Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt (born Eartha Mae Keith; January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008) was an American singer, actress, dancer, voice actress, comedienne, activist, author, and songwriter known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song "Santa Baby", both of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. She starred as Catwoman in the third and final season of the television series Batman in 1967. Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kitt began her career as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company in 1943 and remained a member of the troupe until 1948. A talented singer with a distinctive voice, she recorded the hits "Let's Do It", "Champagne Taste", "C'est si bon" (which Stan Freberg famously burlesqued), "Just an Old Fashioned Girl", "Monotonous", "Je cherche un homme", "Love for Sale", "I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch", "Kâtibim" (a Turkish melody), "Mink, Schmink", "Under the Bridges of Paris" and her most recognizable hit "Santa Baby", which was released in 1953.

 

 

 

 

 

Kitt's unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in French during her years performing in Europe. She spoke four languages and sang in eleven, which she demonstrated in many of the live recordings of her cabaret performances. Diana Ross said that as a member of The Supremes she largely based her look and sound after Kitt's.

In 1968, her career in the U.S. deteriorated after she made anti-Vietnam War statements at a White House luncheon. Ten years later, she made a successful return to Broadway in the 1978 original production of the musical Timbuktu!, for which she received two Tony Award nominations. In 1984, she returned to the music charts with a disco song titled "Where Is My Man", the first certified gold record of her career. "Where Is My Man" reached the Top 40 on the UK Singles Chart, where it peaked at No. 36; the song became a standard in discos and dance clubs of the time and made the Top 10 on the US Billboard dance chart, where it reached No. 7. The single was followed by the album I Love Men on the Record Shack label. Kitt found new audiences in nightclubs across the UK and the United States, including a whole new generation of gay male fans, and she responded by frequently giving benefit performances in support of HIV/AIDS organizations. Her 1989 follow-up hit "Cha-Cha Heels" (featuring Bronski Beat), which was originally intended to be recorded by Divine, received a positive response from UK dance clubs, reaching No. 32 in the charts in that country. In 1988, Kitt replaced Dolores Gray in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies as Carlotta, receiving standing ovations every night for her rendition of "I'm Still Here" at the beginning of act 2. She went on to perform her own one-woman show at The Shaftesbury Theatre to sold-out houses for three weeks in early 1989 after Follies. 

Kitt died of colon cancer on Christmas Day 2008, three weeks short of her 82nd birthday at her home in Weston, Connecticut.

Louise Wright - The Partisans

Louise Wright is a punk rock bass player who played in the Welsh punk rock band The Partisans from 1979 to 1983. The band formed in Bridgend, South Wales, in early 1978, when all four members were in their early teens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The original line-up of Phil Stanton (vocals), Rob "Spike" Harrington (guitar and vocals), Andy Lealand (guitar), Mark "Shark" Harris (drums), and Mark "Savage" Parsons (bass guitar). Parsons and Stanton left in 1979, with Harrington moving to lead vocals, and Louise Wright joining on bass. 

 

 

 

 

 

Influenced by Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Ramones, the band started off covering punk rock hits and soon started to compose their own material. They were the second band signed to Chris Berry's No Future Records label, and their debut release, the double A-sided "Police Story" / "Killing Machine" was released on 28 September 1981. It reached No. 5 on the UK Indie Chart, on the back of a tour with label-mates Blitz, and with strong support from Sounds writer Garry Bushell. Following the success of this single, The Partisans were included on the third volume of Bushell's Oi! compilation series Carry On Oi!, which reached No. 60 on the UK Albums Chart, and won the band gig slots with Blitz, Peter and the Test Tube Babies and The Ejected, as well as a 'No Future' night at London's Zig Zag Club with Red Alert, The Lombardos, and Peter and the Test Tube Babies. 

The band released its second single, "17 Years of Hell", on 27 May 1982, peaking at No. 2 on the Indie Chart. This was followed by their self-titled debut LP, released in February 1983. It hit No. 5 in the Indie Chart and No. 1 in the Punk Chart, amid considerable critical acclaim from the national press and the underground fanzine culture. After the departure of Louise Wright, the remaining members relocated to Bayswater in west London, with new bassist Dave Parsons to relaunch the band. They split up in 1984 but then re-formed in the late 1990s.

