Charline Arthur

Charline Arthur (also Charlene Arthur, née Charline Highsmith; September 2, 1929 – November 27, 1987) was an American singer of boogie-woogie, blues, and early rockabilly. In 1950, Arthur began work as a singer and a disc jockey at the Texas radio station KERB. She left three years later after the impresario Colonel Tom Parker discovered her, signing her with RCA Records. She was a regular performer on the Big D Jamboree radio program throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She also performed and toured with Elvis Presley and others, but in 1956 RCA dropped her from the label and her career declined. Described as a "flash in the pan" and a "woman before her time", Arthur was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and has, since the 1980s, found favor with critics who praise her vocal style, her stage presence, and her influence on artists such as Elvis Presley and Patsy Cline.

Charline Highsmith was born in 1929 to a Pentecostal minister and his wife from Henrietta, Texas and was the second of twelve children. The family was poor but musically inclined, and music was a central part of her family life. Her ambition was to play guitar; she collected bottles and cashed them in to raise the money for her first guitar. An early influence was the Texas boogie-woogie artist Ernest Tubb. By the age of 15 Charline was performing on KPLT radio station in Paris, Texas. She joined a traveling medicine show after winning the show's talent contest. After Charline left the medicine show she played in bars and clubs.

She cut her first record in Dallas, in 1950, "I've Got the Boogie Blues/Love is a Gamble" (Bullet Records), a song she had written at age twelve. She moved to Kermit, in West Texas, where she worked for a while as a DJ and singer. Colonel Tom Parker was one of those who took notice of her. Parker got Charline into a recording studio in Nashville in 1952, where she signed with RCA Victor. Arthur toured in 1954 with the RCA country and Western caravan, with Hank Snow, by Greyhound tour bus. Artists on the tour included Chet Atkins, Minnie Pearl, Hawkshaw Hawkins, the New Davis sisters and Betty Cody, with Eddie Hill as the tour "Master of Ceremonies". They played Charlotte, North Carolina, Mobile, Alabama, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the Little Rock, Arkansas show, RCA sent a recording engineer who taped the show and later issued on EP record RCA EPB 3220, entitled "Country and Western Caravan 1954".

The height of her career was in 1955. That year she recorded for RCA, under Steve Sholes and Chet Atkins. In a national poll she was voted the nation's second best country artist (after Kitty Wells). She continued to tour and played with Elvis Presley a number of times in Texas throughout 1955, including on the Big D Jamboree show when Elvis made his first appearance there on 16 April. In 1956, however, she parted ways with Chet Atkins. Her record sales were relatively low and success on the charts eluded her. RCA canceled her contract and she was not successful in getting another record deal. Arthur felt that the conflict with Atkins was caused because he wanted her to record more assertive songs than she wanted to perform. Analysis of her works has shown that her most mainstream songs were her own compositions, but her lyrics were sexually suggestive and censored by both the Grand Ole Opry and Country and Western Jamboree, a popular fan magazine.

In 1957 she recorded a few songs for the Coin label in Los Angeles. In the late 1950s she played and sang wherever she could and for a while had a trio with her sisters Betty Sue and Dottie, but success eluded them. Afterward, she moved to Salt Lake City and then, with the help of an old fan, she got a regular gig in Idaho where she played until the mid 1960s. In the late 1970s she performed for Ernest Tubb's Midnight Jamboree show, and she retired in 1978. She died on November 27, 1987, aged 58, due to natural causes.

An important reissue of Arthur songs was Welcome to the Club, containing singles recorded between 1949 and 1957, on the German label Bear Family Records. This 1986 album came out on CD in 1998[ but remains the only record of hers available.  Interest in Arthur was renewed in the early 1990s when the role of women in country music was becoming more important. Two historians, Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann, noted that Arthur "fought for the right to become country's first truly aggressive, independent female of the postwar era. ". Since then, various appreciations of Arthur's style and music have been published. The book Texas Music (2000) calls her a "criminally overlooked artist" and praises her for her voice and her influence on Patsy Cline, Wanda Jackson, and even Elvis. The Encyclopedia of Country Music (2012) hails her "gutsy, blues-flavored vocal style and brassy stage presence", and states that her importance is far, far greater than "her commercial fortunes might suggest". Charline is often cited as a pioneering rockabilly female.

