Paul Lorin Kantner (born March 17, 1941) is an American rock musician, known for co-founding the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane.
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Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco, California, in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success.
The band performed at all three of the most famous American rock festivals of the 1960's -- Monterey (1967), Woodstock (1969) and Altamont (1969) -- as well as headlining the first Isle of Wight Festival. Their recordings were internationally successful, and they scored two US Top 10 hit singles and a string of Top 20 albums. Their 1967 record Surrealistic Pillow is regarded as one of the key recordings of the so-called Summer of Love and brought the group international recognition. Two chart hits from the album, Somebody to Love and
White Rabbit, are listed in Rolling Stone's 500.
Successor bands to Jefferson Airplane include Jefferson Starship and Starship; spinoffs include Hot Tuna and KBC Band. Jefferson Airplane was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Jefferson Airplane was formed in San Francisco during the summer of 1965, emerging from the San Francisco Bay folk music boom. Although the Airplane was considered a San Francisco group, Paul Kantner was the only native San Franciscan in the band.
The founder of the group that became Jefferson Airplane was 23-year-old vocalist Marty Balin (born Martyn Jerel Buchwald in Cincinnati, Ohio, January 30, 1942), a San Francisco-raised singer who had established a minor career as a pop singer in the early Sixties and had made several recordings under his own name. He recorded (without commercial success) for Challenge Records in 1962, releasing two singles, the most notable being I Specialize In Love, and was a member of a folk group called the Town Criers in 1963–1964. With the Beatles-led British Invasion of 1964, Balin was inspired by the merging of folk with rock in early 1965, spearheaded by the success of The Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel, and decided to form a group to play the hybrid style. With a group of investors, Balin purchased a former pizza parlour on Fillmore Street where he opened a new club, The Matrix and began searching for members for his group.
Balin met folk musician Paul Kantner at another local club, The Drinking Gourd. Kantner had started out performing on the Bay Area folk circuit in the early 1960s, alongside fellow folkies Jerry Garcia, David Crosby and Janis Joplin. Kantner has cited folk groups like The Kingston Trio and The Weavers as strong early influences. He briefly moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1964 to work in a folk duo with future Airplane/Starship member David Freiberg (who subsequently joined Quicksilver Messenger Service).
Balin and Kantner then set about recruiting other musicians to form the house band at the Matrix. After hearing female vocalist Signe Toly Anderson at the Drinking Gourd, Balin invited her to be the group's co-lead singer. Anderson sang with the band for a year and performed on their first album, departing in October 1966 after the birth of her first child. She was also quickly pushed out of the group by her husband who felt that she should pay more attention to her child than the group.
Kantner next recruited an old friend, blues guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. Originally from Washington, D.C., Kaukonen had moved to California in the early 1960s and met Kantner while at Santa Clara University in 1962. Kaukonen was invited to jam with the new band and although initially reluctant to join he was won over after playing his guitar through a tape delay device that was part of the sound system used by Ken Kesey for his Acid Test parties. Drummer Jerry Peloquin and acoustic bassist Bob Harvey completed the original lineup.
The origin of the group's name is often disputed. "Jefferson airplane" is slang for a used paper match split to hold a marijuana joint that has been smoked too short to hold without burning the fingers - an improvised roach clip.
An urban legend claims this was the origin of the band's name, but according to band member Jorma Kaukonen, the name was invented by his friend Steve Talbot as a parody of blues names such as Blind Lemon Jefferson.[8] A 2007 press release quoted Kaukonen as saying:
I had this friend [Talbot] in Berkeley who came up with funny names for people," explains Kaukonen. "His name for me was Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane (for blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson). When the guys were looking for band names and nobody could come up with something, I remember saying, 'You want a silly band name? I got a silly band name for you!'
The group made its first public appearance as Jefferson Airplane at the opening night of The Matrix on August 13, 1965. The band expanded from its folk roots, drawing inspiration from The Beatles, The Byrds and The Lovin' Spoonful, and gradually developed a more pop-oriented electric sound.