Ye Nuns

Ye Nuns are a tribute band. An all-girl celebration of The Monks, proto-krautrock garage punkers formed by a gang of American GIs stationed in Germany who legendarily sported tonsures and nooses on stage. Formed by seven London ladies in 2006, Ye Nuns are Sister Lolo Wood, Sister Banjo Debbie, Sister Bongo Debbie, Sister Delia, Sister Andrea Croce, Sister Charley Stone and Sister Kate Hodge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They send witchy, six-part harmonies crashing over scratchy guitars, layer on evil fuzz bass and add pounding drums. Lead vocals screech and soar. Electric banjo hacks relentlessly. Vintage keyboard sounds stab. Yet it’s still music that puts grins on faces and gets feet moving. In an arena where youth is often prized above talent, a band of seven women north of 40 is virtually unprecedented. Their experience and assured poise shines through on stage. There’s no need for faux-sexy posing or cute apologetic stylings. Members’ other bands include Curve, Mambo Taxi, Thee Headcoatees, Gay Dad, The A-Lines, Echobelly, Joanne Joanne, The Phantom Pregnancies and The Priscillas to name about one tenth.

 

 

 

 

 

Debut album Nun More Black grinds, grooves and assaults. Recorded in two days flat on old-fashioned tape at Gizzard studios, there are proper tunes, moments of astonishing avant-garde sonic assault and lashings of righteous ire.They have released a Lp and a single.

Sister George

Sister George was an English queercore band from London that was formed in 1994. The group's name was inspired by the 1968 film The Killing of Sister George, which was an adaptation of the play of the same name. Although queercore bands had existed in the UK in the 1980s, such as The Apostles/Academy 23, and No Brain Cells and in the early 1990s, such as Tongue Man, Sister George brought queercore into the spotlight there.

 

 

 

 

 

The members were Lisa Cook on bass, Daryl Stanislaw on drums, Lyndon Holmes on guitar and vocals, and Ellyott on lead vocals and guitar; Ellyott was the main singer and song writer of Israeli band Pollyanna Frank, one of Israel's most important alternative bands; she was also drummer of The Darlings, a band which included Lesley Woods, formerly of the post punk band Au Pairs, and Debbie Smith, later in Curve, Echobelly and Ye Nuns.

 

Their album, Drag King, came out on Catcall Records, which was run by Liz Naylor. The band found themselves heralded in the pages of British music magazines such as the NME. They toured with acts like Huggy Bear and Hissyfit at first, but soon they were joined by other queer bands such as Mouthfull and Children's Hour, and it was these groups that pioneered queercore in the UK. Their album was rereleased in the U.S. by Outpunk Records, and a music video for the song "Handle Bar" was made. This song also appeared on the Outpunk Records compilation, Outpunk Dance Party. Also featured on Drag King was a hardcore style cover of the Tom Robinson song "Glad to Be Gay". The Sister George version featured the voice of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, and the band chanting, "We kill in self defence". Label owner Naylor said of the band's relation to mainstream gay culture, "To me, the gay lifestyle is getting to be like just another alternative lifestyle. You go down Old Compton Street in Soho and see them sitting there in nice coffee bars with their pink pounds - and these (Sister George) are 20-year-old kids who are angry and on the dole." 

The band broke up in the midst of recording their second album. Afterwards, Ellyott went on to form Nightnurse which featured then 16-year-old Charlotte Hatherley on guitar, who would later have success with the band Ash. Daryl drummed for The Element Of Crime with Chris and Jo from Huggy Bear, Layla from Skinned Teen, Dale from Blood Sausage and Andy from Linus, releasing the single "The things we do for love...". Sister George performed in and are interviewed in the film She's Real, Worse Than Queer by Lucy Thane. Ellyott was interviewed for the book Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock by Amy Raphael (Virago Press, 1995).

