Alvin Cash

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Alvin Cash was born Alvin Welch, February 15, 1939, in St. Louis, MO, to a large family. One of eight children, Alvin formed a song and dance group with three of his brothers, doing tap and soft shoe. He attended Summers High in St. Louis with future R&B luminaries Luther Ingram, Billy Davis (Fifth Dimension), and Anna Mae Bullock (Tina Turner). In 1961, Alvin and three of his brothers moved to Chicago, IL, seeking a record deal, but had to dance for tips their first few years in the Windy City. Former Fortune and Motown artist/songwriter/producer Andre Williams, who worked for One-derful/Mar-V- Lus/M-Pac Records whenever he and Berry Gordy disagreed, caught the newly named Crawlers' act and invited them to the studio to chant over a dance track he'd written (with Verlie Rice) called "Twine Time." It was in the same format as Williams' 1957 hit "Bacon Fat," a funky instrumental augmented by chants and sayings, and was a take-off of the Five Du-Tones' "Woodbine Twine." "Twine Time" surprised everybody by zooming to number 14 on the pop chart in February 1965. On the label the artist was listed as Alvin Cash & the Crawlers, though it's unclear if his brothers participated in the recording; but his band, the Nightlighers, did.

~~<===~~ Alvin Cash and his three younger brothers Robert, Arthur and George.

Barbara Lewis

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Pop-soul doesn't get much better than Barbara Lewis, whose seductive, emotive croon took "Hello Stranger" to #3 in 1963. The Michigan native had been writing songs since the age of nine, and began recording as a teenager with producer Ollie McLaughlin, who'd also had a hand in the careers of Del Shannon, the Capitols, and Deon Jackson. Lewis wrote all of the songs on her debut LP (including "Hello Stranger"), and confidently handled harmony soul numbers (some with backing by the Dells) and more pop-savvy tunes, some of which, like "Hello Stranger," were driven by an organ and a bossa nova-like beat. Follow-ups to "Hello Stranger" didn't sell nearly as well (although one of her singles, "Someday We're Gonna Love Again," was covered by the Searchers for a British Invasion hit).

Big Mama Thornton

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“Big Mama” Thornton was a large, tall, imposing woman that commanded the stage and took charge of everything and everyone around her. She was known to take no lip from anyone at any time. She was also a woman that knew the blues and could sing the blues with a power to match and even surpass many noted male singers. Born Willie Mae Thornton December 11, 1926 and one of seven children, Willie was the daughter of a minister father and church singing mother. She knew that she wanted to perform at an early age. At the age of 14, she traveled with the Hot Harlem Revue where she performed for seven years. She moved to Texas in 1948 and worked in the local clubs. In the early 1950s, Big Mama signed with the Peacock label. It is there that she was the first to record “Hound Dog” in 1953. Written by composers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller and given directly to her to sing, the song reached number one on the R&B charts. According to the Handbook of Texas Online, Big Mama received only $500 for her entire life recording “Hound Dog”, while Elvis Presley went on to make it a Rock and Roll classic three years later. The same occurrence happened with the other most recognized Thornton song “Ball ‘n Chain.” A hit for Big Mama, “Ball n‘Chain” is most associated with the late singer Janis Joplin. During the late 50’s, Big Mama saw real success, but unfortunately and like so many other African American performers during this time, saw little of the money she made.
Willie Mae was with Johnny Ace when he killed himself playing Russian Roulette, in a Houston dressing room. During an interview in her home in 1978, she gave

the following account.

Billie Holiday

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Billie Holiday's chaotic life reportedly began in Baltimore on April 7, 1915 (a few reports say 1912) when she was born Eleanora Fagan Gough. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a teenaged jazz guitarist and banjo player later to play in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. He never married her mother, Sadie Fagan, and left while his daughter was still a baby. (She would later run into him in New York, and though she contracted many guitarists for her sessions before his death in 1937, she always avoided using him.) Holiday's mother was also a young teenager at the time, and whether because of inexperience or neglect, often left her daughter with uncaring relatives. Holiday was sentenced to Catholic reform school at the age of ten, reportedly after she admitted being raped. Though sentenced to stay until she became an adult, a family friend helped get her released after just two years. With her mother, she moved in 1927, first to New Jersey and soon after to Brooklyn.
she first gained some publicity in early 1933, when record producer John Hammond -- only three years older than Holiday herself, and just at the beginning of a legendary career -- wrote her up in a column for Melody Maker and brought Benny Goodman to one of her performances. Benny Goodman dragged the frightened singer to her first studio session. Between 1933 and 1944, she recorded over 200 "sides," but she never received royalties for any of them.
Though her artistry was at its peak, Billie Holiday's emotional life began a turbulent period during the mid-'40s. Already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, she began smoking opium early in the decade with her first husband, Johnnie Monroe. The marriage didn't last, but hot on its heels came a second marriage to trumpeter Joe Guy and a move to heroin. Despite her triumphant concert at New York's Town Hall and a small film role -- as a maid (!) -- with Louis Armstrong in 1947's New Orleans, she lost a good deal of money running her own orchestra with Joe Guy. Her mother's death soon after affected her deeply, and in 1947 she was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to eight months in prison.
During her final year, she made two more appearances in Europe before collapsing in May 1959 of heart and liver disease. Still procuring heroin while on her death bed, Holiday was arrested for possession in her private room and died on July 17, her system completely unable to fight both withdrawal and heart disease at the same time.

Dinah Washington

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Born Ruth Lee Jones, 29 August 1924, Tuscaloosa, Alabama and raised in Chicago, Dinah Washington first sang in church choirs for which she also played piano. She then worked in local clubs, where she was heard by Lionel Hampton, who promptly hired her. She was with Hampton from 1943-46, recording hits with "Evil Gal Blues", written by Leonard Feather, and "Salty Papa Blues". After leaving Hampton she sang R&B, again achieving record success, this time with "Blow Top Blues" and "I Told You Yes I Do". In the following years Washington continued with R&B, but also sang jazz, blues, popular songs of the day, standards, and was a major voice of the burgeoning, but as yet untitled, soul movement. However, her erratic lifestyle caught up with her and she died suddenly at the age of 39. Almost from the start of her career, Washington successfully blended the sacred music of her childhood with the sometimes earthly salacious secularity of the blues. This combination was a potent brew and audiences idolized her, thus helping her towards riches rarely achieved by black artists of her generation. She thoroughly enjoyed her success, spending money indiscriminately on jewellery, cars, furs, drink, drugs and men. She died December, 14 1963, in Detroit, Michigan.

Etta James

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Born Jamesetta Hawkins, 25 January 1938, Los Angeles, California, USA. James' introduction to performing followed an impromptu audition for Johnny Otis backstage at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium. "Roll With Me Henry", her "answer" to the Hank Ballard hit "Work With Me Annie", was retitled "The Wallflower" in an effort to disguise its risqué lyric and became an R&B number 1. "Good Rockin' Daddy" provided another hit, but the singer's later releases failed to chart. Having secured a contract with the Chess Records group of labels, James, also known as Miss Peaches, unleashed a series of powerful songs, including "All I Could Do Was Cry" (1960), probably the best ever version of "At Last" (1961), "Trust In Me" (1961), "Don't Cry Baby" (1961), "Something's Got A Hold On Me" (1962), "Stop The Wedding" (1962) and "Pushover' (1963). She also recorded several duets with Harvey Fuqua. Heroin addiction sadly blighted both her personal and professional life, but in 1967 Chess took her to the Fame studios. The resultant Tell Mama was a triumph, and pitted James" abrasive voice with the exemplary Muscle Shoals house band. Its highlights included the proclamatory title track, a pounding version of Otis Redding's "Security" (both of which reached the R&B Top 20) and the despairing "I'd Rather Go Blind", which was later a UK Top 20 hit for Chicken Shack.

Jackie Brenston

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Jackie Brenston was born on August 15, 1930, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the delta town where Highway 49 meets Highway 61. Since early in the century Clarksdale had been one of the most musically fertile places in the South. It was where Son House, Charley Patton, and Robert Johnson worked their wicked magic in juke joints at the outskirts of town. (And where, according to House, Johnson literally sold his soul to the Devil one night, standing at the crossroad.) It was where Muddy Waters, who had grown up listening to and learning from those men, made some of his first recordings. It was where John Lee Hooker and Eddie Boyd were born.

Johnny Ace

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Born John M. Alexander Jr. on June 9th, 1929 in Memphis,Tennessee.
After his discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1947 he began to tinker with the family piano and soon had enough rudimentary skills on that instrument to seek out local gigs in the Memphis area. His first local band was that of Adolph Duncan and he soon got in with the company of future stars Bobby Bland and Roscoe Gordon, along with local musicians Tuff Green and Earl Forrest. In early spring of 1952 Duke #102 is released featuring Johnny Ace & The Beale Streeters. The tunes are "My Song" and "Follow The Rules". By late June the record is a big seller in the Mid South region centered in Memphis. That August Don Robey entered the picture. Robey the owner of the famous Bronze Peacock nightclub in Houston, Texas, also had founded the Peacock record label which was a very successful producer of gospel music.
Almost all of Johnny's records were a hit including "Cross My Heart," "The Clock," "Saving My Love for You," "Please Forgive Me," and "Never Let Me Go" all dented the uppermost reaches of the charts.
It was Christmas Eve 1954 at the City Auditorium, Houston, Texas when Johnny, Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton and Jonnny's girlfriend Olivia, in his dressing room the fatal shot took place.
See Big Mama Thornton for her description of the events in the dressing room.

LaVern Baker

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LaVern Baker was one of the sexiest divas gracing the mid-'50s rock & roll circuit, boasting a brashly seductive vocal delivery tailor-made for belting the catchy novelties "Tweedlee Dee," "Bop-Ting-a-Ling," and "Tra La La" for Atlantic Records during rock's first wave of prominence. Born Delores Williams, she was singing at the Club DeLisa on Chicago's south side at age 17, decked out in raggedy attire and billed as "Little Miss Sharecropper" (the same handle that she made her recording debut under for RCA Victor with Eddie "Sugarman" Penigar's band in 1949). She changed her name briefly to Bea Baker when recording for OKeh in 1951 with Maurice King's Wolverines, then settled on the first name of LaVern when she joined Todd Rhodes' band as featured vocalist in 1952 (she fronted Rhodes' aggregation on the impassioned ballad "Trying" for Cincinnati's King Records). LaVern signed with Atlantic as a solo in 1953, debuting with the incendiary "Soul on Fire." The coy, Latin-tempo "Tweedlee Dee" was a smash in 1955 on both the R&B and pop charts, although her impact on the latter was blunted when squeaky-clean Georgia Gibbs covered it for Mercury. As with many R&B artists of the time, Baker's songs were often covered by white artists, whose success cut into her record sales. Ms. Baker left cover singer Georgia Gibbs "Tweedlee Dee" her flight-insurance policy, explaining to Gibbs in a letter: "Since I'll be away and you won't have anything new to copy, you might as well take this". By that time, though, her star had ascended: Baker's "Bop-Ting-A-Ling," "Play It Fair," "Still," and the rocking "Jim Dandy" all vaulted into the R&B Top Ten over the next couple of years.

Little Esther

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Esther Phillips was perhaps too versatile for her own good, at least commercially speaking; while she was adept at singing blues, early R&B, gritty soul, jazz, straight-up pop, disco, and even country, her record companies often lacked a clear idea of how to market her, which prevented her from reaching as wide an audience as she otherwise might have. An acquired taste for some, Phillips' voice had an idiosyncratic, nasal quality that often earned comparisons to Nina Simone, although she herself counted Dinah Washington as a chief inspiration. Phillips' career began when she was very young and by some accounts, she was already battling drug addiction during her teenage years; whenever her problems took root, the lasting impact on her health claimed her life before the age of 50. Esther Phillips was born Esther Mae Jones in Galveston, TX, on December 23, 1935, and began singing in church as a young child. When her parents divorced, she split time between her father in Houston and her mother in the Watts area of Los Angeles. It was while she was living in Los Angeles in 1949 that her sister entered her in a talent show at a nightclub belonging to bluesman Johnny Otis. So impressed was Otis with the 13-year-old that he brought her into the studio for a recording session with Modern Records and added her to his live revue. Billed as Little Esther, she scored her first success when she was teamed with the vocal quartet the Robins (who later evolved into the Coasters) on the Savoy single "Double Crossin' Blues." It was a massive hit, topping the R&B charts in early 1950 and paving the way for a series of successful singles bearing Little Esther's name: "Mistrustin' Blues," "Misery," "Cupid Boogie," and "Deceivin' Blues." In 1951, Little Esther moved from Savoy to Federal after a dispute over royalties, but despite being the brightest female star in Otis' revue, she was unable to duplicate her impressive string of hits. Furthermore, she and Otis had a falling out, reportedly over money, which led to her departure from his show; she remained with Federal for a time, then moved to Decca in 1953, again with little success. In 1954, she returned to Houston to live with her father, having already developed a fondness for the temptations of life on the road; by the late '50s, her experiments with hard drugs had developed into a definite addiction to heroin. She re-signed with Savoy in 1956, to little avail, and went on to cut sides for Federal and (in 1960) Warwick, which went largely ignored. Short on money, Little Esther worked in small nightclubs around the South, punctuated by periodic hospital stays in Lexington, KY, stemming from her addiction. In 1962, she was rediscovered while singing at a Houston club by future country star Kenny Rogers, who got her signed to his brother's Lenox label. Too old to be called Little Esther, she re-christened herself Esther Phillips, choosing her last name from a nearby Phillips gas station. Phillips recorded a country-soul reading of the soon-to-be standard "Release Me," which was released as a single late in the year. In the wake of Ray Charles' groundbreaking country-soul hit "I Can't Stop Loving You," "Release Me" was a smash, topping the R&B charts and hitting the Top Ten on both the pop and country charts. Back in the public eye, Phillips recorded a country-soul album of the same name, but Lenox went bankrupt in 1963.

Muhammad Ali

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<=== James Brown and Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, the son of Marcellus Clay, a sign painter, and Odessa (Grady) Clay, a domestic worker. He was named for white Kentucky abolitionist Cassius M. Clay. Ali began boxing at the age of 12 under the tutelage of white Louisville policeman Joe Martin. Enraged one day to discover his bicycle missing, Ali resolved to "whup whoever stole it." Martin, wary of the problem of undisciplined adolescent belligerence in Ali's tough neighborhood, convinced the young Ali that such verbal boasts were best complemented by a mastery of the principles of boxing. The rest is history.

Cassius Clay (as he was known as then) was the greatest then a record company ,(Columbia Records) figured he would always be the greatest, hence "I am The Greatest", an 11-round compilation of braggadocio from the champ formerly known as Cassius Clay. Muhammad Ali's first album, "I am The Greatest" was released in late summer 1963, prior to the Feb. 25, 1964 fight with Sonny Liston.

Richrad Berry

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Richard Berry was born on April 11, 1935 in Extension, Louisiana. When he was one year old, he was brought to Los Angeles, where he lived most of his life. As a child, he had an injury to his hips, and used crutches until the age of six, when he had corrective surgery. His first musical venture was the ukulele, which he learned at a summer camp for crippled children. At Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, California, Richard Berry was a respected member of the local doo-wop music community that included Jesse Belvin, Cornel Gunter, Young Jessie, Curtiss Williams and Gaynel Hodge, among others. One of the first groups he joined was harmony group known as the Flamingos. Later, Richard joined a group that became known as the Flairs, and was involved with a variety of different musical projects, recording for Dolphin's of Hollywood (unintentionally- but that's a story in itself), Modern Records, Flair Records, and Flip Records. He provided the uncredited lead vocal for the original recording of Leiber and Stoller's "Riot In Cell Block #9" with the Robins, which later evolved into the Coasters. He also contributed the male counterpart voice for Etta James' recording of "Roll With Me, Henry" (a song with its own share of controversial innuendoes), which was written as an answer to Hank Ballard's "Work With Me, Annie." The original "LOUIE LOUIE" was written in 1955 by Richard Berry and released as a single in 1957 on Flip Records. Recorded with the Pharaohs, Richard created a catchy, somewhat calypso diddy that was originally intended as the B-side for his recording of "You Are My Sunshine." At the time that Richard Berry released "LOUIE LOUIE," he was ready to expand his musical horizons from his doo-wop musical roots. As a founding member of the Flairs, he had various degrees of success with his recordings on Modern Records. When he was offered the opportunity to record on Flip Records, he was trying out a new sound, playing with a local Latin rhythm and blues band known as (Rick Rillera &) The Rhythm Rockers. Inspired by certain Latin rhythms, Berry wrote his creation on a napkin backstage between musical sets, and waited a year before recording the song that would eventually become the world's greatest party song.

Ruth Brown

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Born Ruth Weston, on January 30, 1928, in Portsmouth, Va., she was one of Atlantic Records' most successful recording artists of the 1950's. Young Ruth Weston was inspired initially by jazz chanteuses Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington.
She ran away from her Portsmouth home in 1945 to hit the road with trumpeter Jimmy Brown. A month with bandleader Lucky Millinder's orchestra in 1947 ended abruptly in Washington, D.C., when she was canned for delivering a round of drinks to members of the band. In 1948 she signed with Atlantic Records. On the way to her very first recording session for the label she was seriously injured in an automobile accident, which put her career on hold for a year. In 1949, she made her first recording "So Long." "Teardrops from My Eyes," only her second recording became her first number 1 single.
In 1957 she had a top-40 hit with Leiber and Stoller's "Lucky Lips." She continued to record for Atlantic until 1960. She disappeared from the public eye until the 1970s when she began a comeback. She performed in a number of musicals, including a touring version of Guys and Dolls. In the 1980s, Ruth appeared on Broadway in "Black and Blue" and won a Tony Award for her performance. She also appeared in the films "Under the Rainbow" and "Hairspray". In the late 1980s Brown began recording for the Fantasy label. Her performance on her 1989 album, "Blues on Broadway", won her a Grammy for best female jazz vocalist.
Ruth was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

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