On this blog I will talk about Rock´n´Roll women that I love. From Blues and Rockabilly, to Punk passing through 60s Garage Punk and 70s Glam, this is my tribute to the wonderful women of the Rock´n´Roll underground.
Please note that suggestions are welcome but there is no guarantee that I will publish it as this is a personal project.
The Continental Co-ets were an American rock and roll band founded in 1963 in Fulda, Minnesota. Nowadays they will be described as a 60s garage rock band.
The band was composed of teenage girls enrolled at Fulda High School. Nancy Hofmann played the bass guitar, Carol Goins on lead guitar, Vicki Steinman on drums, and Carolyn Behr on rhythm guitar. Later, the group included Hofmann's sister, MaryJo Hofmann, on keyboards. They gained recognition for being one of the first female bands formed, and to play their own instruments. The band was encouraged by their chorus teacher, David Edwards, to start performing. The group's first public performance was at a movie theater in Marshall, Minnesota. In the beginning, the band only played instrumentals as they did not have a lead vocalist. Another local band, The Vultures, invited the group to a "battle of the sexes". The Continental Co-ets practiced extensively, and included vocals to their performance which led to a successful concert. This, along with other similar performances, opened the band to a broader audience. Their touring extended throughout the Midwest and Canada.
In late 1965, the band traveled to Milford, Iowa to record two original compositions, "I Don't Love You No More" and "Medley of Junk", for the IGL (Iowa Great Lakes) label. About 1,000 copies were produced for release and charted in some parts of Canada. They recorded two more songs in March 1966, but were not released until the 1990s.
In 1967 the band disbanded when the members either left for college or went on with their life. In 2002, the band was inducted into the Iowa Hall of Fame and they reformed to perform at the induction ceremony.
Claudine Clark (born April 26, 1941) is an American R&B musician, best known as the singer and composer of the 1962 hit, "Party Lights", which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Born in Macon, GA, Clark grew up in Philadelphia and received formal musical training at the local Coombs College. She recorded her first single, "Angel of Happiness," in 1958 for the Herald label, she also did a brief stint at Gotham.
Clark subsequently caught on with Chancellor, a label best known for teen idols like Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Her first single, "Disappointed," initially flopped, but when DJs started playing the Clark-penned flip side, "Party Lights," it became a huge hit. Sung from the point of view of a teenage girl ordered to her room while her friends were out having a good time, "Party Lights" struck a chord and shot into the Top Five on both the pop and R&B charts.
Chancellor followed it with "Walkin' Through a Cemetery," which stalled Clark's commercial momentum; by the time "Walk Me Home From the Party" appeared to continue the story line, the moment had passed, and neither it nor "The Telephone Game" could recapture the public's attention. Clark later attempted to compose a rock & roll operetta, and also recorded for Swan under the alias Joy Dawn.
Ann Lee Peebles (born April 27, 1947) is an American singer and songwriter who gained celebrity for her Memphis soul albums of the 1970s for Hi Records. Two of her most popular songs are "I Can't Stand the Rain" and "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down". In 2014, Ann Peebles was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.
As a child she began singing in the choir of her father's church and with the family's group, the Peebles Choir, who regularly opened shows for gospel stars including Mahalia Jackson and the Soul Stirrers featuring Sam Cooke. She was also influenced by R&B performers, including Muddy Waters, Mary Wells and Aretha Franklin. She began performing in clubs in St. Louis, and in the mid-1960s joined a revue led by bandleader Oliver Sain. While visiting Memphis in 1968, she sang in a club with trumpeter Gene "Bowlegs" Miller who introduced her to Hi Records producer Willie Mitchell, who quickly offered her a recording contract.
Her first record, "Walk Away", written by Sain, reached the R&B chart in 1969, as did the follow-up, "Give Me Some Credit", and she released an album, This Is Ann Peebles. All her early records on Hi were produced by Mitchell, and featured the signature sound of the Hi Rhythm Section and Memphis Horns. In 1970, her single "Part Time Love" - a version of Little Johnny Taylor's 1963 hit - reached no. 7 on the R&B chart, and no.45 on the pop chart, and she began working with the Hi label's songwriter Don Bryant. She continued to have R&B hits in the early 1970s, including "I Pity the Fool," "Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love," "Breaking Up Somebody's Home", "Somebody's on Your Case," and "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down". She was also the only female singer on Hi to release a string of albums, including Straight from the Heart and I Can't Stand the Rain, which contained many tracks that she co-wrote with Bryant. The title track of the latter album, written by Peebles and Bryant with DJ Bernard Miller, was her biggest commercial success, reaching no. 6 on the R&B chart and no. 38 on the pop chart in 1973.
