The Troggs

Remembered chiefly as proto-punkers who reached the top of the charts with the "caveman rock" of "Wild Thing" (1966), the Troggs were also adept at crafting power pop and ballads. Hearkening back to a somewhat simpler, more basic British Invasion approach as psychedelia began to explode in the late '60s, the group also reached the Top Five with their flower-power ballad "Love Is All Around" in 1968.

Hailing from the relatively unknown British town of Andover, the Troggs hooked up with manager/producer Larry Page (who was involved in the Kinks' early affairs) in the mid-'60s. After a flop debut single, they were fortunate enough to come across a demo of Chip Taylor's "Wild Thing" (which had already been unsuccessfully recorded by the Wild Ones). In the hands of the Troggs, "Wild Thing" — with its grungy chords and off-the-wall ocarina solo — became a primeval three-chord monster, famous not only in its original hit Troggs version, but in its psychedelic revamping by Jimi Hendrix, who used it to close his famous set at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

"Wild Thing" made number one in the States, but the Troggs' momentum there was impeded by a strange legal dispute which saw their early records simultaneously released on two different labels. Nor did it help that the band didn't tour the U.S. for a couple of years. As a consequence, the fine follow-up singles "With a Girl Like You" and "I Can't Control Myself" didn't do as well as they might have. In Britain, it was a different story — they were smashes, although "I Can't Control Myself" had such an open-hearted lust that it encountered resistance from conservative radio programmers all over the globe.

The Troggs tempered their image on subsequent ballads, which utilized a sort of pre-"power ballad" approach. These weren't bad, and a few of them were British hits, but they weren't as fine as the initial blast of singles which established the band's image. "Love Is All Around," which restored them to the American Top Ten in 1968, was their finest effort in this vein. It was also their final big hit on either side of the Atlantic.By 1970, they were struggling.

They continued to release a stream of singles, most of which had a straightforward simplicity that was out of step with the progressive rock of the time, all of which flopped, though some were fairly good. They found enough live work (sometimes on the punk/new wave circuit) to keep going, although their intermittent records generally came to naught. In 1992, they rose to their highest profile in ages when three members of R.E.M., which had covered "Love Is All Around," backed the Troggs on the comeback album Athens Andover.

In 1994 The Troggs single from 1960s, Love is all Around, was used in the hit Hugh Grant English comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral. This usage of the song revived it completely, so much so that it hit #1 on the UK charts for 15 weeks straight. Find out more about them at their website: www.my-generation.org.uk/Troggs

Research info gathered at: www.allmusic.com


Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and personal blog: http://www.copyat5.com/

Irma Thomas

Irma Thomas (b. February 18, 1941, Ponchatoula, Louisiana) is a Grammy Award winning soul and rhythm and blues singer from New Orleans. She is known as the "Soul Queen of New Orleans."

She is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin and Etta James, but never experienced their level of commercial success; still, she has a large cult following among soul aficionados. In 2007, she won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album for "After The Rain", her first Grammy in an acclaimed career spanning over 45 years.

Born Irma Lee, as a teen she sang with a Baptist church choir, auditioning for Specialty Records as a 13 year old. By the age of 19 she had been married twice and had four children. Keeping her second ex-husband's surname, she worked as a waitress in New Orleans. Her first single, "(You Can Have My Husband But) Don't Mess With My Man," was released in spring 1960, and reached the number 22 spot on the Billboard R&B chart.

She then began recording on the Minit label, working with songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint on songs including “It’s Raining” and “Ruler of my Heart”, which was later reinterpreted by Otis Redding as "Pain In My Heart". Imperial Records acquired Minit in 1963, and a string of successful releases followed, including "I Wish Someone Would Care” (her biggest national hit), its B-side " Break-a-Way” (later covered by Tracey Ullman among others), "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is”, and "Time Is on My Side" (a song later by the Rolling Stones).

