners of the Modern Records label. The company initially released an up-tempo number, Boogie Chillen', which became Hooker's first hit single. Though they were not songwriters, the Biharis often purchased or claimed co-authorship of songs that appeared on their labels, thus securing songwriting royalties for themselves, in addition to their own streams of income. Sometimes these songs were older tunes that Hooker renamed, as with B.B. King's Rock Me Baby, anonymous jams B.B.'s Boogie, or songs by employees (bandleader Vince Weaver). The Biharis used a number of pseudonyms for songwriting credits: Jules was credited as Jules Taub; Joe as Joe Josea; and Sam as Sam Ling. One song by John Lee Hooker, Down Child, is solely credited to Taub, with Hooker receiving no credit. Another, Turn Over a New Leaf is credited to Hooker and Ling. In 1949, Hooker was recorded performing in an informal setting for Detroit jazz enthusiasts. His repertoire included down-home and spiritual tunes that he would not record commercially. The recorded set has been made available in the album Jack O'Diamonds. Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting the occasionally traditional blues lyric (such as "if I was chief of police, I would run her right out of town"), he freely invented many of his songs from scratch. Recording studios in the 1950s rarely paid black musicians more than a pittance, so Hooker would spend the night wandering from studio to studio, coming up with new songs or variations on his songs for each studio. Because of his recording contract, he would record these songs under obvious pseudonyms such as John Lee Booker, notably for Chess Records and Chance Records in 1951/52, as Johnny Lee for De Luxe Records in 1953/54 as John Lee, and even John Lee Cooker, or as Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar,Johnny Williams, or The Boogie Man. His early solo songs were recorded under Bernie Besman. John Lee Hooker rarely played on a standard beat, changing tempo to fit the needs of the song. This often made it difficult to use backing musicians who were not accustomed to Hooker's musical vagaries. As a result, Besman would record Hooker, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden pallet.For much of this time period he recorded and toured with Eddie Kirkland, who was still performing as of 2008. Later sessions for the VeeJay label in Chicago used studio musicians on most of his recordings, including Eddie Taylor, who could handle his musical idiosyncrasies very well. His biggest UK hit, "Boom Boom", (originally released on VeeJay) was recorded with a horn section.

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Later Life He appeared and sang in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. Due to Hooker's improvisational style, his performance was filmed and sound-recorded live at the scene at Chicago's Maxwell Street Market, in contrast to the usual "playback" technique used in most film musicals.Hooker was also a direct influence in the look of John Belushi's character Jake Blues. In 1989, he joined with a number of musicians, including Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt to record The Healer, for which he and Santana won a Grammy Award. Hooker recorded several songs with Van Morrison, including "Never Get Out of These Blues Alive", "The Healing Game" and "I Cover the Waterfront". He also appeared on stage with Van Morrison several times, some of which was released on the live album A Night in San Francisco. The same year he appeared as the title character on Pete Townshend's The Iron Man: A Musical. Hooker recorded over 100 albums. He lived the last years of his life in Long Beach, California. In 1997, he opened a nightclub in San Francisco's Fillmore District called John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room, after one of his hits. He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died on June 21 at the age of 83, two months before his 84th birthday. His last live in the studio recording on guitar and vocal was of a song he wrote with Pete Sears called "Elizebeth", featuring members of his "Coast to Coast Blues Band" with Sears on piano. It was recorded on January 14, 1998 at Bayview Studios in Richmond, California. The last song Hooker recorded before his death was Ali D'Oro, a collaboration with the Italian soul singer Zucchero, in which Hooker sang the chorus "I lay down with an angel'" He was survived by eight children, nineteen grandchildren, eighteen great-grandchildren, a nephew, and fiance Sidora Dazi. One of his children is the musician John Lee Hooker, Jr. Among his many awards, Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two of his songs, "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom" were included in the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. "Boogie Chillen" was included as one of the Songs of the Century. He was also inducted in 1980 into theBlues Hall of Fame. In 2000, Hooker was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Music Hooker's guitar playing is closely aligned with piano boogie-woogie. He would play the walking bass pattern with his thumb, stopping to emphasize the end of a line with a series of trills, done by rapid hammer-ons and pulloffs. The songs that most epitomize his early sound are "Boogie Chillen", about being 17 and wanting to go out to dance at the Boogie clubs, "Baby, Please Don't Go", a blues standard first recorded by Big Joe Williams, and "Tupelo Blues", a stunningly sad song about the flooding of Tupelo, Mississippi in April 1936. He maintained a solo career, popular with blues and folk music fans of the early 1960s and crossed over to white audiences, giving an early opportunity to

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the young Bob Dylan. As he got older, he added more and more people to his band, changing his live show from simply Hooker with his guitar to a large band, with Hooker singing. His vocal phrasing was less closely tied to specific bars than most blues singers. This casual, rambling style had been gradually diminishing with the onset of electric blues bands from Chicago but, even when not playing solo, Hooker retained it in his sound. Though Hooker lived in Detroit during most of his career, he is not associated with the Chicago-style blues prevalent in large northern cities, as much as he is with the southern rural blues styles, known as delta blues, country blues, folk blues, or "front porch blues". His use of an electric guitar tied together the Delta blues with the emerging post-war electric blues. His songs have been covered by Buddy Guy, Cream, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin, Tom Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Van Morrison, The Yardbirds, The Animals, The Doors, The White Stripes, MC5, George Thorogood, R. L. Burnside,The J. Geils Band, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, The Gories, Cat Power, and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Eric Clapton Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in Gibson's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time. In the mid 1960s, Clapton departed from the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. In his one-year stay with Mayall, Clapton gained the nickname "Slowhand". Immediately after leaving Mayall, Clapton formed Cream, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop." For most of the 1970s, Clapton's output bore the influence of the mellow style of J.J. Cale and the reggae of Bob Marley. His version of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" helped reggae reach a mass market. Two of his most popular recordings were "Layla", recorded by Derek and the Dominos, another band he formed and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", recorded by Cream. A recipient of seventeen Grammy Awards, in 2004 Clapton was awarded a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers.

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Early life Eric Patrick Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey, England, the son of 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton (b. 7 January 1929 d. March 1999) and Edward Walter Fryer (21 March 1920 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 15 May 1985), a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec. Fryer shipped off to war prior to Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up with his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, who was stepfather to Patricia Clapton and her brother Adrian, believing they were his parents and that his mother was actually his older sister. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp (Reginald Cecil Clapton was the name of Rose's first husband, Eric Clapton's maternal grandfather). Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany, leaving young Eric with his grandparents in Surrey. Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest. Two years later Clapton picked it up again and started playing consistently.Clapton was influenced by the blues from an early age, and practised long hours to learn the chords of blues music by playing along to the records. He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder, listening to them over and over until he felt he'd got it right. After leaving Hollyfield School, in Surbiton, in 1961, Clapton studied at the Kingston College of Art but was dismissed at the end of the academic year because his focus remained on music rather than art. His guitar playing was so advanced that by the age of 16 he was getting noticed. Around this time Clapton began busking around Kingston, Richmond, and the West End. In 1962, Clapton started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast David Brock in pubs around Surrey. When he was seventeen years old Clapton joined his first band, an early British R&B group, "The Roosters", whose other guitarist was Tom McGuinness. He stayed with this band from January through August 1963. In October of that year, Clapton did a seven-gig stint with Casey Jones & The Engineers.

Career 1960s; The Yardbirds and the Bluesbreakers In October 1963 Clapton joined The Yardbirds, a blues-influenced rock and roll band, and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesising influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B. B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene. The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond. They toured England with American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II; a joint LP album, recorded in December 1963, was issued in 1965. It was during this time period that Clapton's Yardbirds rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would stay on stage and

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replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing what is called a "slow handclap". Clapton told his official biographer, Ray Coleman, that, "My nickname of 'Slowhand' came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into Slowhand as a play on words". In March 1965 the Yardbirds had their first major hit, "For Your Love", on which Clapton played guitar. The Yardbirds elected to move toward a pop-oriented sound, in part because of the success of "For Your Love", written by pop songwriter-for-hire Graham Gouldman, who had also written hit songs for Herman's Hermits and The Hollies. Still musically devoted to the blues, Clapton was opposed to the move, and left the band. He recommended fellow guitarist Jimmy Page as his replacement, but Page was at that time unwilling to relinquish his lucrative career as a freelance studio musician, so Page in turn recommended Clapton's successor, Jeff Beck. While Beck and Page played together in the Yardbirds, the trio of Beck, Page, and Clapton were never in the group together. However, the trio did appear on the 12-date benefit tour for Action for Research into Multiple Sclerosis in 1983, as well as on the album Guitar Boogie. Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April 1965, only to quit a few months later. In the summer of 1965 he left for Greece with a band called The Glands, which included his old friend Ben Palmer on piano. In November 1965 he rejoined John Mayall. During his second Bluesbreakers stint, Clapton gained a reputation as the best blues guitarist on the club circuit. Although Clapton gained world fame for his playing on the influential album, Blues Breakers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; John Mayall â&#x20AC;&#x201C; With Eric Clapton, this album was not released until Clapton had left the Bluesbreakers for the last time. Having swapped his Fender Telecaster and Vox AC30 amplifier for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and Marshall amplifier, Clapton's sound and playing inspired a well-publicised graffiti that deified him with the famous slogan "Clapton is God". The phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington Underground station in the autumn of 1967. The graffiti was captured in a now-famous photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall. Clapton is reported to have been embarrassed by the slogan, saying in his The South Bank Show profile in 1987, "I never accepted that I was the greatest guitar player in the world. I always wanted to be the greatest guitar player in the world, but that's an ideal, and I accept it as an ideal". The phrase began to appear in other areas of Islington throughout the mid 1960s.