After Hi Records closed in 1979, and with the rise of disco music, Peebles took a break from the music industry. She returned in 1989 with the album Call Me, again produced by Willie Mitchell and released on his own Waylo label. During the 1990s, she released albums on Rounder Records' Bullseye Blues subsidiary label. She continued to perform, and in 2006 she released the album Brand New Classics, which consisted of re-recordings of some of her songs in an acoustic style. Peebles also joined Cyndi Lauper on a recording of "Rollin' and Tumblin'" on Lauper's 11th studio album, Memphis Blues. She gave up performing after a stroke in 2012.
Judith Aileen Dyble (13 February 1949 – 12 July 2020) was an English singer-songwriter, most notable for being a vocalist and a founding member of Fairport Convention and Trader Horne. In addition, she and Ian McDonald joined and recorded several tracks with Giles, Giles and Fripp, who later became King Crimson.
Dyble's first band was Judy and The Folkmen (which existed between 1964 and 1966). She then became the original vocalist with Fairport Convention from 1967 to 1968. In November 1966 Ashley 'Tyger' Hutchings asked her to sing and play with himself, Richard Thompson, and Simon Nicol. This became the nucleus of Fairport Convention, initially with Shaun Frater as a drummer and later Martin Lamble. The group recorded their first album with her, their repertoire at the time consisting of American singer-songwriter works, plus originals. The first single was a cover of a 1930s American song, "If I Had a Ribbon Bow". The band covered and re-worked numerous American recordings with the band members choosing some tracks to work with from manager Joe Boyd's record collection. The band also picked up on the works of Joni Mitchell before she was known in the UK, and covered two of her songs on their first album, Fairport Convention.
Fairport's early live shows in London in the late 1960s saw Dyble share stages with acts such as Jimi Hendrix, and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. She guested on The Incredible String Band's 1968 album The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (on "The Minotaur's Song"), and on G. F. Fitz-Gerald's 1970 album Mouseproof (on "Ashes of an Empire"). After her stint with Fairport Convention, Dyble joined the English pop band Giles, Giles and Fripp by advertising in Melody Maker. Dyble contributed to demo recordings for the group. Giles, Giles, and Fripp would later evolve into the foundation progressive rock band King Crimson.
Dyble would go on to become one half of the duo Trader Horne, with ex-Them member Jackie McAuley. The duo signed to Dawn (a subsidiary of Pye Records) releasing one album, Morning Way, in 1969, and two highly prized, collectible vinyl singles. Dyble wrote the title track, "Morning Way" and co-wrote "Velvet to Atone" with Martin Quittenton for the album. She also worked with Lol Coxhill, Phil Miller and his brother Steve in a group called DC & the MBs (Dyble, Coxhill and the Miller Brothers) or Penguin Dust.
At the 1981 Fairport Convention Annual Reunion (held that year at Broughton Castle), Dyble appeared on stage as a surprise guest: backed by Fairport's Full House lineup, she sang Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now" and the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved". She also appeared as a guest in 1982 (A Week-End in The Country), 1997 (30th anniversary), 2002 (35th anniversary) and 2007 (40th anniversary). Dyble died on 12 July 2020 at the age of 71 due to lung cancer.
Molly Nilsson (born December 14, 1984) is a Swedish singer-songwriter and musician. She is the owner of an independent record label, Dark Skies Association, founded in 2009. As of 2004, Nilsson resides in Berlin.
Nilsson grew up in Stockholm. She began her creative pursuits in comics and writing. Soon she began experimenting with a friend's keyboard and transitioned from visual media into songwriting. Nilsson moved to Berlin to pursue music. She released her first album in 2008 titled These Things Take Time, which she released on CD-R with just 500 copies. In 2009, she released another self-produced album, Europa. Nilsson gained more visibility in 2011 when her song "Hey Moon" from These Things Take Time, was covered by John Maus for his album We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves. After releasing another album, Zenith, in 2015, Nilsson began a world tour.
Nilsson produces and performs her music on her own, though she co-releases much of her music on Dark Skies Association and Glasgow's Night School Records. Nilsson's style features minimalist arrangements of synthesizers and drum beats and is often categorized as dark pop or lo-fi synth-pop. She cites solitude as a necessary and important part of her creative process. During live performances, Nilsson often sings over a CD of her own work. She has released ten albums and three singles.
Vivien Garry (1920 - December 1, 2008) was a jazz bassist. There isn’t much biographical information available about her, although she appears to have had a relatively rich career if her discography is any indication.
She led the Vivien Garry Quintet (which, on at least one date, included Edna Williams of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm on trumpet and Ginger Smock on violin) and the Vivien Garry Trio (which included Arv Garrison, on guitar and Wini Beatty on piano).
She swung so hard and played so relaxed and tastefully, but with virtuosity in all the right places. The Vivien Garry’s Quintet included Edna Williams of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm on trumpet and Ginger Smock on violin. Billboard reported that Edna Williams’ trumpet playing is especially outstanding on every side, the spirit of the whole band is driving and fiery.
In her book, New York City Jazz, Elizabeth Dodd Brinkofski writes that Vivien’s groups “played all over Manhattan’s top jazz nightclubs in the 1940s.” She goes on to write that “this was the beginning of women gaining attention as musicians in the genre of jazz.” Though that may be difficult to believe given there is little information readily available on Vivien Garry and the musicians with whom she recorded, like Ginger Smock, Edna Williams, Dody Jeshke, and her pianist Winnie Beatty. Brinkofski also writes that “Viven Garry was the only female bass player that performed on Fifty-Second Street.”
Bas Sheva (July 25, 1925 – February 11, 1960), the stage name of Bernice Kanefsky, was a Jewish-American singer, prominent in the 1950s. Although she began singing Jewish traditional and cantorial music, her career branched out into popular music.
She studied singing with the intent of honoring her family's wishes that she become a cantor. Her voice was extremely powerful and had extraordinary dexterity. However, instead of cantorial music, she decided to move into popular music, adopting the stage name "Bas Sheva", the Ashkenazi pronouciation of the Biblical "Bathsheba". Her career began in the Borscht Belt of New York's Catskill Mountains, performing for audiences of Jewish vacationers. Her recording career began around 1950 with a small number of obscure singles of standard hits, none of which sparked much commercial interest.
In 1953 Bas Sheva was the principal singer for the album "Soul of a People", a collection of traditional Jewish songs issued by Capitol Records. This disk sold well in the Jewish market, and Bas Sheva's performances of this familiar material contributed much to its success.
In 1954, Les Baxter, a composer and producer at Capitol Records, offered her the role of star vocalist on his suite "The Passions". Bas Sheva's performance on "The Passions" is startling even 50 years after it was recorded; she screams, wails, whimpers, howls, grunts, and even acts a little to the pulsating rhythms of Baxter's dark, gritty, and complex musical score. Even in an age where musical innovation was beginning to be encouraged, "The Passions" was far too innovative and edgy and the album was not a commercial success. Despite this showcase of the astounding range of her voice, Bas Sheva never recorded again.
Bas Sheva died on February 11, 1960, at the age of 34, as a result of a diabetic reaction.
Laura Phillips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery.
Many of Anderson's earliest recordings remain unreleased or were issued only in limited quantities, such as her first single, "It's Not the Bullet that Kills You (It's the Hole)." That song, along with "New York Social Life" and about a dozen others, was originally recorded for use in an art installation that consisted of a jukebox that played the different Anderson compositions, at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York City. Among the musicians on these early recordings are Peter Gordon on saxophone, Scott Johnson on guitar, Ken Deifik on harmonica, and Joe Kos on drums. Photographs and descriptions of many of these early performances were included in Anderson's retrospective book Stories from the Nerve Bible. In 1978, she performed at the Nova Convention, a major conference involving many counter-culture figures and rising avant-garde musical stars, including William S. Burroughs, Philip Glass, Frank Zappa, Timothy Leary, Malcolm Goldstein, John Cage, and Allen Ginsberg. She also worked with comedian Andy Kaufman in the late 1970s.
She became more widely known outside the art world when her single "O Superman" reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981. Her debut album Big Science was released the following year. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave.
Anderson is a pioneer in electronic music and has invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a tape-bow violin that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she collaborated with Interval Research to develop an instrument she called a "talking stick," a six-foot (1.8 m) long baton-like MIDI controller that can access and replicate sounds.
Hadda Brooks (October 29, 1916 – November 21, 2002) was an American pianist, vocalist and composer. Her first single, "Swingin' the Boogie", which she composed, was issued in 1945. She was billed as "Queen of the Boogie".
Brooks preferred ballads to boogie-woogie, but developed the latter style by listening to Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis records. Her first recording, "Swingin' the Boogie", for Modern Records, was a regional hit in 1945. Another R&B Top Ten hit, "Out of the Blue," was her most famous song.