Although her first four Imperial singles all charted on Billboard's pop chart, later releases were less successful, and, unlike her contemporaries she never managed to cross over into mainstream commercial success. She recorded for Chess Records in 1967/68 with some success, the Otis Redding song "Good To Me" reaching the R&B chart. She then relocated to California, releasing records on various small labels, before returning to Louisiana, and in the early 1980s opened her own club, the Lion's Den.

After several years’ break from recording, she was signed by Rounder Records, and in 1991 earned her first-ever Grammy nomination for "Live! Simply the Best". She subsequently released a number of traditional gospel albums, together with more secular recordings. The album “Sing It !” was nominated for a Grammy in 1999.

She is still active as a performer, appearing annually at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. She reigned as Queen of the Krewe du Vieux for the 1998 New Orleans Mardi Gras season. She often headlined at her own club, which is now out of business due to the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Thomas relocated to Gonzales, Louisiana, 60 miles from New Orleans, after Hurrican Katrina, but, according to her web site, she is now back in her home in New Orleans. In 2007, The Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame honored her contributions to Louisiana music by inducting her into The Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame.Visit her official website at: http://www.irmathomas.com/

Research info gathered at: www.wikipedia.org


Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/

Kay Starr

Kay Starr (born July 21, 1922) is an American jazz and popular singer. She was born Katherine Laverne Starks on an Indian reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma. Her father was a full-blooded Iroquois Indian; her mother, Annie, was of mixed Irish and American Indian heritage. When her father got a job installing water sprinkler systems for the Automatical Sprinkler Company, the family moved to Dallas, Texas. There, her mother raised chickens, whom Kay used to serenade in the coop. Kay's aunt Nora was impressed by her 7-year-old niece's singing and arranged for her to sing on a Dallas radio station, WRR. Eventually she had her own 15-minute show, singing pop and "hillbilly" songs with a piano accompaniment. By age 10 she was making $3 a night, which was quite a salary in the Depression days.

When her father changed jobs, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she continued performing on the radio. She sang "Western swing music," still mostly a mix of country and pop. During this time at Memphis radio station WMPS,misspellings in her fan mail inspired her and her parents to change her name to "Kay Starr."

At 15, she was chosen to sing with the Joe Venuti orchestra. Venuti had a contract to play in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis which called for his band to feature a girl singer, which he did not have. Venuti's road manager heard Kay Starr on the radio and suggested her to Venuti. She was still in junior high school and her parents insisted on a midnight curfew.

After finishing high school, she moved to Los Angeles and signed with Wingy Manone's band; then from 1943 to 1945 she sang with Charlie Barnet's band. She then retired for a year because she developed pneumonia and later developed nodes on her vocal cords, and lost her voice as a result of fatigue and overwork. In 1946 she became a soloist, and in 1947 signed a solo contract with Capitol Records. In 1948 when the American Federation of Musicians was threatening a strike, Capitol wanted to have all its singers record a lot of songs for future release. Since she was junior to all these other artists, every song she wanted to sing got offered to all the others, leaving her a list of old songs from earlier in the century, which nobody else wanted to record.

Around 1950 she made a trip back home to Dougherty and while there heard a fiddle recording of Pee Wee King's song, "Bonaparte's Retreat". She liked it so much that she wanted to record it, and contacted Roy Acuff's publishing house in Nashville, Tennessee, and spoke to Acuff directly. He was happy to let her record it, but it took a while for her to make clear that she was a singer, not a fiddler, and therefore needed to have some lyrics written. Eventually Acuff came up with a new lyric, and "Bonaparte's Retreat" became her biggest hit up to that point, with close to a million sales.

In 1955, she signed with RCA Victor Records. However, at this time, traditional pop music was being superseded by rock and roll, and Kay had only one hit, which is sometimes considered her attempt to sing rock and roll and sometimes as a song making fun of it, "The Rock And Roll Waltz". She stayed at RCA Victor until 1959, then returned to Capitol.