Janis Martin

Janis Darlene Martin (March 27, 1940 – September 3, 2007) was an American rockabilly and country music singer. She was one of the few women working in the male-dominated rock and roll music field during the 1950s and one of country music's early female innovators.

Martin was born in Sutherlin, Virginia, east of Danville. Her mother was a stage mother, and her father and uncle were both musicians. Before she was six, Martin was already singing and playing the guitar, inspired by Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams. Over the years, this resulted in statewide contests with over 200 contestants, which she won. As a result, Janis was asked to play on the same bill as Cowboy Copas and Sunshine Sue. Through them Martin became a member of the Old Dominion Barndance on WRVA, which came out of Richmond every Saturday Night on CBS network. When she was in her mid-teens, she was appearing with country singers including Arnold, Hank Snow, The Browns and Jim Reeves. She soon claimed she was tired of country music and began a rock and roll career.

The WRVA station announcer, Carl Stutz, wrote a song titled "Will You Willyum", and asked Martin to sing the song live on stage that Saturday night so that he could make a demo tape to send to his publisher in New York. A week later, Stutz called Martin to tell her that RCA Victor was interested in recording "Will You Willyum". As it happened, the publisher offered "Will You Willyum" to Steve Sholes, a producer at RCA Victor, and asked whether Sholes had an artist to record it. Apparently Sholes replied "Well, who's the girl doin' the demo?" At age 15, Martin signed with RCA Victor in March 1956, just two months after Elvis Presley joined the label. She recorded "Will You Willyum" on March 8, 1956, backed by her own composition "Drugstore Rock 'n Roll". The song became the biggest hit of her career, selling 750,000 records. Soon Martin was performing on American Bandstand, The Today Show and Tonight Starring Steve Allen. She also appeared on Jubilee USA, and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, becoming one of the younger performers to ever appear. Billboard named her Most Promising Female Vocalist that year.

RCA chose Martin to tour as a member of the Jim Reeves show and continued recording rock and roll and country material that ended up being successful on both charts, including "My Boy Elvis", "Let's Elope Baby", her cover of Roy Orbison's song "Ooby Dooby", and "Love Me to Pieces".

In the 1960s she left the music business but in the 1970s, she began performing again with her newly formed band, The Variations. In 1975, she was working for the Halifax, Virginia, Police Department when music historian, Dennis West, tracked her down. Edd Bayes, a record collector from Maryland, asked Dennis for her address, which Dennis gave to him. He then coaxed her to appear locally and tell her story in Goldmine magazine. Martin toured through Europe as part of the rockabilly revival there, and in 1979 Bayes convinced RCA to pull four Martin songs from their vault, which were then released on Dog Gone Records in 1977. Edd Bayes took one of the songs that had been recorded twice ("Love Me Love") at different tempos and added the 'cha cha' to the title. In the 1980s, the Bear Family label gathered Martin's complete record history with the compilation album The Female Elvis. Since the early 1980s Janis started performing again at Rockabilly shows through Europe and the US. One of her live shows was released on a CD called Here I Am on Hydra Records. In 1995, Martin appeared on Rosie Flores's Rockabilly Filly album for HighTone Records. Flores recorded an album with Martin six months before her death, but it was not released until September 18, 2012, as The Blanco Sessions by Cow Island Music.

Martin died from cancer on September 3, 2007 at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Marie Girard - Marie et les Garçons

Marie et les Garçons were a French new wave band formed in Lyon in 1976. After Marie Girard left, the remaining members continued as Garçons.

In 1975, students leaving the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Lyon formed a band, Femme Fatale, playing songs by the Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, The Seeds and others. The band members were Marie Girard (1956 - 6 August 1996) (vocals), Patrick Vidal (b. 1957)(bass, vocals), Erik Fitoussi (guitar), Christian Faye (guitar) and Philippe Girard (drums). After a few months, Philippe Girard left, and was replaced on drums by his sister Marie. Vidal took over as lead singer, Jean-Marc Vallod (bass) joined the band, and, on the advice of Marc Zermati of Skydog Records, they changed their name to Marie et les Garçons. Faye left soon afterwards.

