Martha Wash

Martha Elaine Wash (born December 28, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and producerknown for her distinctive and powerful voice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wash first achieved fame as half of the Two Tons O' Fun, who sang backing vocals for the disco singer Sylvester including on his signature hit "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)". After gaining their own record deal, they released three consecutive commercially successful songs which all peaked at number two in the dance charts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The duo was renamed the Weather Girls in 1982 after they released the top-selling single "It's Raining Men", which brought them to mainstream pop attention. The Weather Girls released five albums and were heavily featured on Sylvester's albums. After disbanding in 1988, Wash transitioned to house music as a featured artist on several successful songs. Her success on the Billboard dance chart has earned her the honorific title the Queen of Clubland, with a total of fifteen number-one songs on the chart to date. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wash is also noted for sparking legislation in the early 1990s that made vocal credits mandatory on CDs and music videos. Starting in the late-1980s, her studio vocals were used in several successful dance songs without her permission or proper credit. Models lip-synced to her voice in music videos and during live performances, obscuring Wash's contributions and hiding Wash's size as a full-figured woman. As a result, she was denied credit and royalties for many of the songs she recorded. This included platinum-selling song "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)". Subsequently, in Rolling Stone, music critic Jason Newman described Martha Wash as "The Most Famous Unknown Singer of the '90s". In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 58th most successful dance artist of all time.

Tina Bell

Tina Marie Bell (February 5, 1957 – c. October 10, 2012) was an American singer, songwriter and front woman of the Seattle-based band Bam Bam. The band with Bell was considered one of the founders of the grunge music scene. Bell is considered an early grunge pioneer and dubbed as "the Godmother of Grunge" and "queen of Grunge".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She got her start as a singer by singing at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle, and her first experience on stage was performing with the Langston Hughes Theater, also in Seattle. When looking for a French tutor so that she could sing French lyrics in a Langston Hughes Theater production, she met guitarist Tommy Martin. Bell and Martin formed Bam Bam in 1983. The band also included bassist Scott Ledgerwood, and drummer Matt Cameron (the latter went on to join Soundgarden and then Pearl Jam). Cameron was later replaced by Tom Hendrickson. 

Although Bam Bam were courted by punk rock label C/Z Records, they opted instead to independently release their EP Villains (Also Wear White) in 1984. This was the first grunge record made at Reciprocal Recording studio, the location where later Nirvana made their demos for the Bleach and Incesticide albums. With songs written by Bell, Ledgerwood and Martin, and with Hendrickson on drums, Bam Bam recorded an album's worth of material at Reciprocal Recordings, including the material on the EP. Eight more of the tracks from the Reciprocal sessions were remastered and released in June 2019 as Free Fall From Space, produced by Martin and Hanzsek. An expanded version of Villains (Also Wear White) was released in late 2021 on Bric-a-Brac Records.

Later that year, Bam Bam released the album Bam Bam House Demo '84, which included earlier home recordings of some of the songs recorded at Reciprocal Recording. The band also released a video of the song "Ground Zero," written by Bell, Martin, Ledgerwood and Cameron and taken from the Reciprocal sessions. The song contains lyrics written by Bell about the threat of nuclear war, inspired by living near the Naval Submarine Base Bangor, a home port for Trident nuclear submarines. After the mid 80's, both Ledgerwood and Hendrickson left the band, but Bell continued to front the band with a new rhythm section, along with Martin on guitar. In the late 80's and early 90's, Bam Bam performed in concerts with popular bands such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.

After not receiving the local recognition of the other emerging "Seattle Sound" bands, Bell and the band left Seattle for London in the late '80s, hoping for success in Europe. This, unfortunately, did not garner the intended recognition and resulted in deportation back to America during an immigration enforcement dragnet in the Netherlands. Bell left Bam Bam in 1990, and eventually quit music entirely. She died in her Las Vegas apartment of cirrhosis of the liver at age 55 on October 10, 2012.