Most of her songs have jazz influences, and were sang in a style that sounded decidedly close to the rock and roll songs that follow. These include her smash hits "Wheel of Fortune" (her biggest hit, number one for 10 weeks), "Side by Side", "The Man Upstairs", and "Rock and Roll Waltz". One of her biggest hits was her cover version of "The Man with the Bag", a Christmas song, which can be heard non-stop every holiday season in stores, restaurants, and on the radio. Her career declined in the late 1950s but she continued to work.

In 2006 a remix by Stuhr of Starr's vocal of the classic "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" was used in a commercial for Telus. As of 2007 she resides in Bel Air, California; married six times, she has a daughter and a grandchild. Find out more at: http://www.members.tripod.com/~Kay_starr/biography.html

Research gathered at: http://www.wikipedia.org/


Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and my personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/

Dobie Gray

Dobie Gray (born Lawrence Victor Ainsworth, 26 July 1940) is a musician/singer best known for his cover of the song "Drift Away", which was one of the biggest hits of 1973, and still remains a staple of radio airplay.

He was born in Texas although the exact place is unknown, Simonton being one of the most generally agreed on locations. There is also some argument as to his date of birth, but it is generally placed in the early 1940s. His birth name is also disputed, being listed as "Leonard Victor Ainsworth" or "Laurence Darrow Brown". However, Gray is listed in the Fort Bend County Birth Records in Texas, as being born on 26 July 1940, to Jane P. Spencel and Jethro Clifton Brown.

He moved from Texas to California in the 1960s, where he was mentored by Sonny Bono and later took up residence in Nashville, Tennessee. Both the original "Drift Away" single, and album of the same title, were the final records pressed on the Decca Records label. MCA absorbed the Decca label (along with its other subsidiaries) shortly thereafter.

Gray had other hits though, with songs such as "The 'In' Crowd" in 1965, and "Out On The Floor" a decade later. "The 'In' Crowd" is the song which first brought international recognition to Gray. Written by Billy Page, it extolled the cool sassiness and hipness of being "In" in the mid-sixties. The record was in the charts for three months. The Ramsey Lewis Trio's hit version of it came two years later.

"Drift Away" became a hit again in 2003, when it was covered by Uncle Kracker on his No Stranger to Shame album. The recording is a duet between Kracker and Gray, who is also featured in the video. Gray is still in the entertainment business and has a website at: http://www.dobiegray.com/

Research info gathered at: www.wikipedia.org


Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/

Chris Montez

Chris Montez (born Ezekiel Christopher Montanez, January 17, 1943, in Los Angeles, California, the last of twenty children), is a Mexican American singer. He grew up in Hawthorne, California, influenced by the Latino flavored music of his community and the success of Ritchie Valens.

In 1962, he recorded the single, “Let’s Dance” on Monogram Records. It went to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in the U.S. and to #2 on the U.K. Singles Chart. Though he would tour with Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, the Platters, and the Miracles, there would be no more hits for Montez until four years later. This was despite a relatively new and highly popular group of Liverpudlians, who called themselves The Beatles, opening a London show for him.

He returned to the recording studio in 1965, this time at A&M Records. Montez was searching for the same rock and roll formula that would replicate the success of “Let’s Dance”. During a recording session, A&M co-founder Herb Alpert dropped in and suggested that Montez try a different approach: a Middle of the road, soft ballad sound.

Montez trusted Alpert’s insticts enough to give it a try. “Call Me” was the first single released from his 1966 A&M album, “The More I See You”. The title single from the album, making its way to primarily adult-formatted radio stations, confused some non-rock and roll DJs, who were unfamiliar with Chris’ past work. When back-announcing the song, the DJs would often refer to Chris as a female ( Likely because these songs were sung in a falsetto). But by the time the album was released, Montez’ pictures on the front and back of the jacket cleared up any mystery surrounding his gender.