Cream Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966 (to be replaced by Peter Green) and was invited by drummer Ginger Baker to play in his newly formed band Cream, one of the earliest supergroups, with Jack Bruce on bass (also of Manfred Mann, the Bluesbreakers, and the Graham Bond Organisation). Before the formation of Cream, Clapton was not well known in the United States; he left the Yardbirds before "For Your Love" hit the American Top Ten, and had yet to perform there. During his time with Cream, Clapton began to develop as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, though Bruce took most of the lead vocals and wrote the majority of the material with lyricist Pete Brown. Cream's first gig was an unofficial performance at the Twisted Wheel Club in Manchester on 29 July 1966 before their full debut two nights later at the National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor. Cream established its enduring legend with the high-volume blues jamming and extended solos of their live shows.

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In early 1967 Clapton's status as Britain's top guitarist was rivalled by the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, an acid rock-infused guitarist who used wailing feedback and effects pedals to create new sounds for the instrument. Hendrix attended a performance of the newly-formed Cream at the Central London Polytechnic on 1 October 1966, during which Hendrix sat in on a double-timed version of "Killing Floor". Top UK stars including Clapton, Pete Townshend, and members of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles avidly attended Hendrix's early club performances. Hendrix's arrival had an immediate and major effect on the next phase of Clapton's career, although Clapton continued to be recognised in UK music polls as the premier guitarist. Clapton first visited the United States while touring with Cream. In March 1967, Cream performed a nine-show stand at the RKO Theater in New York. They recorded Disraeli Gears in New York from 11–15 May 1967. Cream's repertoire varied from hard rock ("I Feel Free") to lengthy blues-based instrumental jams ("Spoonful"). Disraeli Gears featured Clapton's searing guitar lines, Bruce's soaring vocals and prominent, fluid bass playing, and Baker's powerful, polyrhythmic jazz-influenced drumming. Together, Cream's talents secured them as an influential power trio. In 28 months, Cream had become a commercial success, selling millions of records and playing throughout the U.S. and Europe. They redefined the instrumentalist's role in rock and were one of the first blues-rock bands to emphasise musical virtuosity and lengthy jazz-style improvisation sessions. Their U.S. hit singles include "Sunshine of Your Love" (#5, 1968), "White Room" (#6, 1968) and "Crossroads" (#28, 1969) – a live version of Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues". Though Cream was hailed as one of the greatest groups of its day, and the adulation of Clapton as a guitar hero reached new heights, the supergroup was shortlived. Drug and alcohol use escalated tension between the three members, and conflicts between Bruce and Baker eventually led to Cream's demise. A strongly critical Rolling Stone review of a concert of the group's second headlining U.S. tour was another significant factor in the trio's demise, and it affected Clapton profoundly. Cream's farewell album, Goodbye, featuring live performances recorded at The Forum, Los Angeles,19 October 1968, was released shortly after Cream disbanded; it also featured the studio single "Badge", co-written by Clapton and George Harrison. Clapton met Harrison and became friends with him after the Beatles shared a bill with the Clapton-era Yardbirds at the London Palladium. The close friendship between Clapton and Harrison resulted in Clapton's playing on Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from the Beatles'White Album (1968). Harrison also released his solo debut album, Wonderwall Music, in 1968. It became the first of many Harrison solo records to feature Clapton on guitar. Clapton would go largely uncredited for his contributions to Harrison's albums due to contractual restraints. The pair would often play live together as each other's guest. A year after Harrison's death in 2001, Clapton helped organise a tribute concert, for which he was musical director. In 1969, when The Beatles were recording/filming what became Let It Be, tensions became so acute that Harrison quit the group for several days, prompting the others to consider replacing him with Clapton, an idea that particularly appealed to John Lennon, who was captured on tape saying that if: "George doesn’t come back by Monday or Tuesday, we ask Eric Clapton to play”, and that this would be congenial to Clapton in that The Beatles, unlike Cream, “would give him full scope to play his guitar.” Years later, Clapton commented on the absurdity of this idea: “There may have been [a suggestion that I would be asked to join The Beatles in January 1969]. The problem with that was I had bonded or was developing a relationship with George, exclusive of them. I think it fitted a need of his and mine, that he could elevate himself by having this guy that could be like a gunslinger to them. Lennon would use my name every now and then for clout, as if I was the fastest gun. So, I don’t think I could have been brought into the whole thing because I was too much a mate of George’s.” Cream briefly reunited in 1993 to perform at the ceremony inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; a full reunion took place in May 2005, with Clapton, Bruce, and Baker playing four sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, and three shows at New York's Madison Square Garden that October. Recordings from the London shows, Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005, were released on CD, LP, and DVD in September/December 2005.

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Blind Faith and Delaney and Bonnie and Friends Clapton's next group, Blind Faith (1969), was composed of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood of Traffic, and Ric Grech of Family, and yielded one LP and one arena-circuit tour. The supergroup debuted before 100,000 fans in London's Hyde Park on 7 June1969. They performed several dates in Scandinavia and began a sold-out American tour in July before their only album was released. The LP Blind Faith consisted of just six songs, one of them a 15-minute jam entitled "Do What You Like". The album's jacket image of a topless pubescent girl was deemed controversial in the United States and was replaced by a photograph of the band. Blind Faith dissolved after less than seven months. Clapton subsequently toured as a sideman for an act that had opened for Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. He also played two dates as a member of The Plastic Ono Band that autumn, including a recorded performance at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in September 1969 released as the album Live Peace in Toronto 1969. On 15 December 1969 Clapton performed with John Lennon, George Harrison, and others as the Plastic Ono Band at a fundraiser for UNICEF in London. Delaney Bramlett encouraged Clapton in his singing and writing. During the summer of 1969, Clapton and Bramlett contributed to theMusic From Free Creek "supersession" project. Clapton, appearing as "King Cool" for contractual reasons, played with Dr. John on three songs, joined by Bramlett on two tracks. Using the Bramletts' backing group and an all-star cast of session players (including Leon Russell and Stephen Stills), Clapton recorded his first solo album during two brief tour hiatuses, fittingly named Eric Clapton. Delaney Bramlett co-wrote six of the songs with Clapton, and Bonnie Bramlett co-wrote "Let It Rain". The album yielded the unexpected U.S. No. 18 hit, J. J. Cale's "After Midnight". Clapton went with Delaney and Bonnie from the stage to the studio with the Dominos to record George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in spring 1970. During this busy period, Clapton also recorded with other artists including Dr. John, Leon Russell, Plastic Ono Band, Billy Preston, and Ringo Starr.

1970s Derek and the Dominos With the intention to counteract the "star" cult faction that had begun to form around him, Clapton assembled a new band composed of Delaney and Bonnie's former rhythm section, Bobby Whitlock as keyboardist and vocalist, Carl Radle as the bassist, and drummer Jim Gordon, with Clapton playing guitar. It was his intention to show that he need not fill a starring role, and functioned well as a member of an ensemble. During this period, Clapton was increasingly influenced by The Band and their album Music from Big Pink, saying, "What I appreciated about The Band was that they were more concerned with songs and singing. They would have three- and four-part harmonies, and the guitar was put back into perspective as being accompaniment. That suited me well, because I had gotten so tired of the virtuosityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or pseudo-virtuosityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;thing

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of long, boring guitar solos just because they were expected. The Band brought things back into perspective. The priority was the song." Naming the band, "Eric Clapton and Friends" at first, the name "Derek and the Dominos" was a fluke. It occurred when the band's provisional name of "Del and the Dynamos" was misread as Derek and the Dominos. Clapton's biography states that Tony Ashton of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke told Clapton to call the band "Del and the Dominos", since "Del" was his nickname for Eric Clapton. Del and Eric were combined and the final name became "Derek and the Dominos". Clapton's close friendship with George Harrison brought him into contact with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, with whom he became deeply infatuated. When she spurned his advances, Clapton's unrequited affections prompted most of the material for the Dominos' album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970). Heavily blues-influenced, the album features the twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Clapton, with Allman's slide guitar as a key ingredient of the sound. Working at Criteria Studios in Miami with Atlantic Recordsproducer Tom Dowd, who had worked with Clapton on Cream's Disraeli Gears, the band recorded a double album. The album features the hit love song "Layla", inspired by the classical poet of Persian literature, Nizami Ganjavi's The Story of Layla and Majnun, a copy of which Ian Dallas had given to Clapton. The book moved Clapton profoundly, as it was the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful, unavailable woman and who went crazy because he could not marry her. The two parts of "Layla" were recorded in separate sessions: the opening guitar section was recorded first, and for the second section, laid down several months later, drummer Jim Gordon composed and played the piano part. The Layla LP was actually recorded by a five-piece version of the group, thanks to the unforeseen inclusion of guitarist Duane Allman ofThe Allman Brothers Band. A few days into the Layla sessions, Dowdâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;who was also producing the Allmansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;invited Clapton to an Allman Brothers outdoor concert in Miami. The two guitarists met first on stage, then played all night in the studio, and became friends. Duane first added his slide guitar to "Tell the Truth" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out". In four days, the five-piece Dominos recorded "Key to the Highway", "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (a blues standard popularised by Freddie King and others), and "Why Does Love Got to be So Sad". In September, Duane briefly left the sessions for gigs with his own band, and the four-piece Dominos recorded "I Looked Away", "Bell Bottom Blues", and "Keep on Growing". Duane returned to record "I am Yours", "Anyday", and "It's Too Late". On 9 September, they recorded Hendrix's "Little Wing" and the title track. The following day, the final track, "It's Too Late", was recorded. Tragedy dogged the group throughout its brief career. During the sessions, Clapton was devastated by news of the death of Jimi Hendrix; eight days previously the band had cut a cover of "Little Wing" as a tribute to Hendrix. On 17 September 1970, one day before Hendrix's death, Clapton had purchased a left-handed Fender Stratocaster that he had planned to give to Hendrix as a birthday gift. Adding to Clapton's woes, the Layla album received only lukewarm reviews upon release. The shaken group undertook a U.S. tour without Allman, who had returned to the Allman Brothers Band. Despite Clapton's later admission that the tour took place amidst a veritable blizzard of drugs and alcohol, it resulted in the live double album In Concert. The band had recorded several tracks for a second album in London during the spring of 1971 (five of which were released on the Eric Clapton box-set Crossroads), but the results were mediocre. A second record was in the works when a clashing of egos took place and Clapton walked, thus disbanding the group. Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident on 29 October 1971. Although Radle would remain Clapton's bass player until the summer of 1979 (Radle died in May 1980 from the effects of alcohol and narcotics), it would be 2003 before Clapton and Whitlock appeared together again (Clapton guested on Whitlock's appearance on the Later with Jools Holland show). Another tragic footnote to the Dominos story was the fate of drummer Jim Gordon, who was an undiagnosed schizophrenic and years later murdered his mother during a psychotic episode. Gordon was confined to 16-years-to-life imprisonment, later being moved to a mental institution, where he remains today.