Billie Davis

Carol Hedges (born 22 December 1945) who was known professionally as Billie Davis, is an English singer who had hits in the 1960s, and is best remembered for the UK hit version of the song, "Tell Him" (1963) and "I Want You to Be My Baby" (1968).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After winning a talent contest in which she was backed by Cliff Bennett's band, the Rebel Rousers, she cut some early demo records with the Tornados for record producer Joe Meek. However, her first commercial success was "Will I What", released in August 1962, on which she performed as a foil to Mike Sarne, rather as Wendy Richard had done on Sarne's chart-topping disc, "Come Outside". This reached number 18 in the UK Singles Chart in September 1962.

 

 

 

 




In February 1963 Davis had her biggest success with a cover version of The Exciters' "Tell Him". Written by Bert Russell (also known as Bert Berns), this song was covered in the sixties by a number of artists, including Helen Shapiro and Alma Cogan, and in the 70s by Hello.  Davis' recording reached number ten in the UK chart, and was followed by "He's The One", which crept into the Top 40 in May 1963.

In 1966, Davis paired with Keith Powell (Keith Powell and the Valets) as "Keith (Powell) and Billie (Davis)" under the Piccadilly record label. They released three singles including "Swingin' Tight", which while popular did not make the chart and the short lived pairing was dissolved. In the late 1960s, Davis returned to Decca, with former Ready Steady Go! presenter Michael Aldred as her producer. Recordings included Chip Taylor's "Angel of the Morning", in 1967, on which she was backed by, amongst others, Kiki Dee and P. P. Arnold. Arnold later recorded the song herself and had the bigger hit in 1968. Davis' final chart entry was a Northern soul version of Jon Hendricks' "I Want You to Be My Baby", originally recorded by Louis Jordan in 1952, which reached number 33 in October 1968.

Davis left Decca in April 1971 after a stay of eight years. She continued to record into the 1980s and was popular, in particular, with audiences in the Spanish-speaking world. Her cover of Burt Bacharach's "The Last One to Be Loved" appeared on the compilation album Trains & Boats & Covers (1999). A retrospective collection of her recordings for Decca was released in 2005.

Dummy Club / Psycho Bunnies

In 1982 a Thrash-a-billy band called The Dummy Club crashed onto the midwest music scene with a drive and vengeance that's rarely seen. Despite the fact that the Psychobilly, Thrash-A-Billy and Core-A-Billy was a very small underground scene, Frankie 'Stoney' Rivera and Janna Blackwell kept pounding out a sound that drew the audience onto the dance floor. In 1985 the band signed a recording contract with Zensor Records in Berlin and released the EP 'Ballad of a Lady Gunslinger'. The EP stayed on the charts in Europe. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Europe, Frankie and Janna went their separate ways in 1989. After extensive travels and soul searching, the songwriting Bass/Vocal team decided to regroup and form the Psycho Bunnies, again brandishing their own style of Hardcore Psychobilly. Janna's ripping, thumping bass lines and Frankie's wailing, soulful vocals are the presence and power that makes the Psycho Bunnies the wildest entity to come out of America's heartland. They are urban street girls with a hard edge, hard drive and philosophy straight from the heart.

In 1991 Janna and Frankie hooked up with Reverend Johnnie Leisure, a lead guitarist with a sound of his own and an attitude to match. Take the Reverend's machine gun riffs and mix it with Janna's rapid-fire bass, Frankie's screamin' siren vocals and Mick Weber's primal drum beat and you have the Psycho Bunnies.