In June 1977, the band performed at the Mont de Marsan Festival at Zermati's invitation. Their demo records were heard by Michel Esteban, founder of the leading Paris rock merchandise shop Harry Cover, who soon signed them to his new label Rebel Records. Vallod then left the band, being replaced by bassist Jean-Pierre Charriau. The band's first single, "Rien à dire", produced by Esteban and, like most of their material, written by Vidal and Fitoussi, was released in December 1977. Esteban played demos of the band to John Cale, who offered to produce the band in New York City. In March 1978, they recorded another single, "Attitudes" / "Re-Bop", in New York; Cale played piano and marimba on the record. The record was released on Esteban's Rebel label in France, and then on Cale's SPY label in the US. The band also played at CBGB, supporting X-Ray Spex, before returning to Paris where they supported Patti Smith and, later in the year, Talking Heads. Later in 1978, "Re-Bop", coupled with the band's version of the Village People's "Macho Man", was issued as a single on ZE Records, the new label formed in New York by Esteban with Michael Zilkha.

The band were on hold for several months while Fitoussi and Charriau undertook national service, and on their return Esteban and Vidal sought to lead their music more towards the mutant disco style of other ZE artists. While recording their first album in New York, Marie Girard left the group and returned to France, and the band became "Garçons". Their album, Divorce, was released in March 1979, together with a single "French Boy", but neither were commercially successful; a re-recorded version of "Re-Bop" was also released. The band toured in 1979, with an augmented line-up including Jimmy Young (drums), Eric Melon (guitar), Allen Wentz (keyboards), Milton Cardona (percussion), three horn players and two singers, as well as Vidal, Fitoussi and Charriau. Fitoussi also played on the debut album by Lizzy Mercier Descloux. Vidal then left the band, and Fitoussi, Charriau and Melon, plus Chris Levrat (keyboards), undertook a final short tour in Europe in early 1980.

Marie Girard joined the band Electric Callas, and also released a solo single, "Les Indiens", in 1983. She later worked as a fashion designer. Marie et les Garçons reunited in 1987 to re-record "Re-Bop", and performed on stage together in 1988 and again in 1990. A compilation album, 76-77, was issued in 1989. Marie Girard died of an aneurysm in 1996, aged 40.

The 5.6.7.8's

The 5.6.7.8's are a Japanese garage rock trio from Tokyo. Even though the group mostly sing their songs in Japanese, they do many covers of American rock and roll records from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The band was formed in 1986, at the height of the garage rock hype that seized Tokyo at the time. The first lineup included Fujiyama, who handled the vocals, and Sachiko (the drummer), supported by guitarist Rico and bassist Yoshie, who was replaced by Mikako in time for the band's debut demo Golden Hits of the 5.6.7.8's (1988). It was followed by the band's first EP Mondo Girls A-Go-Go (1989). In 1990 Rico and Mikako defected to start Sleaze Sisters, and were replaced by bassist Akiko Omo and guitarist Eddie Legend, the sole male member of the group, who used to don a wig to blend in better when they played live, but still lasted only a year before departing to start MAD3. After that, Fujiyama picked up the guitar herself, although 5.6.7.8's still performed as a quartet, with support member Gaku on the saxophone. The band's first full-length album, The 5.6.7.8's Can't Help It!, was recorded in 1991, out not only in Japan, but in Australia and the U.S. as well (the American release came in 1992). That began a period of the band's active overseas expansion: they toured Australia and America and released the single The Spell Stroll on the French label Wee Records. Japan remained their main playground -- they had several releases there in the '90s, namely EPs I Was a Teenage Cave Woman (1992) and Pin Heel Stomp (1997), as well as the second full-length The 5.6.7.8's (1994), -- but they also had six singles and the EP Bomb the Twist (1995) out in the U.S. The lineup continued to shift, with guitarist Aya joining the band for several months in 1995, and Omo leaving before their first big Japanese tour in 1996, replaced by Yamaguchi Yoshiko. In 1997, Fujiyama took a short break from the band, releasing the solo single Coney Island.  