A few weeks after the group was formed, Jerry Peloquin departed, in part because of his disdain for the others' drug use. Although he was not a drummer, singer-guitarist Skip Spence (who later founded Moby Grape) was then invited to replace Peloquin. In October 1965, after the other members decided that Bob Harvey's bass playing was not up to par, he was replaced by guitarist-bassist Jack Casady, an old friend of Kaukonen's from Washington D.C. Casady played his first gig with the Airplane at a college concert in Berkeley, California, two weeks after he arrived in San Francisco.
The group's performing skills improved rapidly and they soon gained a strong following in and around San Francisco, aided by reviews from veteran music journalist Ralph J. Gleason, the jazz critic of the San Francisco Chronicle who, after seeing them at the Matrix in late 1965, proclaimed them "one of the best bands ever." Gleason's support raised the band's profile considerably, and within three months their manager Matthew Katz was fielding offers from recording companies, although they had yet to perform outside the Bay Area.
Two significant early concerts featuring the Airplane were held in late 1965. The first was the historic dance at the Longshoremen's Hall in San Francisco on October 16, 1965, the first of many 'happenings' in the Bay Area, where Gleason first saw them perform. At this concert they were supported by a local folk-rock group, The Great Society, which featured Grace Slick as lead singer and it was here that Kantner met Slick for the first time. A few weeks later, on November 6, they headlined a benefit concert for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the first of many promotions by rising Bay Area entrepreneur Bill Graham, who later became the band's manager.
In November 1965, Jefferson Airplane signed a recording contract with RCA Victor, which included an unheard-of advance of US$25,000. Prior to this, they had recorded a demo for Columbia Records of The Other Side Of This Life with Bob Harvey on bass, which was quickly tucked under the radar by Columbia. On December 10, 1965 the group played at the first Bill Graham show at the Fillmore auditorium, supported by The Great Society and others. The Airplane also appeared at numerous Family Dog shows promoted by Chet Helms at the Avalon Ballroom.
The group's first single was Balin's It's No Secret (a tune he wrote with Otis Redding in mind); the B-side was Runnin' Round The World, the song that led to the band's first major clash with RCA over the lyric "The nights I've spent with you have been fantastic trips." After their debut LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off was completed in March 1966, Skip Spence quit the band. He was eventually replaced by Spencer Dryden, who played his first show with the Airplane at the Berkeley Folk Festival on July 4, 1966. Dryden had previously played with a Los Angeles group called the Ashes, who would later become The Peanut Butter Conspiracy.
Original manager Matthew Katz was fired in August -- beginning a long-running legal battle that continued until 1987 -- and Balin's friend and roommate Bill Thompson was installed as road manager and temporary band manager. It was Thompson, a friend and ally of the band and a former Chronicle staffer, who had convinced reviewers Ralph Gleason and John Wasserman to see the band at the Longshoreman's Hall. Thanks to Gleason's influence, Thompson was able to book the group for appearances at the Berkeley Folk Festival and at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
The group's debut LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off was released in September 1966. The folk-music-influenced album included John D. Loudermilk's Tobacco Road and Dino Valente's Let's Get Together, as well as original ballads It's No Secret and Come Up the Years. Despite the fact that the group had not yet performed outside the Bay Area or appeared on TV, the album garnered considerable attention in the USA and sold well enough to earn a gold record award. RCA initially pressed only 15,000 copies, but it sold more than 10,000 in San Francisco alone, prompting the label to reprint it. For the reprinting, the company deleted "Runnin' Round This World" (which had appeared on early mono pressings), because executives objected to the word "trip" in the lyrics. For similar reasons, RCA also substituted altered versions for two other tracks: Let Me In, changing the line "you shut your door; you know where" to "you shut your door; now it ain't fair." In the same song, they also switched the lyric "Don't tell me you want money" to "Don't tell me it ain't funny." Run Around was also edited, changing the line "flowers that sway as you lay under me" to "flowers that sway as you stay here by me."
Signe Anderson gave birth to her daughter in May 1966, and in October she announced her departure from the band. Her final gig with the Airplane took place at the Fillmore on 15 October 1966. The following night, her replacement Grace Slick made her first appearance. Slick was already known to the band—she had attended the Airplane's debut gig at the Matrix in 1965 and her previous group, The Great Society, had often supported the Airplane in concert.