International Sweethearts of Rhythm

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was the first integrated all-women's band in the United States. During the 1940s the band featured some of the best female musicians of the day.[1] They played swing and jazz on a national circuit that included the Apollo Theater in New York City, the Regal Theater in Chicago, and the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. During feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s in America, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became popular with feminist writers and musicologists who made it their goal to change the discourse on the history of jazz to include both men and women musicians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The original members of the band had met in Mississippi in 1938 at the Piney Woods Country Life School, a school for poor and African American children. The majority who attended Piney Woods were orphans, including band member Helen Jones. In the 1930s he was inspired by Ina Ray Hutton's Melodears to create an all-female jazz band at Piney Woods. Having been an entrepreneur when it came to fundraising, in the early 1920s Jones supported the school by sending an all-female vocal group called the Cotton Blossom Singers on the road. After that she formed the Swinging Rays of Rhythm led by Consuela Carter. The band toured throughout the eastern U.S. to raise money for the school.

 

 

 

 





In 1941 the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became a professional act and severed connections with Piney Woods.  The band settled in Arlington, Virginia, where a wealthy Virginian supported them. Members from different races, including Latina, Asian, Caucasian, Black, Indian and Puerto Rican, lent the band an "international" flavor, and the name International Sweethearts of Rhythm was given to the group. Composed of 14- to 19-year-olds, the band included Pauline Braddy (tutored on drums by Sid Catlett and Jo Jones), Willie Mae Wong (sax), Edna Williams and thirteen others, including Helen Jones Woods. Anna Mae Winburn became bandleader in 1941 after resigning from her position leading the Cotton Club Boys in North Omaha, Nebraska, which featured guitarist Charlie Christian and Fletcher Henderson. Winburn led the band until her retirement.

The venues where they performed were predominantly, if not only, for black audiences. These included the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., the Regal Theatre in Chicago, the Cotton Club in Cincinnati, the Riviera in St. Louis, the Dreamland in Omaha, the Club Plantation and Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm performed in 1948 with Dizzy Gillespie at the fourth annual Cavalcade of Jazz concert at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles on September 12. They also performed at the eighth Cavalcade of Jazz concert on June 1, 1952 when Anna Mae Winburn was leading. In 1980, jazz pianist Marian McPartland convinced the organizers of the third annual Women's Jazz Festival in Kansas City to reunite the Sweethearts. Included in this interview were nine of the original members as well as six of the band's later members.

Clara Rockmore

Clara Reisenberg Rockmore (9 March 1911 – 10 May 1998) was a Lithuanian classical violin prodigy and a virtuoso performer of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early in her childhood she emerged as a violin prodigy. At the age of four, she became the youngest ever student at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where she studied under the prominent violinist Leopold Auer. In 1921 the family moved to the USA, where Rockmore enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music. As a teenager, tendinitis affected her bow arm, attributed to childhood malnutrition, and resulted in her giving up the violin. However, after meeting fellow immigrant Léon Theremin and being introduced to his electronic instrument, the theremin, she became its most prominent player. She performed widely and helped Theremin to refine his instrument.

 

 

 

 

 

Rockmore made orchestral appearances in New York and Philadelphia and went on coast-to-coast tours with Paul Robeson, but it was not until 1977 that she released a commercial recording called The Art of the Theremin. The album, which was produced by Bob Moog and Shirleigh Moog, featured Rockmore's theremin playing with piano accompaniment by her sister Nadia. Rockmore's approach to theremin playing emphasized physical and emotional control.

Rockmore's classical training gave her an advantage over the many other theremin performers of the time. The intonation control she acquired as a violinist and her innate absolute pitch were both helpful in playing the instrument. She had extremely precise, rapid control of her movements, important in playing an instrument that depends on the performer's motion and proximity rather than touch. She developed a unique technique for playing the instrument, including a fingering system that allowed her to perform accurately fast passages and large note leaps without the more familiar portamento, or glide, on theremin. She also discovered that she could achieve a steadier tone and control the vibrato by keeping the tips of her right-hand thumb and forefinger in contact.

By the time Rockmore was playing large scale public concerts, such as New York City's Town Hall in 1938, she was becoming increasingly known for impressing critics with her artistry of the theremin during a time in which much of the general public had come to rather negative conclusions of what was possible on the instrument.

She died in New York City on May 10, 1998, aged 87.