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Solo career Clapton's career successes in the 1970s were in stark contrast with his personal life, which was troubled by romantic longings and drug and alcohol addiction. While suffering his (temporarily) unrequited and intense attraction to Pattie Boyd, he withdrew from recording and touring to isolation in his Surrey, England, residence. There he nursed his heroin addiction, which resulted in a career hiatus interrupted only by the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971 (where he passed out on stage, was revived, and continued his performance). In January 1973, The Who's Pete Townshend organised a comeback concert for Clapton at London's Rainbow Theatre, aptly titled the "Rainbow Concert", to help Clapton kick his addiction. Clapton would return the favour by playing 'The Preacher' in Ken Russell's film version of The Who's Tommy in 1975; his appearance in the film (performing "Eyesight to the Blind") is notable as he is clearly wearing a fake beard in some shots, the result of deciding to shave off his real beard after the initial takes in an attempt to force the director to remove his earlier scene from the movie and leave the set. In 1974, now partnered with Pattie (they would not actually marry until 1979) and no longer using heroin (although starting to drink heavily), Clapton put together a more low-key touring band that included Radle, Miami guitarist George Terry, keyboardist Dick Sims (who died in 2011), drummer Jamie Oldaker, and vocalists Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy (also known as Marcella Detroit). With this band Clapton recorded 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), an album with an emphasis on more compact songs and fewer guitar solos; the cover version of "I Shot The Sheriff" was Clapton's first No. 1 hit and was important in bringing reggae and the music of Bob Marley to a wider audience. The 1975 album There's One in Every Crowd continued this trend. The album's original title, The World's Greatest Guitar Player (There's One In Every Crowd), was changed before pressing, as it was felt its ironic intention would be misunderstood. The band toured the world and subsequently released the 1975 live LP, E.C. Was Here. Clapton continued to release albums and toured regularly. Highlights of the period include No Reason to Cry (a collaboration with Bob Dylan and The Band); Slowhand, which featured "Wonderful Tonight" (another song inspired by Boyd); and a second J.J. Cale cover, "Cocaine". In 1976 he performed, alongside a string of notable guests, to pay tribute to the farewell performance of The Band, filmed in a Martin Scorsese documentary called The Last Waltz.

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1980s In 1981 Clapton was invited by producer Martin Lewis to appear at the Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Clapton accepted the invitation and teamed up with Jeff Beck to perform a series of duets—reportedly their first-ever billed stage collaboration. Three of the performances were released on the album of the show, and one of the songs was featured in the film. The performances heralded a return to form and prominence for Clapton in the new decade. Many factors had influenced Clapton's comeback, including his "deepening commitment to Christianity", to which he had converted prior to his heroin addiction. After an embarrassing fishing incident, Clapton finally called his manager and admitted he was an alcoholic. In January 1982 Roger and Clapton flew to Minneapolis – St. Paul; Clapton would be checked in at Hazelden Treatment Center, located in Center City, Minnesota. On the flight over, Clapton indulged in a large number of drinks, for fear he would never be able to drink again. Clapton is quoted as saying from his autobiography, "In the lowest moments of my life, the only reason I didn't commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn't be able to drink any more if I was dead. It was the only thing I thought was worth living for, and the idea that people were about to try and remove me from alcohol was so terrible that I drank and drank and drank, and they had to practically carry me into the clinic." After being discharged, it was recommended by doctors of Hazelden that Clapton not partake in any activities that would act as triggers for his alcoholism or stress, until he was fully situated back at Hurtwood. A few months after his discharge, Clapton began working on his next album, against the Hazelden doctors' orders. Working with Tom Dowd, Clapton produced what he thought as his "most forced" album to date, Money and Cigarettes. In 1984 he performed on Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, and went on tour with Waters following the release of the album. Since then Waters and Clapton have had a close relationship. In 2005 they performed together for the Tsunami Relief Fund. In 2006 they performed at the Highclere Castle, in aid of the Countryside Alliance, playing two set pieces of "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". Clapton, now a seasoned charity performer, played at the Live Aid concert on 13 July 1985. When offered a slot close to peak viewing hours, he was apparently flattered. As Clapton recovered from his addictions, his album output continued in the 1980s, including two produced with Phil Collins, 1985's Behind the Sun, which produced the hits "Forever Man" and "She's Waiting", and 1986's August. August was suffused with Collins's trademark drum and horn sound, and became Clapton's biggest seller in the UK to date, matching his highest chart position, number 3. The album's first track, the hit "It's In The Way That You Use It", was featured in the Tom Cruise – Paul Newman movie The Color of Money. The horn-peppered "Run" echoed Collins' "Sussudio" and rest of the producer's Genesis/solo output, while "Tearing Us Apart" (with Tina Turner) and the unimpressed "Miss You" echoed Clapton's angry sound. This rebound kicked off Clapton's two-year period of touring with Collins and their August collaborates, bassist Nathan East and keyboard player/songwriter Greg Phillinganes. While on tour for August, two concert videos were recorded of the four-man band, Eric Clapton Live from Montreux and Eric Clapton and Friends. Clapton later remade "After Midnight" as a single and a promotional track for the Michelob beer brand, which had also marketed earlier songs by Collins and Steve Winwood. Clapton won a British Academy Television Award for his collaboration with Michael Kamen on the score for the 1985 BBC Television thriller serial Edge of Darkness. In 1989, Clapton releasedJourneyman, an album which covered a wide range of styles including blues, jazz, soul and pop. Collaborators included George Harrison, Phil Collins, Daryl Hall, Chaka Khan, Mick Jones, David Sanborn and Robert Cray. In 1984, while still married to Pattie Boyd, Clapton began a year-long relationship with Yvonne Kelly. The two had a daughter, Ruth, who was born in January 1985, but her existence was kept a secret by her parents. She was not publicly revealed as his child until 1991. Boyd criticised Clapton because he had not revealed the child's existence. At the 1987 Brit Awards in London, Clapton picked up the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Music. Hurricane Hugo hit Montserrat in 1989, and this resulted in the closure of

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SirGeorge Martin and John Burgess's recording studio AIR Montserrat, where Kelly was Managing Director. Kelly and Ruth moved back to England, and stories about Eric's secret daughter began as a result of newspaper articles published at the time. Clapton and Boyd divorced in 1988 following his affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo, who gave birth to their son, Conor, on 21 August 1986. Boyd was never able to conceive children, despite attempts at in vitro fertilisation. Their divorce was granted on grounds of "infidelity and unreasonable behaviour." Clapton was known to date a host of beautiful women, including Krissy Wood (ex-wife of Ron Wood), actress Charlotte Martin, socialite Alice Ormsby-Gore, Paula Boyd (the younger sister of his future wife Pattie), singer Janis Joplin, singer Marianne Faithfull, rock muses Catherine James, Cyrinda Fox, and Geraldine Edwards, the inspiration for Penny Lane in Almost Famous, singer Rosanne Cash, the former First Lady of France and former model Carla Bruni, and actresses Patsy Kensit, Sharon Stone, and Alicia Witt.