“The More I See You” album yielded three top 40 singles for Montez: The title cut, plus “Call Me” and “There Will Never Be Another You”. Unfortunately, it was this album that would yield the most Top 40 hits for Montez.He would record three more albums for A&M: “Time After Time”, “Foolin’ Around”, and “Watch What Happens”. None of these albums mirrored the success of The More I See You album. The title cut album, “Time After Time”, did hit the Top 40, but no other hits followed. Following the release of “Watch What Happens” in 1968, Montez left A&M Records.In November, 1972, Montez charted a Latin hit in Brazil: “Loco por ti (Crazy about you)” became very popular in that country. Montez resurfaced in 1974 at CBS Records, with the release of a new LP, “The Best of Chris Montez”, a mix of both old and new recordings, with the new ones having little to no resemblance of his past hits.[citation needed] This, and Chris’ more mature appearance on the cover, with longer hair, a mustache, and a stylish (for the mid-1970s) patterned shirt, was proof that the album marked time.

He recorded one more album for CBS: Raza: Ay No Digas, which did well internationally, but failed to make an impact in the U.S. His final album, with exclusively Spanish-language material, was Cartas de Amor, released on the independent label AYM in 1983 and later released on A&M Records (A&M Discos) of Mexico.

He continues to perform, mainly to foreign audiences, but still maintains a series of concert dates stateside. Most of his American appearances are in Branson, Missouri, where he performs with Dick Clark's “Original Stars at American Bandstand” show on stage along with Fabian, Bobby Vee, Brian Hyland, and The Chiffons. Find out more about him and his career at: http://www.chrismontez.com/

Research info gathered at: www.wikipedia.org


Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/

Les McCaan

Born in 1935 in Lexington, Kentucky, Les McCann is a self-taught musician (other than the four piano lessons he took as a youth from a nice old lady who lived in the neighborhood). In the early fifties, he left the South and joined the Navy. While stationed in California, he took every opportunity to visit San Francisco’s jazz clubs, where he first experienced Miles Davis and his music. His first major influence though, was pianist Erroll Garner, who shared the same exuberance and bursting vocalizations. After his discharge from the military, McCann moved to Los Angeles and formed a trio, Les McCann Ltd., which became a favorite on the Sun Strip in the late fifties.

He reached the peak of his career at the 1968 Montreux Jazz Festival, recording "Compared to What" and "Cold Duck Time" for Atlantic (Swiss Movement) with Eddie Harris and Benny Bailey. Although he has done some worthwhile work since then, much of it has been anti-climatic.McCann first gained some fame in 1956 when he won a talent contest in the Navy as a singer that resulted in an appearance on television on The Ed Sullivan Show. After being discharged, he formed a trio in Los Angeles. McCann turned down an invitation to join the Cannonball Adderley Quintet so he could work on his own music.

He signed a contract with Pacific Jazz and in 1960 gained some fame with his albums Les McCann Plays the Truth and The Shout. His soulful funk style on piano was influential and McCann's singing was largely secondary until the mid-'60s. He recorded many albums for Pacific Jazz during 1960-64, mostly with his trio but also featuring Ben Webster, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Blue Mitchell, Stanley Turrentine, Joe Pass, the Jazz Crusaders and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra.

He switched to Limelight during 1965-67 and then signed with Atlantic in 1968. After the success of Swiss Movement, McCann emphasized his singing at the expense of his playing and he began to utilize electric keyboards, notably on 1972's Layers. His recordings became less interesting to traditional jazz fans from that point on, and after his Atlantic contract ran out in 1976, McCann appeared on records much less often. However he stayed popular and a 1994 reunion tour with Eddie Harris was quite successful.

A mid-1990's stroke put him out of action for a time and weakened his keyboard playing (his band began carrying an additional keyboardist) but Les McCann returned to a more active schedule during 1996 and was still a powerful singer. His comeback was solidified by 2002's Pump it Up, a guest-heavy celebration of funk and jazz released on ESC Records. Find out more about this jazz legend at: http://www.lesmccann-officialsite.com/biography.html

Research info gathered at: www.allmusic.com


Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/