Dianne Chai - The Alley Cats

Dianne Chai is an American bass player. She was one of the founders of the L.A. punk rock band The Alley Cats. The original line-up from 1977, featuring Randy Stodola (guitar and vocals), Dianne Chai (bass and vocals) and John McCarthy (drums), was a fixture of the early L.A. punk rock scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Signed to Dangerhouse Records alongside other seminal California-based punk bands including the Bags, Black Randy and the Metro Squad, and X, they released their first single "Nothing Means Nothing Anymore" backed with "Give Me a Little Pain" on March 30, 1978.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are among the six bands featured on the 1979 compilation album Yes L.A. and appear in the 1982 film Urgh! A Music War. The Alley Cats were regular performers at such Los Angeles venues as Club 88, Hong Kong Café, The Masque, and the Whisky a Go Go. Chris Morris (former senior writer at Billboard, music editor at The Hollywood Reporter and critic at The Los Angeles Reader), writing in John Doe's book Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk, said "they made some of the toughest, most nihilistic music on the scene." Violence at shows featuring bands such as the Bags and The Alley Cats caused Madame Wong's restaurant to stop featuring punk bands and switch to slower tempo new wave acts.

The band released a second 7" in 1980 called Too Much Junk, followed by two albums, "Nightmare City" (Time Coast Records) in 1981 and "Escape from The Planet Earth" (MCA Records) in 1982. Reformed as The Zarkons, they released two albums, "Riders In The Long Black Parade" (1985) and "Between the Idea & the Reality…Falls the Shadow" (1988), before disbanding in 1988.

Wendy Rene

Wendy Rene was the stage name of soul singer and songwriter Mary Frierson, later Mary Cross (1947 – December 16, 2014). She recorded for Stax Records in the mid 1960s. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Frierson was born in Memphis, Tennessee. As a teenager, she formed a singing quartet, the Drapels, with her brother Johnnie Frierson and two friends, Marianne Brittenum and Wilbur Mondie. They auditioned for Stax co-founder Jim Stewart in 1963, and were immediately offered a recording contract. Before leaving, Mary showed Stewart some of the songs she had written, and was also offered a solo contract. She needed a stage name, and several options came up including the name Wendy Storm, suggested by Stax receptionist-turned PR head Deanie Parker. Otis Redding then came up with the name Wendy Rene, which she preferred, and she used that name regularly as a solo artist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her first solo single, "After Laughter (Comes Tears)", co-written with her brother, was released in August 1964, and became a local hit but failed to make the national R&B chart. The record featured Booker T. Jones on organ. The song had been recorded by the Drapels, but was released under Wendy Rene's name. The group split up soon afterwards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her second solo single, "Bar-B-Q", was released in November 1964, to cash in on the popularity of dance craze records. Featuring Steve Cropper on guitar, it failed to reach the charts. However, she continued to record and to tour with Stax stars, including Rufus Thomas and Otis Redding, and to sing backing vocals on their records. In December 1967, she was scheduled to fly with Redding and the Bar-Kays for what would have been her final live performance for the foreseeable future. She backed out at the last minute to stay home with her new born child. Tragically, the plane crashed in Madison, Wisconsin leaving Redding and six others dead. She retired from music business soon after. 

 

 

Several of her songs have been used in films (Gegen die Wand, The Fighting Temptations, Lucky Number Slevin, The Wackness, Felix and Meira, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun) and sampled/redone by current artists such as Wu-Tang Clan (in "Tearz"), Metro Boomin, Ariana Grande, Alicia Keys and Lykke Li. Chili's Restaurant used Rene's "Bar-B-Q" single for their 2013 commercial. In 2003 Ace Records released a compilation CD of her recordings, You Thrill My Soul, which included several that were originally unreleased. Another compilation, After Laughter Comes Tears, was issued by Light in the Attic Records in 2012.

 

 

Wendy Rene died on December 16, 2014, after a stroke. She was 67.

Castration Squad

Castration Squad was a punk band from Los Angeles, California, USA active in the early 1980's. The band was formed by Shannon Wilhelm and Mary Bat aka Dinah Cancer (45 Grave) and featuring Alice Bag (The Bags), Elissa Bello (Go-Go’s), Tiffany Kennedy (Cambridge Apostles), Tracy Lea (Redd Kross), Phranc (Nervous Gender) and a rotating, all- star lineup of female punk talent from the late seventies LA scene. The band was highly influential in sound and imagery and was associated with such bands as Christian Death, Gun Club and 45 Grave. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Bat Thing and Shannon’s deadpan vocal performances created a spooky aura that paired well with Bag’s gothy bass lines. While they never released an album, their song “The X Girlfriend” is on the Killed By Death #13 compilation and “A Date with Jack” was released on Alice Bag’s Alice Bag: Violence Girl compilation in 2011.  