1990s The 1990s brought a series of 32 concerts to the Royal Albert Hall, such as the 24 Nights series of concerts that took place around January through February 1990, and February through March 1991. On 27 August 1990, fellow blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was touring with Clapton, and three members of their road crew were killed in a helicopter crash between concerts. Then, on 20 March1991, Clapton's four-year-old son, Conor, died after falling from the 53rd-floor window of his mother's friend's New York City apartment at 117 East 57th Street. Conor's funeral took place on 28 March at St Mary Magdelene's Church in Clapton's home village in Ripley, Surrey. Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which was co-written by Will Jennings. At the 35th Grammy Awards, Clapton received six Grammy Awards for the single "Tears in Heaven" and his Unplugged album. The album reached number one on the Billboard 200, and has since been certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling over 10 million copies in the United States. On 9 September 1992, Clapton performed "Tears in Heaven" at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, and won the award for Best Male Video. In October 1992 Clapton was among the dozens of artists performing at Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. Recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the live two-disk CD/DVD captured a show full of celebrities performing classic Dylan songs, before ending with a few performances from Dylan himself. Despite the presence of 10 other guitarists on stage, including George Harrison, Neil Young, Roger McGuinn, Steve Cropper, Tom Petty, and Dylan, Clapton played the lead on a nearly 7-minute version of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" as part of the finale. While Unplugged featured Clapton playing acoustic guitar, his 1994 album From the Cradle contained new versions of old blues standards, highlighted by his electric guitar playing. Clapton's 1996 recording of the Wayne Kirkpatrick/Gordon Kennedy/Tommy Sims tune "Change the World" (featured in the soundtrack of the movie Phenomenon) won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1997, the same year he recorded Retail Therapy (an album of electronic music with Simon Climie under the pseudonym TDF). The following year, Clapton released the album Pilgrim, the first record featuring new material for almost a decade. Clapton finished the twentieth century with collaborations with Carlos Santana and B. B. King. In 1996 Clapton had a relationship with singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow. They remain friends, and Clapton appeared as a guest on Crow's Central Park Concert. The duo performed a Cream hit single, "White Room". Later, Clapton and Crow performed an alternate version of "Tulsa Time" with other guitar legends at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in June 2007. In 1998 Clapton, then 53, met 22-year-old administrative assistant Melia McEnery in Columbus, Ohio, at a party given for him after a performance. He quietly dated her for a year, and went public with the relationship in 1999. They married on 1 January 2002 at St Mary Magdalene church in Clapton's birthplace, Ripley. As of 2005 they have three daughters, Julie Rose (13 June 2001), Ella May (14 January 2003), and Sophie Belle (1 February 2005).

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At the 41st Grammy Awards on 24 February 1999, Clapton received his third Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, for his song "My Father's Eyes". In October 1999, the compilation album, Clapton Chronicles: The Best of Eric Clapton, was released, which contained a new song, "Blue Eyes Blue", that also appears in soundtrack for the film, Runaway Bride.

2000s Following the release of the 2001 record Reptile, in June 2002, Clapton performed "Layla" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at the Party at the Palace concert in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. On 29 November 2002, the Concert for George was held at the Royal Albert Hall, a tribute to George Harrison, who had died a year earlier of cancer. Clapton was a performer and the musical director. The concert featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ravi Shankar, Gary Brooker, Billy Preston, Joe Brown and Dhani Harrison. In 2004, Clapton released two albums of covers of songs by bluesman Robert Johnson, Me and Mr. Johnson and Sessions for Robert J. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Clapton No. 53 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" On 22 January 2005, Clapton performed in the Tsunami Relief Concert held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, in aid of the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. In May 2005 Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker reunited as Cream for a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Concert recordings were released on CD and DVD. Later, Cream performed in New York at Madison Square Garden. Back Home, Clapton's first album of new original material in nearly five years, was released on Reprise Records on30 August. In 2006 he invited Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II to join his band for his 2006â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2007 world tour. Trucks is the third member of the Allman Brothers Band to tour supporting Clapton, the second being pianist/keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who appeared on the MTV Unplugged album and the 24 Nights performances at the Royal Albert Hall theatre of London in 1990 and 1991, as well as Clapton's 1992 U.S. tour. On 20 May 2006, Clapton performed with Queen drummer Roger Taylor and former Pink Floyd bassist/songwriter Roger Waters at the Highclere Castle, Hampshire, in support of the Countryside Alliance. On 13 August 2006, Clapton made a guest appearance at the Bob Dylan concert inColumbus, Ohio, playing guitar on three songs in Jimmie Vaughan's opening act. A collaboration with guitarist J. J. Cale, titled The Road to Escondido, was released on 7 November 2006, featuring Derek Trucks and Billy Preston. The 14-track CD was produced and recorded by the duo in August 2005 in California. The chemistry between Trucks and Clapton convinced him to invite The Derek Trucks Band to open for Clapton's set at his 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival. Trucks remained on set afterward, performed with Clapton's band throughout his performances, and later embarked on a world tour with him. The rights to Clapton's official memoirs, written by Christopher Simon Sykes and published in 2007, were sold at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair for US$4 million.

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On 26 February 2008, it was reported that North Korean officials had invited Clapton to play a concert in the communist state. Clapton's management received the invitation and passed it on to the singer, who agreed in principle and suggested it take place sometime in 2009. Kristen Foster, a spokesperson, said, "Eric Clapton receives numerous offers to play in countries around the world," and "[t]here is no agreement whatsoever for him to play in North Korea." In 2007 Clapton learned more about his father, a Canadian soldier who left the UK after the war. Although Clapton's grandparents eventually told him the truth about his parentage, he only knew that his father's name was Edward Fryer. This was a source of disquiet for Clapton, as witnessed by his 1998 song "My Father's Eyes". A Montreal journalist named Michael Woloschuk researched Canadian Armed Forces service records and tracked down members of Fryer's family, and finally pieced together the story. He learned that Clapton's father was Edward Walter Fryer, born21 March 1920, in Montreal and died 15 May 1985 in Newmarket, Ontario. Fryer was a musician (piano and saxophone) and a lifelong drifter who was married several times, had several children, and apparently never knew that he was the father of Eric Clapton. Clapton thanked Woloschuk in an encounter at Macdonald Cartier Airport, in Ottawa, Canada. In February 2008 Clapton performed with his long-time friend Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden and guested on his recorded single, "Dirty City", on Winwood's album Nine Lives. The two former Blind Faith bandmates met again for a series of 14 concerts throughout the United States in June 2009. Clapton's 2008 Summer Tour began on 3 May at the Ford Amphitheatre, Tampa Bay, Florida, and then moved to Canada, Ireland, England, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Monaco. On 28 June 2008, he headlined Saturday night for Hard Rock Calling 2008 in London's Hyde Park (previously Hyde Park Calling) with support from Sheryl Crow and John Mayer. In September 2008 Clapton performed at a private charity fundraiser for The Countryside Alliance at Floridita in Soho, London that included such guests as the London Mayor Boris Johnson. In March 2009, the Allman Brothers Band (amongst many notable guests) celebrated their 40th year, dedicating their string of concerts to the late Duane Allman on their annual run at the Beacon Theatre. Eric Clapton was one of the performers, with drummer Butch Trucks remarking that the performance was not the typical Allman Brothers experience, given the number and musical styles of the guests who were invited to perform. Songs like "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" were punctuated with others, including "The Weight", with Levon Helm; Johnny Winter sitting in on Hendrix's "Red House"; and "Layla". On 4 May 2009 Clapton appeared as a featured guest at the Royal Albert Hall, playing "Further on Up the Road" with Joe Bonamassa. Clapton was scheduled to be one of the performers at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary concert in Madison Square Garden on 30 October 2009, but cancelled due to gallstone surgery. Van Morrison (who also cancelled) said in an interview that he and Clapton were to do a "couple of songs", but that they would do something else together at "some other stage of the game".

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2010s Clapton performed a two-night show with Jeff Beck at London's O2 Arena on 13â&#x20AC;&#x201C;14 February 2010. The two former Yardbirds extended their 2010 tour with stops at Madison Square Garden, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, and the Bell Centre in Montreal. Clapton performed a series of concerts in 11 cities throughout the United States from 25 February to 13 March 2010, including Roger Daltrey as opening act. His third European tour with Steve Winwood began on 18 May and ended 13 June, including Tom Norris as opening act. He then began a short North American tour lasting from 26 June to 3 July, starting with his third Crossroads Guitar Festival on 26 June at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. Clapton released a new studio album, Clapton, on 27 September 2010 in the United Kingdom and 28 September 2010 in the United States. On 17 November 2010, Clapton performed as guest on the Prince's Trust rock gala held at the Royal Albert Hall, supported by the house band for the evening, which included Jools Holland, Midge Ure andMark King. On 24 June 2011 Clapton was in concert with Pino Daniele in Cava de' Tirreni stadium, Italy, with an audience of 15,000 people before performing a series of concerts in South America from 6 to 16 October 2011. He spent the November and December 2011 touring Japan with Steve Winwood, playing 13 shows in various cities throughout the country. On 24 February 2012 Clapton, Keith Richards, Gary Clark Jr., Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, Kim Wilson and other artists performed together in the Howlin' For Hubert Tribute concert held at the Apollo Theater of NYC honoring blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin who died at age 80 in 4 December. Clapton is scheduled to perform a series of 12 concerts in the United Kingdom from 13 to 26 May 2013 to celebrate his 50 years as a professional musician, following the fourth Crossroads Guitar Festival held at Madison Square Garden in 12-13 April.

Influences Clapton cites Freddie King, B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Hubert Sumlin as guitar playing influences. Clapton stated blues musician Robert Johnson to be his single most important influence. In 2004 Clapton released CDs and DVDs entitled Sessions for Robert Johnson, featuring Clapton covering Robert Johnson songs using electric and acoustic guitars. Clapton co-authored with others the book Discovering Robert Johnson, in which Clapton said Johnson, was "...the most important blues musician who ever lived. He was true, absolutely, to his own vision, and as deep as I have gotten into the music over the last 30 years, I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really. ... it seemed to echo something I had always felt."

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Bo Diddley Ellas Otha Bates (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist,songwriter (usually as Ellas McDaniel), and rock and roll pioneer. He was also known as The Originator because of his key role in the transition from the blues to rock, influencing a host of acts, including Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, The Who, The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and George Michael, among others. He introduced more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard-edged electric guitar sound on a wideranging catalog of songs, along with African rhythms and a signature beat (a simple, fiveaccent rhythm) that remains a cornerstone of rock and pop. Accordingly, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and a Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was known in particular for his technical innovations, including his trademark rectangular guitar.

