WArthur Adams is an American blues guitarist from Medon, Tennessee. Inspired by B.B. King and other 1950s artists, he played gospel music before attending college. He moved to Los Angeles, and during the 1960s and 1970s he released solo albums and worked as a session musician. In 1985 he was tapped to tour on bass guitar with Nina Simone, and he staged a comeback in the 1990s when he released Back on Track, and became a respected Chicago blues player and bandleader in B.B. King's clubs.
WJulian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s.
WNathaniel Carlyle Adderley was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, whom he supported and played with for many years.
WThe Brothers Four is an American folk singing group, founded in 1957 in Seattle, Washington, and known for their 1960 hit song "Greenfields".
WDavid Warren Brubeck was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. Many of his compositions have become jazz standards including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting both his mother's classical training and his own improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures as well as superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
WDavid Warren Brubeck was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. Many of his compositions have become jazz standards including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting both his mother's classical training and his own improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures as well as superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
WLionel Frederick Cole was an American jazz singer and pianist whose recording career spanned almost 70 years. He was the brother of musicians Nat King Cole, Eddie Cole, and Ike Cole, father of Lionel Cole, and uncle of Natalie Cole and Carole Cole.
WShawn Colvin is an American singer-songwriter and musician. While Colvin has been a solo recording artist for decades, she is best known for her 1998 Grammy Award-winning song "Sunny Came Home".
WTom Coster is an American keyboardist, composer, and longtime backing musician for Carlos Santana.
WCreedence Clearwater Revival, also referred to as Creedence and CCR, was an American rock band that recorded and performed from 1959 to 1972 under various names before settling on the Creedence Clearwater Revival name in 1967. The band initially consisted of lead vocalist, lead guitarist, and primary songwriter John Fogerty; his brother, rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty; bassist Stu Cook; and drummer Doug Clifford. These members had played together since 1959, first as the Blue Velvets and later as the Golliwogs.
WStephen Fain Earle is an American rock, country and folk singer-songwriter, record producer, author and actor. Earle began his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982.
WWilliam John Evans was an American jazz pianist and composer who mostly worked as the leader of a trio. His use of impressionist harmony, interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines continues to influence jazz pianists today.
WArthur Stewart Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination especially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while in high school. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player.
WDoug E. Fresh is a Barbadian-born American rapper, record producer and beatboxer, also known as the "Human Beat Box". The pioneer of 20th-century American beatboxing, Fresh is able to accurately imitate drum machines and various special effects using only his mouth, lips, gums, throat, tongue and a microphone.
WFrijid Pink is an American rock band, formed in Detroit in 1967, best known for their December 1969 rendition of "House of the Rising Sun".
WDavid L. Frishberg is an American jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and lyricist born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His songs have been performed by Blossom Dearie, Rosemary Clooney, Shirley Horn, Anita O'Day, Michael Feinstein, Irene Kral, Diana Krall, Stacey Kent, John Pizzarelli and Mel Tormé.
WGerald John Granelli was an American-born Canadian jazz drummer. He was best known for playing drums on the soundtrack A Charlie Brown Christmas with the Vince Guaraldi Trio.
WVincent Anthony Guaraldi was an American jazz pianist noted for his innovative compositions and arrangements and for composing music for animated television adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip including their signature melody, "Linus and Lucy" and the holiday standard, "Christmas Time Is Here". He is also known for his performances on piano as a member of Cal Tjader's 1950s ensembles and for his own solo career. His 1962 composition "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" became a radio hit and won a Grammy Award in 1963 for Best Original Jazz Composition. He died of a sudden heart attack in February 1976 at age 47 moments after finishing a nightclub performance in Menlo Park, California.
WWillard Palmer "Bill" Harris was an American jazz trombonist.
WJames Wesley "Red" Holloway was an American jazz saxophonist.
WRonald Edward Holloway is an American tenor saxophonist. He is listed in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz where veteran jazz critic Ira Gitler described Holloway as a "Hard bear-down-hard-bopper who can blow authentic R&B and croon a ballad with warm, blue feeling."
WRickie Lee Jones is an American singer, musician, songwriter, artist, and author. Over the course of a career that spans five decades, Jones has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, pop, soul, and jazz.
WLukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, sometimes referred to as POTR, is an American country rock group based in California. The band consists of Lukas Nelson, Anthony LoGerfo, Corey McCormick, Logan Metz, and Tato Melgar (percussion). Lukas is the son of Willie Nelson. Lukas Nelson & Promise of The Real has released 6 studio albums and 4 EP's.