Brix Smith Start

Brix Smith Start (born Laura Elisse Salenger, best known as Brix Smith) is an American singer and guitarist, best known as the lead guitarist and a major songwriter for the English post-punk band The Fall. She is currently the lead vocalist and guitarist with Brix & the Extricated, along with brothers Steve and Paul Hanley. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smith Start was raised in Los Angeles by her mother Lucy Salenger. Studying theatre and literature at Bennington College in Vermont, Smith Start formed a group, Banda Dratsing, in which she performed as bassist/vocalist; she adopted the name "Brix" after the Clash's 1979 song "The Guns of Brixton". Smith Start was raised in Los Angeles by her mother Lucy Salenger. Studying theatre and literature at Bennington College in Vermont, Smith Start formed a group, Banda Dratsing, in which she performed as bassist/vocalist; she adopted the name "Brix" after the Clash's 1979 song "The Guns of Brixton". Smith Start met Mark E. Smith, vocalist of the Fall, at a Chicago concert in April 1983; she moved to his native England, where they settled in Mancheste. She joined the group on guitar and vocals for the album Perverted by Language. She co-wrote some of the best-regarded Fall tracks from the period, and is acknowledged for introducing a more mainstream, pop-oriented element to the group's sound.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She remained with the Fall until 1989. Acknowledging her importance to the band, some critics break the Fall's career and evolution into the pre-Brix years, the Brix years, and the post-Brix years. She rejoined for the recording and live promotion of the albums Cerebral Caustic (1995) and The Light User Syndrome (1996). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1985, Smith Start launched side project the Adult Net with fellow Fall member Simon Rogers. Contributors included Mark E. Smith. The group released four singles for the Fall's label Beggars Banquet Records in 1985 and 1986, including a cover of Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints". The Adult Net released The Honey Tangle in 1989 on Phonogram Records. This line-up included Craig Gannon, The The member James Eller and Blondie drummer Clem Burke. 

 

 

Smith Start reunited with former Fall members Steve Hanley and Paul Hanley as Brix & the Extricated for a one-off gig at the Manchester Ruby Lounge in December 2014. They played Fall songs to celebrate the launch of Steve Hanley’s book The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall. The success of the concert saw the band start performing more gigs and, in 2015, a national UK tour. They played Rebellion Festival in August 2016, where Brix was interviewed by John Robb. The line-up is completed by guitarists Steve Trafford (another ex-Fall member) and Jason Brown. By this time new material was being written and introduced into the set. A single, "Something to Lose", was released on Blang Records in November 2016, followed by the album Part 2 in September 2017. Their second album, Breaking State, was released in October 2018 on Grit Over Glamour Records and almost exactly a year later in October 2019, their third album, Super Blood Wolf Moon, came out on the same label. 

Zola Taylor

 Zoletta Lynn Taylor (March 17, 1938 – April 30, 2007) was an American singer. She was the original female member of The Platters from 1954 to 1962, when the group produced most of their popular singles. The Platters are an American vocal group formed in 1952. They are one of the most successful vocal groups of the early rock and roll era. Originally, their distinctive sound was a bridge between the pre-rock Tin Pan Alley tradition and the burgeoning new genre. The act has gone through several personnel changes, with one of the most successful incarnations comprising lead tenor Tony Williams, David Lynch, Paul Robi, Herb Reed, and Zola Taylor. The group had 40 charting singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart between 1955 and 1967, including four number-one hits.

 

 

 

 

 

