David Essex OBE (born David Albert Cook on 23 July 1947) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and actor. Since the 1970s, Essex has attained nineteen Top 40 singles in the UK (including two numbers ones), and sixteen Top 40 albums. He has also had an extensive career as an actor performing on stage and screen…
Luther Vandross was one of the most successful R&B artists of the 1980s and '90s. Not only did he score a series of multi-million-selling albums containing chart-topping hit singles and perform sold-out tours of the U.S. and around the world, but he also took charge of his music creatively, writing or co-writing most of his songs and arranging and producing his records. He also performed these functions for other artists, providing them with hits as well.
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London, England, in 1962. The first stable line-up consisted of Brian Jones (guitar, harmonica), Mick Jagger (lead vocals), Keith Richards (guitar, backing vocals), Bill Wyman (bass), Charlie Watts (drums), and Ian Stewart (piano)…
1978 Roots Reggae album reissued on CD for the first time. Born 1944 in Kingston, Jamaica Pat Kelly is rightly revered as one of the island’s best ever singers although he is less well known for his considerable contribution to reggae music as a highly accomplished recording engineer. Always a keen hard working student, while studying Electrical Engineering at Kingston Technical High School, Pat worked part time at Chin’s Radio Services on Church Street in downtown Kingston where the proprietor, Ivan Chin, operated one of Jamaica’s first recording studios. Pat was awarded a scholarship to continue his education in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA where, after three years, he graduated with a degree in Advanced Electronics.
As soul music moved into the early '70s, it became dominated by smoother sounds and polished productions, picking up its cues from Motown, Chicago soul, and uptown soul. By the beginning of the decade, soul was fracturing in a manner similar to pop/rock, as pop-soul, funk, vocal groups, string-laden Philly soul, and sexy Memphis soul became just a few of the many different subgenres to surface. Often, the productions on these records were much more polished than '60s productions, boasting sound effects, synthesizers, electric keyboards, echoes, horn sections, acoustic guitars, and strings.