Slick's recruitment proved pivotal to the Airplane's commercial breakthrough—she possessed a powerful and supple contralto voice that complemented Balin's voice and was well-suited to the group's amplified psychedelic music; as a former model, her stage presence greatly enhanced the group's live impact.
The Great Society had recorded an early version of Somebody to Love (under the title Someone to Love) as the B-side of their only single, "Free Advice"; it was produced by Sylvester Stewart (soon to become Sly Stone) but it reportedly took more than 50 takes to achieve a satisfactory rendition. The Great Society decided to split up in late 1966 and played its last show on September 11. Soon after, Slick was asked to join Jefferson Airplane by Jack Casady (whose musicianship was a major influence on her decision) and her Great Society contract was bought out for $750.
In December 1966, Jefferson Airplane was featured in a Newsweek article about the booming San Francisco music scene, one of the first in a welter of similar media reports that prompted a massive influx of young people to the city and contributed to the commercialization and exploitation of the hippie culture.
Around the beginning of 1967 Bill Graham took over from Bill Thompson as manager. In January the group made their first visit to the East Coast. On January 14, alongside The Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane headlined the now-legendary "Human Be-In," the famous all-day 'happening' staged in Golden Gate Park, one of the key events leading up to the "Summer of Love."
During this period the band gained their first international recognition when rising British pop star Donovan, who saw them during his stint on the US West Coast in early 1966, mentioned the Airplane in his song The Fat Angel, which subsequently appeared on his Sunshine Superman LP.
The group's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow, recorded in Los Angeles with producer Rick Jarrard in only 13 days at a cost of $8000, launched the Airplane to international fame. Released in February 1967, the LP entered the Billboard 200 album chart on March 25 and remained there for over a year, peaking at #3. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.
The name Surrealistic Pillow was suggested by the "shadow" producer of the album, Jerry Garcia, when he mentioned that, as a whole, the album sounded "as Surrealistic as a pillow is soft." Although RCA Victor would not acknowledge Garcia's considerable contributions to the album with a "Producer" credit, he is listed in the album's credits as "spiritual advisor."
In addition to the group's two best-known tracks, White Rabbit and Somebody to Love, the album featured My Best Friend by former drummer Skip Spence,
Balin's driving Plastic Fantastic Lover, and the atmospheric Balin-Kantner ballad Today. A reminder of their earlier folk incarnation was Kaukonen's solo acoustic guitar tour de force, Embryonic Journey (his first composition), which referenced contemporary acoustic guitar masters such as John Fahey and helped to establish the popular genre exemplified by acoustic guitarist Leo Kottke.
The first single from the album, Spence's My Best Friend, failed to chart, but the next two singles rocketed the group to prominence.
Both Somebody to Love and White Rabbit became major US hits, the former reaching #5 and the latter #8 on the Billboard singles chart. By late 1967 the Airplane were national and international stars and had become one of the hottest groups in America.
This phase of the Airplane's career peaked with their famous performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. Monterey showcased leading bands from several major music "scenes" including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the United Kingdom, and the resulting TV and film coverage gave national (and international) exposure to groups that had previously had only regional fame. Two songs from the Airplane's set were subsequently included in the D. A. Pennebaker film documentary of the event.
The Airplane also benefited greatly from appearances on national network TV shows such as Johnny Carson's Tonight Show on NBC and The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. The Airplane's famous appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour performing White Rabbit and Somebody to Love was videotaped in color and augmented by developments in video techniques. It has been frequently re-screened and is notable for its pioneering use of the Chroma key process to simulate the Airplane's psychedelic light show.
The membership of Jefferson Airplane remained relatively stable from 1967 to 1970. During that period they recorded five more albums and performed extensively in the USA and Europe. The group's music underwent a significant transformation after Surrealistic Pillow, however. Key influences on the group's new direction were the popularity and success of Jimi Hendrix and the British supergroup Cream, which prompted the Airplane (like many other groups) to adopt a 'heavier' sound and to place a greater emphasis on improvisation.
The band's third LP, After Bathing at Baxter's, was released on November 27, 1967 and eventually peaked in the charts at #17. Its famous cover, drawn by renowned artist and cartoonist Ron Cobb depicts a Heath Robinson-inspired flying machine (constructed around an idealised version of a typical Haight-Ashbury district house) soaring about the chaos of American commercial culture.