In June 1953, the band released two singles with Federal Records, under the management of Bass, but found little success. Bass then asked his friend, music entrepreneur and songwriter Buck Ram, to coach the group in hope of getting a hit record. Ram made some changes to the lineup, most notably the addition of female vocalist Zola Taylor and, in autumn 1954, the replacement of Alex Hodge by Paul Robi. Under Ram's guidance, The Platters recorded eight songs for Federal in the R&B/gospel style, scoring a few minor regional hits on the West Coast, and backed Williams' sister, Linda Hayes. One song recorded during their Federal tenure, "Only You (And You Alone)", originally written by Ram for the Ink Spots, was deemed unreleasable by the label, though copies of this early version do exist.  Convinced by Jean Bennett and Tony Williams that "Only You" had potential, Ram had The Platters re-record the song during their first session for Mercury. Released in the summer of 1955, it became the group's first Top Ten hit on the pop charts and topped the R&B charts for seven weeks. The follow-up, "The Great Pretender", with lyrics written in the washroom of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas by Buck Ram, exceeded the success of their debut and became The Platters' first national #1 hit. "The Great Pretender" was also the act's biggest R&B hit, with an 11-week run atop that chart. In 1956, The Platters appeared in the first major motion picture based around rock and roll, Rock Around the Clock, and performed both "Only You" and "The Great Pretender".

The Platters' unique vocal style had touched a nerve in the music-buying public, and a string of hit singles followed, including three more national #1 hits and more modest chart successes such as "I'm Sorry" (#11) and "He's Mine" (#23) in 1957, "Enchanted" (#12) in 1959, and "(You've Got) The Magic Touch" (#4) in 1956. The Platters soon hit upon the successful formula of updating older standards, such as "My Prayer", "Twilight Time", "Harbor Lights", "To Each His Own", "If I Didn't Care", and Jerome Kern's "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes". Zola Taylor was a member of The Platters until 1962, when she was replaced by singer Barbara Randolph.

The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in its inaugural year of 1998. The Platters were the first rock and roll era group to have a Top Ten album in the United States. They were also the only act to have three songs included on the American Graffiti soundtrack that fueled an oldies revival already underway in the early to mid-1970s: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Great Pretender", and "Only You (and You Alone)". Zola Taylor died in Riverside, CA at age 69, from pneumonia, following a series of strokes.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte-Marie, (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, c. February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American singer-songwriter, musician, Oscar-winning composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She has won recognition, awards and honors for her music as well as her work in education and social activism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sainte-Marie was born in 1941on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was adopted by Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a Wakefield, Massachusetts couple of Mi'kmaq descent. In 1964, on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a powwow, she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot and his wife, Clara Starblanket Piapot, who added to Sainte-Marie's cultural value and place in native culture. She plays piano and guitar, self-taught in her childhood and teen years. In college some of her songs, "Ananias", the Indian lament, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" and "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (a cover of a Hindi Bollywood song "Mayus To Hoon Waade Se Tere" from the 1960 movie Barsaat Ki Raat) were already in her repertoire. By 1962, in her early twenties, she was touring alone, developing her craft and performing in various concert halls, folk music festivals and First Nations reservations across the United States, Canada and abroad. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown Toronto's old Yorkville district, and New York City's Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-1960s folk scene, often alongside other emerging Canadian contemporaries, such as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1963, recovering from a throat infection, Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine and recovering from the experience became the basis of her song "Cod'ine", later covered by Donovan, Janis Joplin, the Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Man, the Litter, the Leaves, Jimmy Gilmer, Gram Parsons, Charles Brutus McClay, the Barracudas (spelled "Codeine"), the Golden Horde, Nicole Atkins and Courtney Love. Also in 1963, she witnessed wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam war at a time when the U.S. government was denying involvement – which inspired her protest song, "Universal Soldier" which was released on her debut album, It's My Way on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for both Donovan and Glen Campbell.

She was subsequently named Billboard magazine's Best New Artist. Some of her songs addressing the mistreatment of Native Americans, such as "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" (1964) and "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" (1964, included on her 1966 album), created controversy at the time. In 1967, she released Fire and Fleet and Candlelight, which contained her interpretation of the traditional Yorkshire dialect song "Lyke Wake Dirge". Sainte-Marie's other well-known songs include "Mister Can't You See", (a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1972); "He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo"; and the theme song of the movie Soldier Blue. She appeared on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest with Pete Seeger in 1965 and several Canadian Television productions from the 1960s to the 1990s, and other TV shows such as American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; and sang the opening song "The Circle Game" (written by Joni Mitchell) in Stuart Hagmann's film The Strawberry Statement (1970) Then Came Bronson; episode 20 "Mating Dance for Tender Grass" (1970) sang and acted. 

In 1983, Sainte-Marie became the first indigenous person to win an Oscar. Her song "Up Where We Belong", co-written for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, won both the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. In 1997, she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans.