Biography
The Ad Libs were a vocal group from Bayonne, New Jersey during the early 1960s. Featuring their characteristic female lead vocals with male “doo-wop” backing, their 1965 single “The Boy from New York City“, written by George Davis and John T. Taylor, was their only pop chart hit.
Biography
One of the most multifaceted talents country music has ever known, Roger Dean Miller left a musical legacy of astonishing depth and range. A struggling honky-tonk singer and songwriter when he first hit Nashville in 1957, he blossomed into a country-pop superstar in the 1960s with self-penned crossover hits like “Dang Me” and “King of the Road.” In 1965–66 he won eleven Grammy awards. Two decades later, he received a 1985 Tony award for his score for Big River, a Broadway musical based on Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In between such career triumphs, Miller kept friends and fans in constant stitches as his extemporaneous wit proved almost as famous as his music.
Biography
Warren Smith (b. February 7, 1932, Humphreys County, Mississippi – d. January 31,1980) was a pioneer rockabilly singer and guitar player.
Biography
Rosco Gordon (April 10, 1928 – July 11, 2002) was an African American blues singer and songwriter. Born in Memphis, Tennessee on Florida street. Gordon was one of the “Beale Streeters“, a moniker given to a group of musicians who helped develop the style known as Memphis Blues.
Biography
Charles Feathers, (June 12, 1932 – August 29, 1998), was an influential rockabilly and country music performer.
Biography
Malcolm Yelvington (b. Sept. 14, 1918, Covington, Tennessee – d. Feb. 21, 2001, Memphis, Tennessee) was an American country musician. He released a record on Sun Records in 1954, just after Elvis Presley.
Biography
Albert Austin “Sonny” Burgess (born May 28, 1931, on a farm near Newport, Arkansas to Albert and Esta Burgess) is a guitarist and singer of classic rockabilly music.
Biography
Howlin’ Wolf quickly became a local celebrity, and soon began working with a band that included both Willie Johnson and guitarist Pat Hare. His first recordings came in 1951, when he recorded sessions for both the Bihari brothers at Modern Records and Leonard Chess‘ Chess Records. Chess issued Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years in August 1951; Wolf also recorded sides for Modern, with Ike Turner, in late 1951 and early 1952. Chess eventually won the war over the singer, and Wolf settled in Chicago, Illinois c. 1953. Upon arriving in Chicago, he assembled a new band, recruiting Chicagoan Joseph Leon “Jody” Williams from Memphis Slim’s band as his first guitarist. Within a year Wolf enticed guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago; Sumlin’s terse, curlicued solos perfectly complemented Burnett’s huge voice and surprisingly subtle phrasing. Although the line up of Wolf’s band would change regularly over the years, employing many different guitarists both on recordings and in live performance including Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.D. McGhee, Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers, his brother Abe “Little Smokey” Smothers, Jimmy Rogers, Freddie “Abu Talib” Robinson, and Buddy Guy, among others, with the exception of a couple of brief absences in the late ’50s Sumlin remained a member of the band for the rest of Wolf’s career, and is the guitarist most often associated with the Chicago Howlin’ Wolf sound.
Biography
Slim Rhodes and his Mountaineers were a popular act in Memphis going back to the 1930s. So much so, that the Sun Record Company signed them to a recording contract in the 1950s.
Biography
The late Frank Floyd has hard times and raunchy humor to relate on this album, recorded in 1972 after a long period of retirement and released late last year from the Adelphi blues vaults. Floyd recorded his first Chess single of old-time country blues for Sam Phillips in 1951, and with “Swamp Root” had some minor success with Sun Records. As an older performer, and one whose songs harked back to both black minstrelsy and white hillbilly music of the 1920s, Floyd saw his records mistaken for “race music” as Elvis and rock’n’roll took over. Years later, Floyd re-emerged from farm life to play folk heritage festivals, and recorded this in 1972, at age 66. Accompanying himself on harmonica and guitar, and still sounding like he stepped right out of the 1920s — foot tapping, single-note strumming, harmonica wailing — Floyd arranges two of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodels” here, as well as singing some outrageously bawdy songs (“Shampoo,” “Mosquito Bar Britches”). The title track comes from Floyd’s own experiences in late ’20s and ’30s medicine shows — the main entertainment in backroads America at the time. Floyd learned how to please a crowd with jokes and to play harmonica without a rack, the instrument protruding cigar-style from his mouth. Floyd died in 1984, but his performance here effectively captures an era in America’s musical history.
