Diana Ernestine Earle Ross (b. March 26, 1944) is an American singer and actress. During the 1960s, she helped shape the Motown sound as lead singer of The Supremes, before leaving the group for a solo career on January 14, 1970. Since the beginning of her career with The Supremes and as a solo artist, Ross has sold more than 150 million records.
During the 1970s and through the mid-1980s, Ross was among the most successful female artists, crossing over into film, television and Broadway. She received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her 1972 role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, for which she won a Golden Globe award. She won awards at the American Music Awards, garnered twelve Grammy Award nominations, and won a Tony Award for her one-woman show, An Evening with Diana Ross, in 1977.
Ross was the first female solo artist to score six number-one hits. This feat puts her in a tie for fifth place among solo female artists with the most top hits on the Hot 100.
She is also one of the few recording artists to have two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame -- one as a solo artist and the other as a member of The Supremes. In December 2007, she received a John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Honors Award.
Including her work with The Supremes, Ross has released 67 albums.
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John Kay (b. Joachim Fritz Krauledat, April 12, 1944, Tilsit, Germany) is a Canadian singer, songwriter and guitarist known as the frontman of Steppenwolf.
Kay has lived since 1990 in Franklin, Tennessee.
In the Evacuation of East Prussia in early 1945, in harsh winter conditions, his mother first had to flee with the baby boy from the advancing Soviet troops. In 1948, the two also fled from Arnstadt in the East German Soviet occupation zone to resettle in Hanover, West Germany (as recounted in his song "Renegade" on the album Steppenwolf Seven). Located in the British occupation zone, teen aged Joachim, suffering from eyesight problems, listened to music broadcast by the British Forces Broadcasting Service before his family moved to Canada in 1958.
He joined a blues rock and folk music group known as The Sparrows in 1965, which had moderate success in Canada before moving to California, augmenting its line-up and changing its name to Steppenwolf in 1967. With music that pioneered hard rock and heavy metal, Kay's Steppenwolf had international success with songs such as Born to Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride, Monster, The Pusher, and Rock Me. This was multiplied by the use of Born to Be Wild and The Pusher in the 1969 movie Easy Rider.
Kay recorded both as a solo artist and with Steppenwolf during the late 1970's, and wrapped up Steppenwolf's 40th year of touring with what was to be a final gig in October 2007. However, Kay and Steppenwolf were scheduled to appear July 24, 2010, at the three-day HullabaLOU music festival in Louisville, Ky.
In 2004 he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, in recognition of his early years as a Canadian citizen and the beginnings of his musical career in Toronto. Kay was present at the induction ceremony in Toronto, and reiterated his strong affection for Canada.
Kay suffers from increased sensitivity to light, so he wears his trademark sunglasses. He also has congenital achromatopsia, complete colorblindness, a defect of the eyes which causes legal blindness. Despite this condition, he is an avid videographer.
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Steppenwolf is a Canadian-American hard rock group that was prominent in the late 1960s. The group was formed in 1967 in Los Angeles by vocalist John Kay, guitarist Michael Monarch, bassist Rushton Moreve, keyboardist Goldy McJohn and drummer Jerry Edmonton after the dissolution of Toronto group The Sparrows of which Moreve was not a member.
The band has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, releasing eight gold albums and twelve Billboard Hot 100 singles of which six were Top 40 hits, including three Top 10 successes: Born to Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride, and Rock Me. Steppenwolf enjoyed worldwide success from 1968 to 1974, but clashing personalities led to the end of the core lineup. Today, frontman John Kay is the only original member left, having served as lead singer for more than 40 years since 1967.
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Born to Be Wild is a rock song written by Mars Bonfire and made famous by the Canadian-American rock band Steppenwolf. It is often used in popular culture to denote a biker appearance or attitude. It is sometimes described as the first heavy metal song, and the second verse lyric "heavy metal thunder," marks the first use of this term in rock music.
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Raymond Douglas "Ray" Davies, CBE (b. June 21, 1944, London, UK) is an English rock musician, best known as lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.
Since the demise of The Kinks in 1996, Ray Davies has embarked on a solo career as a singer-songwriter.
Ray Davies (pronounced day-viz by Ray) is the seventh of eight children, including six older sisters and younger brother Dave Davies.
