Veteran guitarist, singer, and songwriter Bill Perry was one of the most inventive storytellers in the modern blues idiom, yet sadly, he passed away from a heart attack in the summer of 2007. He was 50. He burst upon the national blues touring circuit in the mid-'90s with the short-lived Point Blank/Virgin Record label. Born and raised in Chester, NY, Perry got his first guitar at age five. He quickly learned the theme from "Batman" on it while growing up in a music-filled household. Perry's grandmother played organ in the church, but Perry was attracted to his father's Jimmy Smith albums, which featured jazz/blues guitarist Kenny Burrell. During his formative years, his favorite guitarists were Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and Johnny Winter. He also loved Albert Collins, B.B. King, and Freddie King.
The new recording from EM Records features works by Edward Elgar, whose fiery and technically complex tudes caractristiques date from the early part of his career; and Donald Francis Tovey, who, in his emotionally wideranging Sonata eroica, pays homage to Bach. The disc also presents a selection of the Virtuosic Studies by Albert Sammons, the violinist who made benchmark recordings of Elgar's Violin Sonata and Concerto and who made a highly significant contribution to British violin-playing in the early years of the twentieth century. These are being recorded here for the first time.
One of the most popular vocalists between the end of World War II and the rise of rock & roll in the mid-'50s, Perry Como perfected the post-big band approach to pop music by lending his own irresistible laidback singing – influenced by Bing Crosby and Russ Columbo – to the popular hits of the day on radio, TV, and LP. Both his early traditional crooning style plus his later relaxed manner and focus on novelty material were heavily indebted to Bing Crosby, though Como's appeal during the early '50s was virtually unrivalled.
Alexis Marshall is best known as the frontman for Rhode Island’s notorious provocateurs Daughters, whose eight-year hiatus between their posthumous self-titled album and the critically acclaimed comeback album You Won’t Get What You Want found the ever-evolving band explode from down-and-out cult heroes to one of the biggest bands in the nebulous territory where abrasive noise rock fuses with high-art aspirations. For his debut album House of Lull . House of When, Marshall wanted to push that sense of chaos even further, by crafting an album around moments of spontaneity and sonic detritus, where a mistake could become a hook or the whip of a chain could become a beat.
Wayne Ea Marshall OBE (born 13 January 1961, Oldham, Lancashire) is a British pianist, organist, and conductor. As an organist, Marshall has served as organist and associate artist of the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. In 2004, he gave the inaugural organ recital in the new Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. Also in Los Angeles, in October 2004, he premiered James MacMillan's organ concerto A Scotch Bestiary with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen. Marshall has appeared as an organist at the BBC Proms.