Recorded over a period of more than four months, with little input from nominal producer Al Schmitt, the new album demonstrated the group's growing engagement with psychedelic rock.
Where the previous LP had consisted entirely of standard-length songs, the new one was dominated by long multi-part suites and one track (A Small Package of Value Will Come To You Shortly) was a sonic collage inspired by Frank Zappa's avant-garde work on side four of Freak Out! Baxter's also marked the ascendency of Kantner and Slick as the band's major composers and the concurrent decline in the influence and involvement of founder Marty Balin. The other members, gravitating toward a harder-edged style, openly criticized Balin for his ballad-oriented compositions. Balin also was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the "star trips" and inflated egos produced by the band's runaway commercial success.
Baxter's also marked the end of the Airplane's brief run of success on the singles chart. While both White Rabbit and Somebody To Love were US Top 10 hits, The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil, peaked at #43 while Watch Her Ride stalled at #61, though both were listed as being in the top forty in Cash Box. None of the band's subsequent singles made it into the Top 40 and several did not chart at all. AM Top 40 radio, in particular, became wary of a group that had scored a hit with a song that contained thinly-veiled drug references and whose singles were often deemed too controversial, so Jefferson Airplane never again enjoyed the kind of widespread radio support they would have needed to score more Top Ten hits.
Despite this, Jefferson Airplane continued to enjoy significant success as "album" artists.
Between 1967 and 1972 they scored a run of eight consecutive Top 20 albums in the USA, with both Surrealistic Pillow and Crown of Creation making the Top 10. Furthermore, many of their singles did manage to make minor chart positions in the singles chart due in part to the growing influence of FM radio, which would play many rock songs that AM radio refused to.
In February 1968, manager Bill Graham was fired after Grace Slick delivered an "either he goes or I go" ultimatum to the group. Bill Thompson took over as permanent manager and set about consolidating the group's financial security, establishing Icebag Corp. to oversee the band's publishing interests and purchasing a 20-room mansion at 2400 Fulton Street across from Golden Gate Park near the Haight-Ashbury district, which became the band's office and communal residence. Bill Laudner was hired as road manager.
In mid-1968, the group was photographed for a Life magazine cover story on The New Rock, appearing on the cover of the June 28, 1968 edition. They undertook their first major tour of Europe through mid-to-late 1968, playing alongside The Doors in the Netherlands, England, Belgium, Germany and Sweden. In a notorious incident at a concert in Amsterdam, while the Airplane was performing Plastic Fantastic Lover, Doors singer Jim Morrison, stoned on some hash given to him by a fan, appeared on stage and began dancing. As the group played faster and faster, Morrison spun around wildly until he finally fell senseless on the stage at Marty Balin's feet (Morrison was unable to perform his set with the Doors and was hospitalized while keyboardist Ray Manzarek was forced to sing all the vocals). It was also during this tour that Slick and Morrison engaged in a brief sexual relationship, which she would discuss in her 1998 autobiography.
Jefferson Airplane's fourth LP, Crown of Creation (released in September 1968), was a commercial success, peaking at #6 on the album chart. Grace Slick's Lather, which opens the album, is said to be about her affair with drummer Spencer Dryden and his 30th birthday.
Triad, a David Crosby piece, had been rejected by The Byrds because they deemed its subject matter (a ménage à trois) to be too "hot" to record. Slick's searing sex and social commentary anthem Greasy Heart had been released as a single in March 1968. Several tracks recorded for the LP were left off the album, but later included as bonus tracks, including the free form Grace Slick / Frank Zappa collaboration Would You Like A Snack?
Their appearance on The Smothers Brothers in the fall of that year would cause a minor stir when Grace Slick appeared black face (she claimed she simply wanted to wear all the makeup she saw in her dressing room) and performed the Black Panther Party's black power salute after finishing the song Crown of Creation.
The group went on a short European Tour along with The Doors in late 1968. In February 1969 RCA released the live album Bless Its Pointed Little Head, which was culled from late 1968 live concert performances at the Fillmore West on October 24–26 and the Fillmore East on November 28–30. It became the Airplane's fourth Top 20 album, peaking at #17.