Davies was an art student at Hornsey College of Art in London in 1962–1963, when the Kinks developed into a professional performing band. After the Kinks obtained a recording contract in early 1964, Davies emerged as the chief songwriter and de facto leader of the band, especially after the band's breakthrough success with his early composition You Really Got Me, which was released as the band's third single in August of that year.
Davies led the Kinks through a period of musical experimentation between 1966 and 1976, with notable artistic achievements and commercial success. Between 1977 and their break-up in 1996, Davies and the group reverted to their earlier mainstream rock format and enjoyed a second peak of success, with other hit songs, like Destroyer, Come Dancing, and Do it Again. The Kinks disbanded in 1996, and Ray Davies has performed solo since then.
Davies has had a tempestuous relationship with younger brother Dave (the band's lead guitarist) that dominated the Kinks' career as a band. He has been married three times and has four daughters - Louisa, Victoria, Natalie and Eva.
In 1990, Davies was inducted, with The Kinks, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, in 2005, into the UK Music Hall of Fame.
On 4 January 2004, Davies was shot in the leg while chasing thieves, who had snatched the purse of his companion as they walked in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.
The shooting came less than a week after Davies was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
Davies' compositions for The Kinks' early recordings of 1964-65 ranged from chiming, melodic beat music to the more distinctive and influential proto-metal, protopunk, powerchord-based rock and roll which first brought the band to prominence. Indeed, it was the latter style that characterized their first two major hits, You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night, as well as the B-side I Need You and the minor hit Till the End of the Day. However, by the mid-to-late 1960's, this raucous early sound had gradually given way to more sensitive, introspective and complex songs, such as Tired of Waiting for You, See My Friends, Where Have All the Good Times Gone, Too Much on My Mind, This is Where I Belong, Waterloo Sunset, Wonderboy, and Days.
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Jon [Roy] Anderson (b. October 25, 1944) is an English musician best known as the former lead singer of the progressive rock band Yes. He is also an accomplished solo artist and has collaborated with artists such as the Greek musician Vangelis, among others.
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Yes is an English progressive rock band formed in London in 1968, generally regarded as one of the archetypal bands and pioneers of the genre. Despite many lineup changes, occasional splits within the group, and the ever-changing trends in popular music, the band has continued for more than 40 years and still retains a large following. They have sold over 33 million albums.
The band's music blends symphonic and other "classical" structures with their own brand of rock music.
Although the band's sole consistent member has been bass player Chris Squire, Yes is also generally noted for the distinctive high-register vocals of former lead singer Jon Anderson and the eclectic musical stylings of a succession of guitarists (Steve Howe, Peter Banks, Trevor Rabin, Billy Sherwood), keyboard players (Rick Wakeman, Tony Kaye, Patrick Moraz, Geoff Downes, Igor Khoroshev, Oliver Wakeman), and drummers (Alan White and Bill Bruford).
Several band members became celebrated musicians and/or bandleaders in their own right, and a 1980 lineup of the band was briefly fronted by Trevor Horn (shortly before he became one of rock music's most celebrated record producers). The band's current lineup is Squire, Howe, White, Oliver Wakeman (keyboards) and Benoît David (lead vocals).
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Fragile is the fourth album by the British progressive rock band Yes, released on Atlantic Records, catalogue 7211. It was the band's first album with keyboardist Rick Wakeman after the departure of Tony Kaye, and the first to feature cover art by Roger Dean, his work emblematic of both the band and progressive rock as a whole. Fragile was issued in the UK in November 1971, but was held back in North America for two months because of the chart momentum of The Yes Album. It peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 during a stay of 46 weeks, and as Atlantic 2401 019 reached #7 in the UK album chart.
Work on the material began while Kaye was still in the band. In a 2006 interview, he said, "I did rehearse Fragile before I left. I left in the middle."
Four of the nine tracks feature full performances by the new line-up with Wakeman, three of which were of eight minutes length or longer. Its best known track, "Roundabout," was released in the United States in an edited 3:27 version as a single and peaked at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (then called the Pop Singles Chart) in April 1972.
Rick Wakeman contributed to the writing of "South Side of the Sky" and "Heart of the Sunrise" by adding piano interludes to both songs, but wasn't credited due to contractual conflicts. He was instead promised more money by Atlantic studio executives, which he claims he never saw.