Early life and career Born in McComb, Mississippi, as Ellas Otha Bates, he was adopted and raised by his mother's cousin, Gussie McDaniel, whose surname he assumed, becoming Ellas McDaniel. In 1934, the McDaniel family moved to the largely black South Side area of Chicago, where the young man dropped the name Otha and became known as Ellas McDaniel, until his musical ambitions demanded that he take on a more catchy identity. In Chicago, he was an active member of his local Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he studied the trombone and the violin, becoming proficient enough on the latter for the musical director to invite him to join the orchestra, with which he performed until the age of 18. He was more impressed, however, by the pulsating, rhythmic music he heard at a local Pentecostal Church, as well as an interest in the guitar. Inspired by a concert where he saw John Lee Hooker perform, he supplemented his work as a carpenter and mechanic with a developing career playing on street corners with friends, including Jerome Green (c. 1934–1973), in a band called The Hipsters (later The Langley Avenue Jive Cats). During the summer of 1943–44, he played for tips at the Maxwell Street market in a band withEarl Hooker. By 1951 he was playing on the street with backing from Roosevelt Jackson (on washtub bass) and Jody Williams (whom he had taught to play the guitar). Williams later played lead guitar on "Who Do You Love?" (1956). In 1951 he landed a regular spot at the 708 Club on Chicago's South Side, with a repertoire influenced by Louis Jordan, John Lee Hooker, andMuddy Waters. In late 1954, he teamed up with harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold, drummer Clifton James, and bass player Roosevelt Jackson, and recorded demos of "I'm A Man" and "Bo Diddley". They re-recorded the songs at Chess Studios with a backing ensemble comprising Otis Spann (piano), Lester Davenport (harmonica), Frank Kirkland (drums), and Jerome Green (maracas). The record was released in March 1955, and the A-side, "Bo Diddley", became a No. 1 R&B hit.

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Stage Name McDaniel adopted the stage name Bo Diddley The origin of the name is somewhat unclear, as several differing stories and claims exist. Diddley claims that his peers gave him the nickname, which he first suspected to be an insult. Bo Diddley himself said that the name first belonged to a singer his adoptive mother was familiar with, while harmonicist Billy Boy Arnold once said in an interview that it was originally the name of a local comedian that Leonard Chess borrowed for the song title and artist name for Bo Diddley's first single, and guitar craftsman Ed Roman reported that another (unspecified) source says it was his nickname as a Golden Gloves boxer. A "diddley bow" is a typically homemade American string instrument of African origin, probably developed from instruments found on the coast of west Africa. The American slang phrase bo diddly meaning "absolutely nothing" goes back possibly to the early 20th century or earlier. Diddly is a truncation of diddly-squat, retaining the same meaning of "nothing" and bo is an intensifier.

Success in the 1950s and 1960s On November 20, 1955, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show, where he infuriated the host. "I did two songs and he got mad," Bo Diddley later recalled. "Ed Sullivan said that I was one of the first colored boys to ever double-cross him. Said that I wouldn't last six months". The show had requested that he sing the Merle Travis-penned Tennessee Ernie Ford hit "Sixteen Tons", but when he appeared on stage, he sang "Bo Diddley" instead. This substitution resulted in his being banned from further appearances. The request came about because Sullivan's people heard Diddley casually singing "Sixteen Tons" in the dressing room. Diddley's accounts of the event were inconsistent. Diddley was an excellent story teller whose stories varied from time to time, however, Diddley contended to friends and family that he was not trying to double-cross Sullivan and attributed the "misunderstanding" to the fact that; when he saw "Bo Diddley" on a cue card, he was under the impression he was to perform two songs, "Bo Diddley" and "Sixteen Tons". Chess included Diddley's recording of "Sixteen Tons" on the album Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger, which was originally released in 1960. He continued to have hits through the rest of the 1950s and even the 1960s, including "Pretty Thing" (1956), "Say Man" (1959), and "You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover" (1962). He released a string of albums whose titles, including Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger and Have Guitar, Will Travel, bolstered his self-invented legend. Between 1958 and 1963, Checker Records released 11 full-length albums by Bo Diddley. Although he broke through as a crossover artist with white audiences (appearing at the Alan Freed concerts, for example), he rarely tailored his compositions to teenage concerns. The album title Surfing with Bo Diddley was a boast about his influence on surf guitarists.

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In 1963, he starred in a UK concert tour with the Everly Brothers and Little Richard. The Rolling Stones, still barely known outside London at that time, appeared as a supporting act on the same bill. In addition to the many songs recorded by him, in 1956 he co-wrote, with Jody Williams, the pioneering pop song "Love Is Strange", a hit for Mickey & Sylvia in 1957. Bo Diddley was one of the first American male musicians to include women in his band, including "The Duchess" Norma-Jean Wofford, Peggy Jones (aka "Lady Bo"), Cornelia Redmond (aka Cookie), and Debby Hastings, who led his band for the final 25 years of his performing career. After moving from his home in Chicago to Washington, D.C., he set up one of the first home recording studios where he not only recorded the album Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger but he recorded his valet, Marvin Gaye. The Diddley-penned, "Wyatt Earp" was a single released on Okeh Records, since the Chess brothers did not want to release the record. Also during this time, Moonglows founder Harvey Fuqua who sang background on many of Diddley's home studio recordings was introduced to Gaye, and asked him to join the Moonglows. When Fuqua went to Motown, Gaye followed.

Later years Over the decades, Bo Diddley's venues ranged from intimate clubs to stadiums. On March 25, 1972, he played with The Grateful Dead at theAcademy of Music in New York City. The Grateful Dead released part of this concert as Volume 30 of the band's Dick's Picks concert album series. Also in the early 1970s, the soundtrack for the ground-breaking animated film Fritz The Cat contained his song "Bo Diddley", in which a crow idly finger-pops along to the track. Bo Diddley spent many years in New Mexico, living in Los Lunas, New Mexico from 1971 to 1978 while continuing his musical career. He served for two and a half years as Deputy Sheriff in the Valencia County Citizens' Patrol; during that time he personally purchased and donated three highway patrol pursuit cars. In the late 1970s, Diddley left Los Lunas and moved to Hawthorne, Florida where he lived on a large estate in a custom made log-cabin home, which he helped to build. For the remainder of his life he spent time between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Florida, living the last 13 years of his life in Archer, Florida, a small farming town near Gainesville. He appeared as an opening act for The Clash in their 1979 US tour; in Legends of Guitar (filmed live in Spain, 1991) with B.B. King, Les Paul,Albert Collins, George Benson, among others, and joined The Rolling Stones as a guest on their 1994 concert broadcast of Voodoo Lounge, performing "Who Do You Love?" with the band. Sheryl Crow and Robert Cray also appeared on the pay-per-view special.

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Illness On May 13, 2007, Bo Diddley was admitted to intensive care in Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, following a stroke after a concert in Council Bluffs, Iowa on May 12. Starting the show, he had complained that he did not feel well. He referred to smoke from the wildfires that were ravaging South Georgia and blowing south to the area near his home in Archer, Florida. Nonetheless, he delivered an energetic performance to an enthusiastic crowd. The next day, as Bo Diddley was heading back home, he seemed dazed and confused at the airport. His manager, Margo Lewis, called 911 and airport security and Bo was immediately taken by ambulance to Creighton University Medical Center and admitted to the Intensive-care unit, where he stayed for several days. After numerous tests, it was confirmed that Bo Diddley had suffered a stroke. He had a history of hypertension and diabetes, and the stroke affected the left side of his brain, causing receptive and expressive aphasia (speech impairment). The stroke was followed by a heart attack, suffered in Gainesville, Florida, on August 28, 2007. While recovering from the stroke and heart attack, Diddley came back to his home town of McComb, Mississippi, in early November 2007 for the unveiling of a plaque devoted to him on the National Blues Trail stating that he was "acclaimed as a founder of rock and roll." He was not supposed to perform, but as he listened to the music of local musician Jesse Robinson who sang a song written for this occasion, Robinson sensed that he wanted to perform and handed him a microphone. That was the first and last time that Bo Diddley performed publicly after suffering a stroke.

Death Bo Diddley died on June 2, 2008 of heart failure at his home in Archer, Florida. Garry Mitchell, a grandson of Diddley and one of more than 35 family members at the musician's home when he died at 1:45 am EDT (05:45 GMT), said his death was not unexpected. "There was a gospel song that was sung (at his bedside) and (when it was done) he said 'wow' with a thumbs up," Mitchell told Reuters, when asked to describe the scene at Diddley's deathbed. "The song was 'Walk Around Heaven' and in his last words he said 'I'm going to heaven.'" His funeral, a four-hour "homegoing" service, took place on June 7, 2008, at Showers of Blessings Church in Gainesville, Florida and kept in tune with the vibrant spirit of Bo Diddley's life and career. The many in attendance chanted "Hey Bo Diddley" as a gospel band played the legend's music. A number of notable musicians sent flowers, including: George Thoro good, Tom Petty, andJerry Lee Lewis. Little Richard, who had been asking his audiences to pray for Bo Diddley throughout his illness, had to fulfill concert commitments in Westbury and New York City the weekend of the funeral. He took time to remember Bo Diddley, his friend of a half-century, performing his namesake tune in his honor. After the funeral service, a tribute concert was held at the Martin Luther King Center, also in Gainesville, and featured performances by his son and daughter, Anthony McDaniel and Evelyn Kelly, long-time background vocalist Gloria Jolivet, co-producer Scott "Skyntyte" Free, Diddley's touring band, The Debby Hastings Band, and guest artist Eric Burdon. In the days following his death, tributes were paid to him by then-President George W. Bush, the United States House of Representatives, and an uncounted number of musicians and performers, including Eric Burdon, Elvis Costello, Ronnie Hawkins, Mick Jagger, B. B. King, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Bonnie Raitt, George Thorogood, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, the Black Lipsand Ronnie Wood. He was posthumously awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts degree by the University of Florida for his influence on American popular music and in its "People in America" radio series about influential people in American history, the Voice of America radio service paid tribute to him, describing how "his influence was so widespread that it is hard to imagine what rock and roll would have sounded like without him." Mick Jagger stated that "he was a wonderful, original musician who was an enormous

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force in music and was a big influence on The Rolling Stones. He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him." Jagger also praised the late star as a one of a kind musician, adding, "We will never see his like again. As his bass player Debby Hastings said: he was the rock that the roll was built on." The documentary film Cheat You Fair: The Story of Maxwell Street by director Phil Ranstrom features Bo Diddley's last on-camera interview. In November 2009 the guitar used by Diddley in his last-ever stage performance sold for $60,000 at auction.

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B. B. King His reign as King of the Blues has been as long as that of any monarch on earth. Yet B.B. King continues to wear his crown well. At age 76, he is still light on his feet, singing and playing the blues with relentless passion. Time has no apparent effect on B.B., other than to make him more popular, more cherished, more relevant than ever. Don't look for him in some kind of semiretirement; look for him out on the road, playing for people, popping up in a myriad of T.V. commercials, or laying down tracks for his next album. B.B. King is as alive as the music he plays, and a grateful world can't get enough of him. For more than half a century, Riley B. King better known as B.B. King - has defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released over fifty albums, many of them classics. He was born September 16, 1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN, to pursue his music career. Memphis was where every important musician of the South gravitated, and which supported a large musical community where every style of African American music could be found. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most celebrated blues performers of his time, who schooled B.B. further in the art of the blues. B.B.'s first big break came in 1948 when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio program on KWEM out of West Memphis. This led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis, and later to a ten-minute spot on black-staffed and managed Memphis radio station WDIA. "King's Spot," became so popular, it was expanded and became the "Sepia Swing Club." Soon B.B. needed a catchy radio name. What started out as Beale Street Blues Boy was shortened to Blues Boy King, and eventually B.B. King. In the mid-1950s, while B.B. was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, a few fans became unruly. Two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall. B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, then realized that he left his beloved $30 acoustic guitar inside, so he rushed back inside the burning building to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death. When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give the name to his guitar to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman. Ever since, each one of B.B.'s trademark Gibson guitars has been called Lucille. Soon after his number one hit, "Three O'Clock Blues," B.B. began touring nationally. In 1956, B.B. and his band played an astonishing 342 one-night stands. From the chitlin circuit with its small-town cafes, juke joints, and country dance halls to rock palaces, symphony concert halls, universities, resort hotels and amphitheaters, nationally and internationally, B.B. has become the most renowned blues musician of the past 40 years. Over the years, B.B. has developed one of the world's most identifiable guitar styles. He borrowed from Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and others, integrating his precise

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and complex vocal-like string bends and his left hand vibrato, both of which have become indispensable components of rock guitarist's vocabulary. His economy, his every-note-counts phrasing, has been a model for thousands of players, from Eric Clapton and George Harrison to Jeff Beck. B.B. has mixed traditional blues, jazz, swing, mainstream pop and jump into a unique sound. In B.B.'s words, "When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille." In 1968, B.B. played at the Newport Folk Festival and at Bill Graham's Fillmore West on bills with the hottest contemporary rock artists of the day who idolized B.B. and helped to introduce him to a young white audience. In ``69, B.B. was chosen by the Rolling Stones to open 18 American concerts for them; Ike and Tina Turner also played on 18 shows. B.B. was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He received NARAS' Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1987, and has received honorary doctorates from Tougaloo(MS) College in 1973; Yale University in 1977; Berklee College of Music in 1982; Rhodes College of Memphis in 1990; Mississippi Valley State University in 2002 and Brown University in 2007. In 1992, he received the National Award of Distinction from the University of Mississippi. In 1991, B.B. King's Blues Club opened on Beale Street in Memphis, and in 1994, a second club was launched at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles. A third club in New York City's Times Square opened in June 2000 and most recently two clubs opened at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut in January 2002. In 1996, the CD-Rom On The Road With B.B. King: An Interactive Autobiography was released to rave reviews. Also in 1996, B.B.'s autobiography, "Blues All Around Me" (written with David Ritz for Avon Books) was published. In a similar vein, Doubleday published "The Arrival of B.B. King" by Charles Sawyer, in 1980. B.B. continues to tour extensively, averaging over 250 concerts per year around the world. Classics such as "Payin' The Cost To Be The Boss," "The Thrill Is Gone," How Blue Can You Get," "Everyday I Have The Blues," and "Why I Sing The Blues" are concert (and fan) staples. Over the years, the Grammy Award-winner has had two #1 R&B hits, 1951's "Three O'Clock Blues," and 1952's "You Don't Know Me," and four #2 R&B hits, 1953's "Please Love Me," 1954's "You Upset Me Baby," 1960's "Sweet Sixteen, Part I," and 1966's "Don't Answer The Door, Part I." B.B.'s most popular crossover hit, 1970's "The Thrill Is Gone," went to #15 pop.

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Pink Anderson After being raised in Greenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina, he joined Dr. Frank Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company in 1914 to entertain the crowds whilst Kerr tried to sell a concoction purported to have medicinal qualities. |Cemetery marker for Pink Anderson in Lincoln Memorial Garg, keeping his musical talents in tune with an old Gibson J-50 guitar and a harmonica. He still "went out" when he could with Leo "Chief Thundercloud" Kahdot (of the Potawatomi native Americans) and his medicine show, often with the Jonesville, South Carolina based harmonica-player Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson. In May 1950, Anderson was recorded by folklorist Paul Clayton at the Virginia State Fair. Heart problems eventually forced Anderson to retire from the road in 1957. He was once more recorded at his home in 1962 by Samuel Charters. "Anderson went on to make an album on his own after the blues revival commenced in the early 1960s" and played some folk clubs, "establishing him as a minor but worthy exponent of the Piedmont school, versed in blues, ragtime, and folk songs". He also appeared in the 1963 film, The Bluesmen. A stroke in the late 1960s curtailed his musical activity. Attempts by folklorist Peter B. Lowry in 1970 to get Anderson on tape were not successful, although apparently he could occasionally summon up some of his past abilities. A final tour took place in the early 1970s with the aid ofRoy Book Binder, one of his "students", taking him to Boston and New York. He died in October 1974, of a heart attack at the age of 74. He is interred at Lincoln Memorial Gardens in Spartanburg. Anderson's son, known as ] Little Pink Anderson (b. July 13, 1954 ), is currently a bluesman living in Vermillion, South Dakota.

The Pink in Pink Floyd Syd Barrett, of English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, came up with the band's name by juxtaposing the first names of Anderson and North Carolina bluesman, Floyd Council Barrett noticed the names in the liner notes of a 1962 Blind Boy Fuller album (Philips BBL-7512). The text, written by Paul Oliver, read: "Curley Weaver and Fred McMullen, (...) Pink Anderson or Floyd Council - these were a few amongst the many blues singers that were to be heard in the rolling hills of the Piedmont, or meandering with the streams through the wooded valleys."

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In the South, the lives of whites and blacks have always been closely interwoven. In an economy based on cotton, their relationship was symbiotic. Both needed the other for their livelihood. It was a relationship unthinkable in the North. Francis Davis, author of The History of the Blues states that "floods and boll weevil infestations spelled disaster for everyone, landowner and sharecropper or tenant farmer alike." He reports that in 1889, when a white mob killed an approximated 25 blacks in Leflore County, MS reacting to hearsay about a black armed uprising, many cotton farmers in the county gave protection to any black who sought it. This account is an example of white recognition of the indispensability of blacks as workers, but it was also around this time that whites began to see the value of blacks as American cultural contributors. Whites began recording the blues in the early part of the 20th century thus extending the typical relationship between blacks and whites in a positive direction. Whites and blacks began to work together for a common good; both were making money and documenting history, whether they were aware of it at the time or not. This section investigates the benefits of bringing whites and blacks together in a business setting. Once record companies realized that blues was a moneymaker, they began sending out scouts with transportable equipment to record the music. For example, with the success of Blind Lemon Jefferson's second record in the 1920s, record companies immediately sent scouts to Dallas (Jefferson's hometown) to look for more bluesmen. They also consulted blacks when it came to which artists to promote and the language to use in advertising copy. While these advertisements were most often stereotypical of the image whites had of blacks, they did demonstrate an effort by whites to understand the culture and music of blacks. Even if it was for purely monetary purposes at this point, it did provide a reason why whites should see blacks more as human beings and less as sheer laborers Many people today complain that recording companies financially took advantage of musicians because the artists were often denied royalties and copyrights. However, Jeff Todd Titon points out in Early Downhome Blues that the money made from the sales of the records made by these artists was seldom enough to cover the cost of recording, production, and distribution. The companies were not obligated to pay the artists a flat rate for their

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services: however, by paying a flat wage for royalties and copyrights the musicians were guaranteed to leave with money in their pocket regardless of how well their records sold. It was also very difficult to supply these blues artists with royalties because during the early 1900s they usually did not hold a regular address. The artists happily conceded to the immediate lump-sum payment agreement because they suspected it would be very likely they would never see a royalty check if the company was given an easy excuse for not mailing it to them. The people who were most hurt by this system were the truly popular bluesmen such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake who brought in large amounts of revenue, but never saw any of it after their initial award. However, the extra profits of artists like these two compensated for the low sales of other artists' records. Their misfortune made it possible for record companies to go out searching for other talent and make other field recordings.

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Memphis Slim - Beer Drinking Woman Now I walked into a beer tavern To give a girl a nice time When I entered I had forty-five dollars When I left I had one dime Wasn't that a beer drinkin' woman Don't you know, man don't you know She was a beer drinkin' woman I don't want to see her no more Now when I spent down to my last dime She says, "Daddy I know you're not through" I told her, "Yes, baby doll and the diploma belongs to you" Wasn't that a beer drinkin' woman Don't you know, man don't you know She was a beer drinkin' woman And I don't want to see her no more She would often say, "Excuse me a minute, I've got to step around here" And every time she'd come back She'd say, "I want another quart of beer" Wasn't that a beer drinkin' woman Don't you know, man don't you know Boy, she was the toughest I met Lord, she was a beer drinkin' woman I don't want to see her no more I say, "I've got to step off baby, anything else you would like?" She said, "Daddy I'll keep this table, If you promise me you'll be back" You know that was a beer drinkin' woman Don't you know, man don't you know? She was a beer drinkin' woman I don't wanna see her no more I says, "I'm sorry baby, but I only have one more dime" She said, "Daddy buy me a small bottle of beer, so I can concentrate my mind" Wasn't that a beer drinkin' woman? Don't you know, man don't you know Lord, she was a beer drinkin' woman I don't wanna see her no more

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Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan

Well there's floodin' down in Texas....All of the telephone lines are down Well there's floodin' down in Texas....All of the telephone lines are down And I've been tryin' to call my baby....Lord and I can't get a single sound Well dark clouds are rollin' in....Man I'm standin' out in the rain Well dark clouds are rollin' in....Man I'm standin' out in the rain Yeah flood water keep a rollin'....Man it's about to drive poor me insane Well I'm leavin' you baby....Lord and I'm goin' back home to stay Well I'm leavin' you baby....Lord and I'm goin' back home to stay Well back home I know floods and tornados....Baby the sun shines every day

Fine Looking Woman â&#x20AC;&#x201C; B.B.KING Got a fine lookin' woman, lives way across the town Yes, she's a fine lookin' woman, lives way across the town Whenever i see that woman My love comes tumbling down She's a fine lookin' woman and she soothes my worried soul She's a fine lookin' woman and she soothes my worried soul Well, she put the lights out on me Then i gave up all my gold She's a fine lookin' woman and she shakes all the men Yeah, fine lookin' woman and the meat shakes on the bone Well, everytime she shakes mine Then all my body's gone

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Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd

If I leave here tomorrow Would you still remember me? For I must be travelling on, now 'Cause there's too many places I've got to see But if I stayed here with you, girl Things just couldn't be the same 'Cause I'm as free as a bird now And this bird you cannot change And the bird you cannot change And this bird you cannot change Lord knows, I can't change Bye, bye, baby, it's been a sweet love, yeah, yeah Though this feeling I can't change But, please, don't take it so badly 'Cause Lord knows I'm to blame But if I stayed here with you, girl Things just couldn't be the same 'Cause I'm as free as a bird now And this bird you'll never change And the bird you cannot change And this bird you cannot change Lord knows, I can't change Lord, help me, I can't change Lord, I can't change Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah

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Champagne & Reefer - Muddy Waters

Yeah bring me champagne when I'm thirsty. Bring me reefer when I want to get high. Yeah bring me champagne when I'm thirsty. Bring me reefer when I want to get high. Well you know when I'm lonely Bring my woman set her right down here by my side. Well you know there should be no law on people that want to smoke a little dope. Well you know there should be no law on people that want to smoke a little dope. Well you know it's good for your head And it relax your body don't you know. Everytime I get high I lay my head down on my baby's breast. Well you know I lay down be quiet Tryin' to take my rest. Well you know she done hug and kiss me Says Muddy your one man that I love the best. I'm gonna get high Gonna get high just as sure as you know my name. Y'know I'm gonna get so high this morning It's going to be a cryin' shame. Well you know I'm gonna stick with my reefer Ain't gonna be messin' round with no cocaine.

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Lynyrd Skynyrd - Tuesday's Gone

Train roll on, on down the line, Won't you please take me far away? Now I feel the wind blow outside my door, Means I'm leaving my woman at home Tuesday's gone with the wind. My baby's gone with the wind. Tuesday's Tuesday's Tuesday's My baby's

gone gone gone gone

with the with the with the with the

wind. wind. wind. wind.

And I don't know where I'm going. I just want to be left alone. Well, when this train ends I'll try again, But I'm leaving my woman at home. Tuesday's gone with the wind. Tuesday's gone with the wind. Tuesday's gone with the wind. My baby's gone with the wind. Train roll on, Tuesday's gone. Train roll on many miles from my home, See I'm, I'm riding my blues away. Tuesday, you see, she had to be free But somehow I've got to carry on. Tuesday's Tuesday's Tuesday's My baby's

gone gone gone gone

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with the with the with the with the

wind. wind. wind. wind.

Love Street - The Doors She lives on love street lingers long on love street she has a house and garden i would like to see what happens she has robes and she has monkies lazy diamond-studded flunkies she has wisdom and knows what to do she has me and she has you i see you live on love street there`s a store where the creatures meet i wonder what they do in there summer sunday and a year I guess i like it fine so far she lives on love street lingers long on love street she has a house and garden i would like to see what happens

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B.B. King - Let's Get Down to Business I'm glad to see you back, baby You been gone such a long, long time And now that you're back, baby Let's make up for long lost time Well, the day that you left me, baby I nearly went out of my mind I couldn't hardly sleep at night, baby Every morning i woke up crying So let's get down to business Yeah, let's get down to business Well, let's get down to business, baby You been gone such a long time Now i know that i love you, baby And i thought that you loved me, too Now, now that we're together, baby Tell me what are you going to do Well, what made us break up, baby I don't know till today But if it was my fault, baby I swear i'll change my ways So let's get down to business Yeah, let's get down to business Well, let's get down to business, baby You been gone such a long time Hey, let's, let's Let's get down to business, baby Well, well, well Let's get down to business Yeah, let's get down to business, baby You been gone such a long time I know that i love you, baby I say i thought that you loved me, too Now, now we're together, baby What are you going to do I said whatever made us break up, baby I don't know till today But if it was my fault, baby I swear i'll change my ways So let's get down to business Yeah, let's get down to business Well, let's get down to business, baby You been gone such a long time

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B.B. King - Get Off My Back Woman

Yeah, you get off of my back, baby Can't you tell you're choking me Oh i ain't no pony, baby Can't you tell you're choking me Yeah, you just get off of my back, baby Can't you see you're hurting me Well, i don't mind helping you, baby Every now, now and then Yes, you ain't helped yourself, baby Since god knows when So you just get off of my back now, baby Can't you see you're hurting me Yes, i'm standing here telling you, baby This is the end of the line Yes, i'm tired of you riding me, baby I declare i ain't lying So you just get off of my back, baby Can't you see you're hurting me Well, you get off, get off, get off, baby 'cause you're a heavy, heavy load Yes, you can catch yourself Another ride, baby Somewhere further down the road You just get off, get off, baby Can't you see you're hurting me

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Louis Armstrong - All That Meat And No Potatoes

All that meat, and no potatoes Just ain't right, like green tomatoes Yeah, i'm waiting Palpatatin' But all that meat, and no potatoes All that meat, and no potatoes All that food, to the alligators, yeah Hold me steady I am ready With all that meat and no potatoes I don't think that peas are bad With me, most anything goes I look in the pot, i'm fit to fight 'cause woman, you know that mess ain't right. All that meat, and no potatoes Just ain't right, like green tomatoes Yes, i'm steamin' I'm really screamin' All that meat and no potatoes. (where's my fine hambone?!? where is it?!?)

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Since the late 1960s, the electric blues has lost popularity in the mainstream, but continued with a strong contingent of fans in the U.S., UK and elsewhere, with many musicians who began their careers in the 1950s continued to record and making presentations, occasionally becoming stars. In years 70 and 80, the style has absorbed a lot of influences, mainly rock and soul. Stevie Ray Vaughan was the biggest star influenced by blues-rock and paved the way for guitarists like Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny Lang. There were also practitioners of a more electric blues influenced by soul, in the decades of 1970-80, Joe Louis Walker and, more successfully, Robert Cray, whose album Strong Persuader (1986), with the sound of his fluid guitar and an intimate vocal style produced a big hit. Since the commercial success of Nick of Time in 1989, Bonnie Raitt has been one of the most important artists in acoustic and electric blues, doing enough to pomover the profile of old blues artists. Following the renewed success of John Lee Hooker with his album The Healer (1989), which featured several guest appearances in the early 1990s, a significant number of artists began to return to the electric blues, including therein Gary Moore with Still Got the Blues (1990) and Eric Clapton, with From the Cradle (1994). There were also several new groups that played versions of blues-rock, such as The White Stripes, The Black Crowes, The Black Keys, Jeff Healey, Clutch, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Joe Bonamassa. This renewed interest in the blues in general in electric blues in particular has led to talk of another "blues revival" or a new resurgence.