In April 1969, sessions began for their next album, Volunteers, using new 16-track facilities at the Wally Heider Studio in San Francisco. This proved to be the last album by the "classic" lineup of the group. The album's release was delayed when the band ran into conflict with their label over content of songs such as We Can Be Together and Uncle Sam Blues and the planned titled of the album, Volunteers of Amerika.
In early August 1969, a few days after the band headlined at a free concert in New York's Central Park, they performed in what Grace Slick called an early "morning maniac music" slot at the Woodstock festival, for which the group was joined by noted British session keyboard player Nicky Hopkins. When interviewed about Woodstock by Jeff Tamarkin in 1992, Paul Kantner still recalled it with fondness, although Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden had less than rosy memories.
Immediately after their Woodstock performance, the band played a live concert on The Dick Cavett Show. The new album was finally released in the USA in November 1969 with the title shortened to Volunteers. The song Uncle Sam Blues did not appear but was later released on the eponymous Hot Tuna. Volunteers continued the Airplane's run of Top 20 LPs, peaking at #13 and going gold early in 1970. It was their most political venture, showcasing the group's vocal opposition to the Vietnam War and documenting their reaction to the changing political atmosphere in the United States. The most-known tracks included Volunteers, We Can Be Together, Good Shepherd, and the post-apocalyptic Wooden Ships, which Paul Kantner co-wrote with David Crosby and Stephen Stills and which Crosby, Stills & Nash also recorded on their debut album.
RCA voiced objections to the phrase "up against the wall, motherfucker" in the lyrics of Kantner's song We Can Be Together, but the group managed to prevent it from being censored, pointing out that RCA had already allowed the offending word to be included on the cast album of the rock musical Hair.
In December, the Airplane played at the Altamont Free Concert held at the Altamont Speedway in California, thus being the only band to perform at all three of the iconic rock festivals of the 1960s, along with Monterey Pop and Woodstock. Headlined by The Rolling Stones, the concert was marred by violence. Marty Balin was knocked out during a scuffle with Hells Angels members who had been hired to act as "security." The event became notorious for the now-famous "Gimme Shelter Incident": the fatal stabbing of black teenager Meredith Hunter in front of the stage by Hells Angels "guards" after he pulled out a revolver during the Stones' performance (This incident was the centerpiece of the documentary film Gimme Shelter).
Spencer Dryden quit the band in February 1970, burned out by four years on the "acid merry-go-round" and deeply disillusioned by the events of Altamont, which, he later recalled, "... did not look like a bunch of happy hippies in streaming colors. It looked more like sepia-toned Hieronymus Bosch." He took time off and later returned to music in 1972 as a drummer for the Grateful Dead spin-off band New Riders of the Purple Sage. Dryden's replacement was Joey Covington, an L.A. musician who had been sitting in with Hot Tuna during 1969.
Touring continued throughout 1970 but the group's only new recording that year was the single, Have You Seen the Saucers? backed with Mexico. The latter was an attack on then President Richard Nixon's Operation Intercept, which had been implemented to curtail the flow of marijuana into the United States. Have You Seen the Saucers marked the beginning of a science-fiction theme that Kantner would explore in his first solo album released in the same year, Blows Against the Empire, and with many of his songs in the 70s and 80s.
Jefferson Airplane ended 1970 with their traditional Thanksgiving Day engagement at the Fillmore East (the final performance of the short-lived Kantner/Balin/Slick/Kaukonen/Casady/Creach/Covington line-up) and the release of their first compilation album, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane, which continued their unbroken run of chart success, reaching #12 on the Billboard album chart.
1971 was a year of major upheaval for Jefferson Airplane. Grace Slick and Paul Kantner had begun a relationship during 1970, and on January 25, 1971, their daughter China Wing Kantner was born. Grace's divorce from her first husband had come through shortly before this, but she and Kantner agreed that they did not wish to marry.
In March 1971, Airplane's founder and co-lead singer Marty Balin decided to leave the band officially after months of isolation from the others. Although he had remained part of the band's live performances after the band's creative direction shifted from the brooding love songs that he specialized in, an emerging drinking problem, compounded by the evolution of the polarized Kantner/Slick and Kaukonen/Casady cliques, had finally left him the odd man out. He had also been deeply affected by the death of his friend Janis Joplin and had begun to pursue a healthier lifestyle; Balin's study of yoga and abstention from drugs and alcohol further distanced him from the other members of the group, whose drug intake continued unabated. This further complicated the recording of their long-overdue follow-up to Volunteers. Balin had recently completed several new songs, including Emergency and the elongated R&B-infused You Wear Your Dresses Too Short, both of which would later see the light of day on archival releases.
On May 13, 1971, Grace Slick was injured in a near-fatal automobile crash when her car slammed into a wall in a tunnel near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Her recuperation took several months, forcing the Airplane to cancel most of their concert and touring commitments for 1971.
The band still managed studio dates during 1971. Their next LP Bark (whose cover featured a dead fish wrapped in an A&P-style grocery bag) was issued in September 1971. Although it was the final album owed to RCA under the band's existing contract, it was the inaugural release on the band's Grunt Records vanity label. Manager Bill Thompson had struck a deal with RCA to allow Jefferson Airplane to run Grunt Records as they saw fit, but still use RCA's distribution.
The single "Pretty As You Feel," excerpted from a longer jam on the LP, lead vocals by Joey Covington, the song's composer, was the last Jefferson Airplane single to place on the US singles chart, peaking at #60. The album rose to #11, higher than Volunteers.
Even after the departure of Balin, major creative and personal divisions persisted between Slick and Kantner on the one side and Kaukonen and Casady on the other. (Jorma Kaukonen's song Third Week In The Chelsea, from Bark, chronicles the thoughts he himself was having about leaving the band.) These problems were exacerbated by escalating drug use -- especially Slick's alcoholism -- which caused the Airplane to become increasingly unreliable in their live commitments and led to some chaotic situations at concerts.
By the beginning of 1972 it was evident to most people close to the group that Jefferson Airplane was now severely damaged if not already an unairworthy total wreck, and about to collapse.
The band held together long enough to record one more LP, entitled Long John Silver, begun in April 1972 and released in July. By this time the various members were also engaged with their various solo projects. Hot Tuna, for instance, had released a second (electric) LP during 1971, First Pull Up, Then Pull Down which proved even more successful than its predecessor. Though still a nominal member of the band, Joey Covington had immersed himself in the production of his own album with Peter Kaukonen and Black Kangaroo on Grunt; consequently, John Barbata (formerly of The Turtles and CSNY) played on most of the album and continued on for the promotional tour that followed. The Long John Silver LP is notable for its cover, which folded out into a humidor (which the inner photo depicted as storing marijuana). The album rose to #20.
With the formal departure of Covington and addition of Kantner's old friend David Freiberg on vocals, Jefferson Airplane began a tour to promote the Long John Silver LP in the summer of 1972, their first concerts in over a year. This tour included a major free concert in Central Park that drew more than 50,000 people.
They returned to the West Coast in September, playing concerts in San Diego, Hollywood and Albuquerque. The tour culminated in two shows at Winterland in San Francisco (September 21–22), both of which were recorded. At the end of the second show the group was joined on stage by Marty Balin, who sang lead vocals on Volunteers and the final song, You Wear Your Dresses Too Short.
Although no official announcement was ever released, the Winterland shows proved to be the last live performances by Jefferson Airplane until their restoration and reunion in 1989.
Jefferson Airplane's second live album, Thirty Seconds Over Winterland, was released in April 1973. Its cover art depicts a squadron of flying toasters, a design that the band later alleged was plagiarized for the famous "After Dark" computer screensaver design.
In 1974, a collection of previous unreleased material and the single Mexico and Have You Seen The Saucers was released as Early Flight, the last official Jefferson Airplane album until the self-titled reunion album of 1989.
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Wilson Pickett (March 18, 1941 - January 19, 2006) was an American R&B, rock-and-roll, and soul singer and songwriter.
A major figure in the development of American soul music, Pickett recorded over 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, and frequently crossed over to the US Billboard Hot 100.
Among his best known hits are In the Midnight Hour (which he co-wrote); Land of 1,000 Dances; Mustang Sally; and Funky Broadway.
The impact of Pickett's songwriting and recording led to his 1991 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
[8941 Dylan / 8941 Kantner / 8940 Zappa]