The remaining five tracks showcase the band members' individual talents. "Cans and Brahms" is an arrangement by Wakeman of the third movement from the Fourth Symphony in E minor by Johannes Brahms, his utilization of synthesizers adapted to classical works in vogue at the time, evidenced in efforts by Wendy Carlos. "We Have Heaven" is by Jon Anderson in which he sings all the vocal parts, a technique later used on his solo album Olias of Sunhillow. The initial, overlapping lyric is "tell the moon, don't tell the March Hare." Bill Bruford's "Five Per Cent for Nothing" derives its instrumental passages from the rhythm line, while "The Fish" and "Mood for a Day" serve almost entirely as bass and guitar solo pieces for Chris Squire and Steve Howe, respectively.
It has drawn comparison to Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Tarkus in that it consists of a series of semi-solo pieces and long epics concerning the whole band, but in both albums critics have complained that "the long pieces and short pieces never cohere, and the album becomes something of a jumble (Tony Gifford, Endless Enigma)."
Recorded in September 1971 at Advision Studios in London, the album is an analog multi-track production. Standard multi-track methods were employed, such as overdubbing, including a flipping of the master tape to record the backwards piano, cued by Howe's guitar, for the beginning of "Roundabout."
Jon Anderson - vocals
Steve Howe - electric guitar, steel-string acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Chris Squire - bass, backing vocals
Rick Wakeman - Hammond organ, piano, RMI 368 Electra-Piano and Harpsichord, Mellotron, Moog synthesizer
Bill Bruford - drums, percussion
Side One
"Roundabout" (Anderson/Howe) – 8:30
"Cans and Brahms (Extracts from Brahms' 4th Symphony in E Minor, Third Movement)" (Brahms, arranged Wakeman) – 1:38
"We Have Heaven" (Anderson) – 1:40
"South Side of the Sky" (Anderson/Squire) – 8:02
Side Two
"Five Per Cent for Nothing" (Bruford) – 0:35
"Long Distance Runaround" (Anderson) – 3:30
"The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" (Squire) – 2:39
"Mood for a Day" (Howe) – 3:00
"Heart of the Sunrise" (Anderson/Squire/Bruford) – 11:27
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Keith Noel Emerson (b. November 2, 1944, Todmorden, West Yorkshire) is a British keyboard player and composer. Formerly a member of the Keith Emerson Trio, John Brown's Bodies, The T-Bones, V.I.P.s, P.P. Arnold's backing band, and The Nice (which evolved from P.P. Arnold's band), he started Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), one of the early supergroups, in 1970.
Following the breakup of ELP, circa 1979, Emerson had modest success with Emerson, Lake & Powell in the 1980's. ELP reunited during the early 90's. Emerson also reunited The Nice in 2002 for a tour. An album titled Keith Emerson Band Featuring Marc Bonilla was released in Aug/Sept 2008.
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Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts.
The band consists of Keith Emerson (keyboards), Greg Lake (bass guitar, vocals, guitar) and Carl Palmer (drums, percussion). They are one of the most commercially successful progressive rock bands and from the outset focused on combining classical pieces with rock music.
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Michael Leslie "Mick" Jones (b. December 27, 1944) is an English guitarist, songwriter, and record producer best known as the founding member of the rock band Foreigner.
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Foreigner is a British-American rock band formed in New York City in 1976 by veteran English musicians Mick Jones, ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald, and American vocalist Lou Gramm. Foreigner has sold more than 70 million albums worldwide (including over 37.5 million in the United States alone).
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Feels Like the First Time is a popular song recorded by the rock band Foreigner. It was written by Mick Jones and released in 1977 from the band's debut album, Foreigner. It is notable as Foreigner's first single, and became a big hit peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The title of the song is appropriate in that it is the band's first song on their first album, and their first single.
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Cold as Ice is a 1977 song by British-American rock band Foreigner from their self-titled debut album. It became one of the best known songs of the band in the U.S., peaking at number 6 in the Billboard Hot 100. It was initially the B-side of some versions of the Feels Like the First Time 45 rpm single.
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Hot Blooded is a song by the British-American hard rock band Foreigner, from their second studio album Double Vision. It was released as a single in July 1978 and reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart that September. The single was also certified Platinum (one million units sold) by the Recording Industry Association of America. It is considered to be Foreigner's signature song.
[8945 Marley / 8944 Ross / 8944 Nyman]