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Marcos Paulo Carlesci Pereira Posso descrever que este Portfólio é uma “Mistura de Sentimentos, batidos no liquidificador”. Isso mesmo, Raiva, tristeza, felicidade, medo, ódio entre outros. Foi até interessante a montagem deste trabalho, muito suor e “lágrimas de sangue” derramadas. Descobrir que musicas que escutamos hoje são derivadas deste estilo o “blues” é muito legal perceber que algo de muito tempo atrás sobreviveu muitas décadas até os dias atuais. Ver também que um estilo que podemos considerar “fechado” o gospel, teve grande influência na musica. Depois de tanta dedicação e esforço eu posso cantar: “WE ARE THE CHAPIONS, MY FRIENDS”; pois realizar este trabalho, Foi realmente uma luta a qual nós saímos vencedores. Creio que depois de tantos dias de batalha, pesquisando, montando, arrumando, configurando, passando fome atrás dos materiais necessários, o Blues não saíra mais da minha mente. Quando tiver meus filhos os lembrarei de o quanto foi fadigoso realizar este tal PORTFÓLIO SOBRE BLUES! Creio também que antes de ter meus filhos serão necessárias algumas sessões com algum psicólogo (espero eu que ele não se traumatize, tomara). Como diz o ditado “No final tudo da certo”, terminamos felizes com certo nível de loucura, mas felizes. Esta tudo consumado! Amém.

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Natalia Ortiz Rocha

Fazendo este trabalho não só estudamos o Blues, como também todo o inicio da música. Com este trabalho podemos perceber a importância da música nas nossas vidas. As letras retratam pensamentos sem medo de serem libertados, e nos faz refletir. Ajudei no trabalho, pesquisando sobre a influência do Blues nos mais diferentes estilos musicais e me surpreendi por nunca ter ouvido falar da “raiz da música”, pesquisei as músicas que foram para o CD e gostei de algumas, tem melodias agradáveis. O Blues é muito mais que um estilo musical, Blues é história.

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Natalia Guerra O trabalho sobre blues foi um aprendizado maior sobre esse estilo, sobre suas influencias e historia. Com suas musicas calmas e que se tem permanecido única desde o seu início.Onde atingiu vários públicos por suas canções variadas. Blues exerceu grande influencia em outros estilos musicas e nos seus surgimentos. Foi um longo trabalho, mas que valeu a pena, pois da para tirar varias coisas interessantes para nossa expressão, cultura, desenvolvimento e aprendizagem. Que teve mitos, lendas, grandes nomes e canções clássicas. E que houve grande transformação ate os dias atuais. O Blues parecia que todas as musicas eram iguais, mas não, Blues foi um estilo predominante nos Estados Unidos que era o modo como os afro-americanos melhor se expressavam, onde passavam a demonstrar sua dura realidade da miséria, privação e sofrimento por estar longe de sua terra natal. O Blues só acontece quando realmente nossa tristeza pode ser sentida, quando pensamos que mais nada pode dar errado, ouvimos blues e aprendemos a vivenciar a tristeza, sentir nosso próprio sofrimento.

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Maria Paula Galé O BLUES para mim é um assunto novo, gostei de saber mais sobre ele. Deu bastante trabalho fazer as pesquisas e organizar um portfólio, tivemos que nos reunirmos muitas vezes. Foi necessário muito tempo para concluirmos o trabalho. Eu pesquisei sobre B.B. King, o que achei muito legal, pois ele foi um dos grandes nomes do blues. Também pesquisei sobre blues revival 70’s/80’s, foi difícil achar sobre o assunto, mas depois de muito pesquisar, consegui achar. Apesar de todo trabalho que tivemos, sempre é interessante aprender coisas novas.

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Lucas Ióca Esse trabalho deu trabalho, não gostei muito de fazer ele, além de aprender muito, isso pode me ajudar futuramente, isso aumentou minha cultura, e meu conhecimento dentro da musica, uma coisa que gosto muito. Com o portfólio pude aprender mais a fazer decisões em equipe, e que não é só porque nos queremos quer dizer que vai ser desse modo. Aprendi a aceitar opiniões diferentes, e a respeita-las.

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Luiz Fernando Bom, o trabalho do portfólio foi uma experiência muito interessante, pois exigiu muita cooperação do grupo para o desenvolvimento do mesmo. Também foi muito interessante descobrir o principio da história do rock. Particularmente gostei muito de fazer este trabalho, pelo fato de conhecer musicas que nem sequer sonhava em ouvir ou gostar, outra coisa muito interessante é descobrir que eu ouvia muitas dessas musicas quando menor. Aqui vão algumas musicas que eu gostei de ouvir:

1. Free Bird-Lynyrd Skynyrd: 2. Texas Flood- Steve Ray Vaughan 3. Tuesday Gone-Lynyrd Skynyrd

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Jonathan F. Higino

Fazer o portfólio sobre os blues realmente foi interessante, aprendi mais sobre música e cultura, principalmente pelo fato de que o Rock N’ Roll veio do blues, pois eu particularmente gosto muito de rock. Esse trabalho também influenciou, no fato de que eu não conhecia muito sobre blues, após o trabalho até descobri que eu já ouvia músicas que não sabia que eram blues. Pesquisei sobre os instrumentos musicais usados nas músicas do blues, como eram as afinações e como tocavam.

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Jaqueline Natália Pizzaia Gosto muito de música, porém nunca tinha pesquisado sobre a “origem” do meu gosto musical que começou tudo no Blues, o Rock. Fazer este trabalho não foi nada fácil, foi muito cansativo e demorado. Mas adquiri mais conhecimento sobre o tema. Vi que várias bandas que eu gosto como AC/DC, tem muita influencia do blues, isso foi algo interessante de se saber, mas gosto de outras bandas como Iron Maiden, Metallica, Guns n’ Roses, e etc, apenas bandas antigas e boas do rock. Mas foi bom de fazer, até que gosto de trabalho em conjunto, porque em minha opinião, nós conhecemos mais as pessoas e a nossa amizade parece que se desenvolve mais com trabalhos em grupo.

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History os blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espiritual_negro http://cnncba.blogspot.com.br/2009/03/negros-spirituals-cancoes-de.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Louis_Blues_(song) Genres of the blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie-woogie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_blues Influences os blues http://blogs.estadao.com.br/combate_rock http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_blues http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/soul http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll http://bluescomz.blogspot.com.br/

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Classical Blues http://www.arcmusic.org/features/blues_guides/classic_blues.pdf

Bluesman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brown Blueswomen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_%22Chippie%22_Hill Instrumente used in blues http://casadaminhasaudade.blogspot.com.br/2009/04/instrumentos-utilizados-noblues.html?zx=357f798e60b5ac72 http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm%C3%B3nica_(instrumento_musical)

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baixo http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompete http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitarra http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitarra_el%C3%A9trica http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitarra_ac%C3%BAstica http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateria_(instrumento_musical)

Artists os blues http://www.bbking.com/bio/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Anderson http://biograblues.blogspot.com.br/2009/05/ray-charles.html http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Charles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Boy_Williamson_II http://members.tripod.com/~Originator_2/index.html http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0225775/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Diddley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington http://www.milesdavis.com/us/biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lee_Hooker http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Clapton

Blues revival http://wchandyfatheroftheblues.blogspot.com.br/2011/12/eletricidade-de-umclassico.html

White audience http://www.angelfire.com/sc/bluesthesis/whiteint.html

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THE BLUES CAN NOT BE CONSIDERED BY US AS A SIMPLE MUSICAL RHYTHM, FROM NOW ON THE BLUES BECOMES FOR US THE MUSIC IN ITSELF BECAUSE SINCE HE HAS BEEN TRANSFORMING ITS ROOTS IN GENERATIONS THAT PASSED! THE BLUES WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT WE KNOW AS ROCK, JAZZ, AMONG OTHERS, WAS A REVOLUTION THAT BROKE STIGMAS AND PREJUDICES OF THE SEASON, LEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND OTHER PEOPLE TO A RADICAL CHANGE IN ITS DEFINITION OF MUSIC. WHY THE BLUES IS SO IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN STRONG FOUNDATION FOR MANY CURRENT MUSIC STYLES, INFLUENCING BOTH LYRICS AND MELODIES. SAY THAT THE BLUES WAS "ALL GOOD" WITH HIS SINGERS, AND COMPOSERS HAVE A PLACE IN WORLD HISTORY MORE BLUE AND MELODIC, GIVING US "MERE MORTALS", A SOUNDTRACK THAT REPRESENTS OR REPRESENTED OUR REALITY SOMEDAY. THEIR STYLES PROVE HOW THE SAME THING CAN BE MODIFIED BY DIFFERENT TYPES OF PEOPLE, SHOWS HOW THE HUMAN BEING IS CAPABLE OF DOING WHAT IS GOOD WHENEVER YOU WANT, BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN THE BLUES? NOT BECAUSE HE IS THE REAL HUMAN VOICE, THE ONE THAT SCREAMS FOR THEIR RIGHTS, THAT THEY FIGHT FOR THEIR IDEALS, WHICH FIGHTS THE OPPRESSOR AND THE OPPRESSED WHO MAKES A "SINGER OF HIS VICTORIES." WE DO NOT LET THE BLUES IS ERASED FROM HISTORY LIKE SO MANY OTHER RHYTHMS WERE EXTINGUISHED, FORGOTTEN, NOT BECAUSE THE BLUES WAS ONCE A GLARING MARK OF A PEOPLE!

CONCLUDING, THE BLUES IS ALL, SAVE THE BLUES!

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