Bassist Vinnie Burke (1921-2001) was born in Newark, New Jersey. He began playing violin and guitar early in life, but when he lost the use of his little finger in a munitions factory accident he switched to double bass. Vinnie played with the small groups of Joe Mooney, Marian McPartland, Don Elliott and Tal Farlow, and with the big bands of Sauter-Finnegan and Benny Goodman, as well as in a number of groups he led.
Declan "Dec" Burke is a guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist who has written, recorded and performed with Frost* and Darwin’s Radio. He has also toured with Frost* supporting Spock’s Beard and Dream Theater. Dec formed Darwin’s Radio in 2003 with Mark Westworth. The band released the "Pictures EP" in 2003 and then "Eyes of the World" in 2006, culminating in their appearance at RosFest in Philadelphia in 2007. The band released the follow up "Template for a Generation" in August 2009. At the end of 2009, Dec announced he was moving on from Darwin’s Radio to concentrate on a solo venture.
The result of this was his first release "Destroy All Monsters", a nine track album coming in at 45mins and a more pop take on the prog genre…
This 3-CD SoulMusic Records’ set celebrates the recordings that Solomon Burke made for the legendary Atlantic Records label between 1960 and 1968. Solomon is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest soul singers to emerge during the genre’s golden days. He signed to Atlantic before ‘soul music’ became a bona fide sub-genre of African-American music and it was Solomon who helped define this new movement and he was, in fact, one of the first artists to use ‘soul’ to describe his music. He would eventually be known the world over as ‘The King of Rock and Soul’.