In the 1970s, she commuted to Europe for performances in nightclubs and festivals. She performed rarely in the United States, living for many years in Australia. Queen of the Boogie, a compilation of recordings from the 1940s, was released in 1984. Two years later her manager Alan Eichler brought her out of a 16-year retirement to open a jazz room at Perino's in Los Angeles, after which she continued to perform in nightclubs in Hollywood, San Francisco, and New York City.
She resumed her recording career with the 1994 album Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere for DRG. Virgin Records acquired the old Modern catalogue and, thanks to Brooks' new-found success, issued a compilation of her 1940s and 1950s recordings entitled That's My Desire. The label signed her to record three songs for the Christmas album Even Santa Gets the Blues, made more unusual by the fact she had releases on the same label 50 years apart. Time Was When (Virgin, 1996) included Al Viola (guitar), Eugene Wright (bass) and Richard Dodd (cello), and she wrote two of its songs: "You Go Your Way and I'll Go Crazy" and "Mama's Blues". She began playing at the Viper Room, the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room, and Michael's Pub in New York City, and such Hollywood clubs as Goldfinger's, the Vine St. Bar and Grill, and the Hollywood Roosevelt Cinegrill.
Brooks died at the age of 86 at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles after open-heart surgery. In 2007, a 72-minute documentary on Brooks's life, Queen of the Boogie, directed by Austin Young and Barry Pett, was presented at the Los Angeles Silver Lake Film Festival.
Bobbye Jean Hall is an American percussionist who has recorded with a variety of rock, soul, blues and jazz artists, and has appeared on 20 songs that reached the top ten in the Billboard Hot 100. She has recorded as percussionist and drummer using the following instruments: bongos, congas, tambourine, claves, quica, wood block, tabla, full drum kit, tom-toms, cabasa, maracas, cowbell, bells, shaker, güiro, triangle, mark tree, hand claps, finger snaps and finger cymbals.
Bobbye Jean Hall was born in Detroit, Michigan, and began her career there playing percussion in nightclubs while still in her teens. While playing at the 20 Grand nightclub in 1961 she was approached by Motown arranger Paul Riser to play on a recording session. Using bongos, congas and other percussion, she played uncredited on many Motown recordings in the 1960s. She moved to Los Angeles in 1970 where she was one of the few female session musicians in a male-dominated profession, a sometime associate of the Funk Brothers and the so-called Wrecking Crew. Already a veteran player by May 1971, she was featured on congas in the studio video of the Temptations doing "Sorry Is A Sorry Word", and she added her bongo skills to Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)". Her first studio gig behind a full rock drum kit was with Chris Ethridge on his 1971 album L.A. Getaway.
Hall recorded several albums with Bill Withers, including his No. 1 hit "Lean On Me", and his Live at Carnegie Hall album. She also toured with Carole King. In May 1974, she performed again at Carnegie Hall, this time backing James Taylor, a follow-up to appearing on two of his albums. Stevie Wonder used Hall's percussion skills for a few songs in 1974 and 1976, including "Bird of Beauty" on which her artful quica work established a mood of Brazil at Carnival.
In 1978, Bob Dylan took her on a world tour, from mid-February to mid-December. A two-disc album was produced using 22 songs recorded live in Japan: Bob Dylan at Budokan, and a stop in Santa Monica, California, allowed Dylan and most of the touring band to cut a studio album, Street-Legal, with Hall on percussion. In late August 1978, in between Dylan tour dates, Hall played congas for Tom Waits's Blue Valentine album, on the track "Romeo Is Bleeding", giving it a gritty Latin feel. In 1979, she recorded "Run Like Hell" (on The Wall) with Pink Floyd. She recorded with Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band in the early 1980s. Hall joined Stevie Nicks for her album Bella Donna and toured with her in 1981, 1983, and 1986.
Other musicians she has recorded for include Fanny, Kim Carnes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Janis Joplin, Tavares, Randy Newman, Rod Stewart, Dolly Parton, Mel Brown, Leo Sayer, Cecilio & Kapono, Russ Ballard, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia, Patti Scialfa, Freda Payne, Dwight Yoakam, Donald Byrd, Gene Harris, Bobby Hutcherson, Grant Green, Ferron, Poco, the Temptations, Mary Wells, Jefferson Starship, Kenny Rankin, the Manhattan Transfer, Stanley Turrentine, Boz Scaggs, Marc Bolan, Judy Mowatt, Hugo Montenegro, Aretha Franklin, the Doobie Brothers, Kris Kristofferson, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Al Kooper, the Jeff Healey Band, the Doors, Robin Zander, Lone Justice, the Mamas & the Papas, David Byrne, Marty Balin, Sarah Vaughan, Tommy Bolin, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Harry Chapin and Tracy Chapman.