The years between 1998 and 2002 saw no releases, but some heavy touring in Japan, America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. In 2002, Quentin Tarantino heard their CD in a clothing shop in Tokyo, and soon invited them to star as themselves in a Kill Bill scene (they contributed the song "Woo Hoo" for the movie soundtrack). 2002 also saw 5.6.7.8's releasing the album Teenage Mojo Workout and the EP Pretty Little Lilly Can Dance No More, and their compilation Best Hits of the 5.6.7.8's came out in America and Japan in 2003 (it was released in Europe the next year). In 2004, Teenage Mojo Workout was released in Britain, and the single Woo Hoo reached number 24 on the local charts, but long-term British success eluded them. The same year Yoshiko gave up her post for Omo, who returned to being 5.6.7.8's bassist after an eight-year hiatus. The band has kept quiet since 2004, releasing no new material but playing the occasional live show.

Cheryl

Cheryl Powling is a London born singer, chicken breeder and professional stained glass artist. She left school when she was 16 and drifted from job to job.

At 18 she decided she wanted to be a singer and signed a contract with Chas Chandler. Recorded at Stage One Studio in London and released in January 1981 on Penthouse Records, ‘Killer Kiss’ is an absolute heartbreaker’s declaration of intent.

Buffeted about with an almost QUICK-like nursery-rhyme guitar keyboard run, ‘Killer Kiss’ sound should have carried Cheryl to the top of the charts, but the single sadly did not make it above the fold. With no future musical prospects, she packed it in.  Cheryl now breeds chickens and works as a professional stained glass artist.

Nena

Gabriele Susanne Kerner (born 24 March 1960), better known as Nena, is a German singer-songwriter, actress, and comedian who rose to international fame in 1983 as the eponymous lead vocalist of the band Nena with the Neue Deutsche Welle song "99 Luftballons". In the same year the band re-recorded this song in English as "99 Red Balloons". Nena's re-recording of some of the band's old hit songs as a solo artist, produced by the co-composer of most of them, her former Nena band colleague and keyboard player Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, rekindled her solo career in 2002. Combined with the success of the Nena band years, she has sold over 25 million records, making her one of Germany's most successful music artists.

Gabriele Susanne Kerner (Nena) was born on 24 March 1960 in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany while her family lived in the nearby town of Breckerfeld. Her musical career began on 2 July 1979 when guitarist Rainer Kitzmann founded The Stripes band and, on the basis of having seen her dancing at a local disco, asked her to audition for the position of the lead singer. The group, based in Hagen, performed songs with English lyrics and had a minor hit with the song "Ecstasy", but never achieved mainstream success and disbanded on 3 March 1982.

CBS offered Nena a record deal if she would move to Berlin and make music with German lyrics. In May 1982 Nena and Rolf Brendel moved to West Berlin, where they met future band members guitarist Carlo Karges, keyboard player Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, and bass player Jürgen Dehmel. Together, they formed the band Nena. In June 1982 "Nena" released their first single, "Nur geträumt", which became an instant hit in Germany after the band appeared on the German television show Musikladen on 21 August 1982. The single reportedly sold 40,000 copies the day after the song appeared on the show and reached No. 2 in the German charts.

In 1983, the band released its first album Nena, which contained the singles "99 Luftballons" and "Leuchtturm". "99 Luftballons" became a number one hit in West Germany and the Netherlands in 1983 and went on to major international chart success the following year, an English version hitting No. 1 in the UK and the original German version hitting No. 2 in the US, behind Van Halen's "Jump". In 1984, Casey Kasem's radio show American Top 40 introduced a "mixed" version of the song, "splicing" the German and English versions together. It was also a huge hit in many other countries, it is one of the best-known German rock songs in many parts of the world.

Although "99 Luftballons" was the Band Nena's only hit in the English-speaking world, the band continued to enjoy success in several European countries in the following years. Nena's next international single "Just a Dream" (an English language re-issue of "Nur geträumt") reached No. 70 in the UK charts in 1984; it had "Indianer" on the B-side. A dance version of "Just a Dream" was released in the 1990s to a new audience and became a club anthem. The band split in 1987, and Nena went solo thereafter.

Nena's first solo album Wunder gescheh'n was released on 5 November 1989. The title track (German for "Miracles Happen"), composed by Nena herself, relates to the fact that Nena was at the time pregnant with twins, but release of the album that appeared just four days before the fall of the Berlin Wall (on 9 November) and the fact that she performed the song at the end of the Konzert für Berlin three days later has ever since associated it with that historic event. It was to prove to be her last major hit of the 20th century as throughout the 1990s her albums and singles – although often critically acclaimed – were less commercially successful. In 1993, following the indifferent performance of her second solo album Bongo Girl, Sony decided not to renew Nena's recording contract, and the label which distributed her third, RMG Music Entertainment, disappeared shortly afterwards. In 1995 she moved from Berlin to Hamburg.

In 2002, Nena celebrated her 20th anniversary on stage with the album Nena feat. Nena, a disc produced by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen (her former band colleague and author of almost all of the band's and her chart successes) and consisting of newly arranged recordings of the band's hits from the 1980s. This album marked a "comeback" for Nena, and spawned a number of successful chart entries. The remake of "Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime" as an English-German duet with Kim Wilde was a hit in various European countries, reaching the No. 1 spot in the Netherlands and Austria, and No. 3 in Germany, in 2003. Having regalvanised her career by virtue of the band's 1980s hits, Nena reestablished herself as a force with entirely new material (produced again by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen) with the 2005 album Willst du mit mir gehn which quickly achieved platinum status and climbed to No. 2 in the German charts. The first single from the album, "Liebe ist", reached No. 1 on the German charts in early 2005, and was the theme song for a German telenovela, Verliebt in Berlin.



In October 2007, Nena released a new album entitled Cover Me, made up entirely of cover songs. David Bowie, Rolling Stones and Rammstein are three of the bands covered. She also released the single, "Ich kann nix dafür" in April 2007 for the film, Vollidiot, and her cover of "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones in the US and the UK. In 2009 she recorded and released a new version of her hit song "99 Luftballons", which more closely follows the 1980s original, in contrast to her 2002 version. This song was first performed in Germany on 6 September 2009. Some parts of the new version are in French. Since 2009, Nena's releases have been published by her own record label, The Laugh & Peas Company.

Sister Cookie

From London via Lagos, charismatic chanteuse SISTER COOKIE takes you on an eclectic excursion into the roots & fruits of black music. Old sounds, new tricks. Sensuous, seductive and moody. As well as possessing a distinctive voice that's tender and sweet when it needs to be, she is a composer and self-taught pianist who writes honest and raw songs about pain, heartbreak and suffering.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria towards the end of the 1980s into a music-loving household, the lady they now call Sister Cookie was constantly surrounded by a variety of sounds throughout her childhood.; from the juju, highlife, reggae and soul records favoured by her mother and the jazz LPs in her father's collection, to the pulsating traditional West African rhythms that served as the background to numerous special occasions and the moving sprituals that dominated every church service, the would-be chanteuse soaked up an eclectic mix of music. Her family relocated to London when she was aged ten and her fixation with music increased, spending much of her time continuing to teach herself to play the piano. Having absorbed different genres throughout her teens, Cookie eventually developed a passion for jazz and the blues.

Her debut single, a version of Willie Jones' 1962 scorcher, Where's My Money, on which she was accompanied by Turin's Soulful Orchestra, was released on the Italian label, Soulful Torino Records, in August 2014. A limited-edition, vinyl-only release, it sold out instantly. She has also released singles with London-based bands MFC Chicken [FOLC Records, 2015] and and The Future Shape of Sound [Rise Up, Freshly Squeezed Music].

Sister Cookie has wowed audiences with her unique sound and charisma at a plethora of venues and festivals across Europe, including: The Jazz Cafe, Latitude, Bush Hall, Escenario Santander (Spain), Lache Pas La Patate (France), Funtastic Dracula Carnival (Spain), BIRD (Netherlands), Spazio 211 (Italy), Slap! Festival (Spain), House of Fun Weekender  (UK) and Eat My Soul Festival (Spain).