WThe Marcus King Band is a southern rock/blues band from South Carolina formed in 2013.
WCatherine Tift Merritt is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She has released seven studio albums, two for Lost Highway Records, two for Fantasy Records, and three for Yep Roc Records.
WIdris Muhammad was an American jazz drummer who recorded with Ahmad Jamal, Lou Donaldson, Pharoah Sanders, Bob James, and Tete Montoliu. Muhammad had an extensive and varied career performing across jazz, funk, R'n'B and soul genres.
WOdetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and a civil and human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. Time magazine included her recording of "Take This Hammer" on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music."
WArthur Edward Pepper Jr. was an American alto saxophonist and very occasional tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. Active in West Coast jazz, Pepper came to prominence in Stan Kenton's big band. He was known for his emotionally charged performances and several stylistic shifts throughout his career, and was described by critic Scott Yanow as having "attained his goal of becoming the world's great altoist" at the time of his death.
WStephen Ray Perry is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead singer of the rock band Journey during their most commercially successful periods from 1977 to 1987, and again from 1995 to 1998. Perry also had a successful solo career between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, made sporadic appearances in the 2000s, and returned to music full-time in 2018.
WJim Post is an American folk singer-songwriter, composer, playwright and actor. In 1968 his pop song "Reach out of the Darkness" charted on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks, peaking at number 10.
WProphets of Rage was an American rap rock supergroup. Formed in 2016, the group consisted of three members of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, two members of Public Enemy, and rapper B-Real of Cypress Hill. The band disbanded in 2019, following the reuniting of Rage Against the Machine. During its three-year existence, Prophets of Rage released one EP and one full-length studio album.
WRobert Roland Chudnick, known professionally as Red Rodney, was an American jazz trumpeter.
WMorton Lyon Sahl is a Canadian-born American comedian, actor, and social satirist, considered the first modern stand-up comedian since Will Rogers. Sahl pioneered a style of social satire that pokes fun at political and current event topics using improvised monologues and only a newspaper as a prop.
WBola Sete was a Brazilian guitarist. Sete played jazz with Vince Guaraldi and Dizzy Gillespie.
WSylvester James Jr., known mononymously as Sylvester, was an American singer-songwriter. Primarily active in the genres of disco, rhythm and blues, and soul, he was known for his flamboyant and androgynous appearance, falsetto singing voice, and hit disco singles in the late 1970s and 1980s.
WIzear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. An early pioneer of 1950s rock and roll, he is best known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his then-wife Tina Turner as the leader of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.
WStanley William Turrentine was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He began his career playing R&B for Earl Bostic and later soul jazz recording for the Blue Note label from 1960, touched on jazz fusion during a stint on CTI in the 1970s. He was described by critic Steve Huey as "renowned for his distinctively thick, rippling tone [and] earthy grounding in the blues." In the 1960s Turrentine was married to organist Shirley Scott, with whom he frequently recorded, and he was the younger brother of trumpeter Tommy Turrentine.
WJoseph Fidler Walsh is an American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he has been a member of three successful rock bands: James Gang, Eagles, and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. Walsh was also part of the New Zealand band Herbs. In the 1990s, he was a member of the short-lived supergroup The Best.
WThe Weather Girls are an American female duo whose best-known line-up comprised Martha Wash and Izora Armstead. Formed in 1976 in San Francisco, California, The Weather Girls members began their musical career as Two Tons O' Fun, the female backup duo for disco singer Sylvester. After years of limited success singing background for Sylvester, the duo were signed in 1979 to Fantasy Records. The Weather Girls was launched into mainstream recognition following the release of their best-selling single, "It's Raining Men" (1982), which became their first number-one Dance song. Despite critical and commercial success, the duo struggled to repeat the success of "It's Raining Men" and ultimately disbanded after the release of their self-titled fifth album The Weather Girls in 1988.
WLarry Williams was an American rhythm and blues and rock and roll singer, songwriter, producer, and pianist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Williams is best known for writing and recording some rock and roll classics from 1957 to 1959 for Specialty Records, including "Bony Moronie", "Short Fat Fannie", "Slow Down", "Dizzy, Miss Lizzy" (1958), "Bad Boy" and "She Said Yeah" (1959). John Lennon was a fan, and The Beatles and several other British Invasion groups recorded several of his songs.