Legends You May Know - coming up...

Elvis Presley - Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. A cultural icon, he is commonly known by the single name Elvis. One of the most popular musicians of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or "the King".

Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins; January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012) was an American singer. Her style spanned a variety of music genres including Blues, R&B, Rock'n'Roll, Soul, Jazz, Gospel.

Stevland Hardaway Morris (born May 13, 1950) known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Blind since shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.

Madonna (born Madonna Louise Ciccone  August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, director, dancer and entrepreneur. She has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the best selling recording artisc of all time by Guiness Recorder. Considered to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time for being an influential figure in contemporary music.

Diana Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American Vocalist, Recording Artist and actress. Ross has a soprano vocal range.Ross first rose to fame as a founding member and lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that has included successful ventures into film and Broadway

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American musician known as Ray Charles. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing R&B, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records.

Frank Sinatra - The Best Is Yet To Come

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was born December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The only child of Sicilian immigrants, a teenaged Sinatra decided to become a singer after watching Bin Crosby perform. He dropped out of high school, where he was a member of the glee club, and began to sing at local nightclubs. 

Between 1943 and 1946, Sinatra's solo career blossomed as the singer charted 17 different Top 10 singles. The mobs of bobby-soxer fans Sinatra attracted with his dreamy baritone earned him such nicknames as "The Voice" and "The Sultan of Swoon." "It was the war years, and there was a great loneliness," recalled Sinatra, who was unfit for military service due to a punctured eardrum. "I was the boy in every corner drugstore who'd gone off, drafted to the war. That was all."

In September 1935, Sinatra took part in a talent contest organized by Edward Bowes, and won first prize: this led to a national tour. When the tour was over, Sinatra took a job as a singing waiter and MC at a venue called the Rustic Cabin. The pay was only $15 per week, but the Rustic Cabin gigs were also broadcast across New York on the WNEW radio station. Sinatra’s voice was now being heard by a far wider audience than before. In 1939, the wife of bandleader and trumpet player Harry James heard Sinatra singing on the radio, and persuaded her husband to give Sinatra a job. Harry hired Sinatra for the princely sum of $75 per week, and the two artists made their first joint recording in July 1939, as war was looming in Europe.

Sinatra made his movie acting debut in 1943, in Higher and Higher. In 1945, he won a special Academy Award for The House I Live In, a 10-minute short made to promote racial and religious tolerance on the home front. Sinatra's popularity began to slide in the postwar years, however, leading to a loss of his recording and film contracts in the early 1950s. In 1953, he made a triumphant comeback, winning an Oscar for his portrayal of the Italian-American soldier Maggio in From Here to Eternity. Although this was his first non-singing role, Sinatra quickly found a vocal outlet when he received a new recording contract with Capitol Records in the same year. In his music, the Sinatra of the 1950s brought a more mature sound with jazzier inflections in his voice.

“Sinatra-Mania” was now in full swing - Sinatra scored a phenomenal 23 top ten singles between 1940 and early 1943 alone: to show their appreciation of his talent, his American fans affectionately nicknamed him “The Voice”.

Frank Sinatra was also well known for stormy love life and colourful relationships, which were frequently the object of tabloid attention. Frank married no less than four times; his first marriage was to his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Barbato, with whom he had three children - Nancy, Frank Sinatra Jr., and Christina. The marriage hit the rocks when Sinatra had an affair with actress Ava Gardner. She became wife No. 2, when he married her in 1951. But rumour has it that Sinatra still loved Nancy’s cooking so much, that he would send someone by to pick up her homemade specialities many years after they had parted.

Failing health kept him out of the public eye after his 80th birthday, and he suffered a heart attack and stroke in 1996, and a further heart attack in 1997. After suffering his 3rd and final heart attack, Frank Sinatra died on 14 May 1998. His funeral in Beverly Hills was a star-studded occasion, with a list of mourners that included Liza Minnelli, Tony Curtis and Gregory Peck. Legend has it that he was buried in a blue suit, with a bottle of Jack Daniels, a pack of Camels cigarettes, a Zippo lighter - and a roll of dimes for good luck.

გამოყენებულია:

http://www.biography.com/people/frank-sinatra-9484810

http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/frank-sinatra.html

The Beatles - Unforgettable

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. They became the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed act in the history of popular music. The group's best-known lineup consisted of  John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock'n'roll. In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania", but as their songwriting grew in sophistication, they came to be perceived by many fans and cultural observers as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the era's sociocultural revolutions.


HISTORY.

In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was already using the name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July. In February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, but Lennon initially thought Harrison was too young to join. After a month of Harrison's persistence, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. 

The band built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960. Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act and producer George Martin enhanced their musical potential. They gained popularity in the United Kingdom after their first modest hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962. They acquired the nickname the "Fab Four" as Beatlemania grew in Britain over the following year, and by early 1964 they had become international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United States pop market.
They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. According to the RIAA, as of 2012 the Beatles have sold 177 million units in the US, more than any other artist. In 2008, the group topped Billboardmagazine's list of the all-time most successful "Hot 100" artists.

Their earliest influences include Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Little Richard and Chuck Berry.During the Beatles' co-residency with Little Richard at the Star Vlublin Hamburg, from April to May 1962, he advised them on the proper technique for performing his songs. Of Presley, Lennon said, "Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been Elvis, there would not have been the Beatles."

Despite periodic rumors of reunions throughout the 1970s, no group projects came close to materializing. It should be added that the Beatles themselves continued to feud to some degree, and from all evidence weren't seriously interested in working together as a unit. Any hopes of a reunion vanished when Lennon was assassinated in New York City in December 1980. The beatles continued their solo careers throughout the 1980s, but their releases became less frequent, and their commercial success gradually diminished as listeners without first-hand memories of the combo created their own idols.

გამოყენებულია:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_beatles

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-beatles-mn0000754032

Aretha Franklin - The Queen of Soul

Born Aretha Louise Franklin on March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Baptist preacher Reverend Clarence La Vaughan "C.L." Franklin, and mother Barbara Siggers Franklin, a gospel singer. The fourth of five children, Franklin's parents separated by the time she was six; four years later, her mother succumbed to a heart attack. Guided by C.L.'s preaching assignments, the family relocated to Detroit, Michigan. C.L. eventually landed at Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church, where he gained national renown as a preacher.

Aretha Franklin is one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged. Her astonishing run of late-'60s hits with Atlantic Records--"Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Chain of Fools," "Baby I Love You," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Think," "The House That Jack Built," and several others--earned her the title "Lady Soul," which she has worn uncontested ever since. Yet as much of an international institution as she's become, much of her work--outside of her recordings for Atlantic in the late '60s and early '70s--is erratic and only fitfully inspired, making discretion a necessity when collecting her records.

Franklin's success continued throughout the 70s, and as the artist took home eight consecutive Grammy awards for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance, she earned the title "The Queen of Soul." She worked tirelessly and expanded her repertoire to include rock and pop covers, but by 1975 her sound was fading in favor of the disco craze. In the wake of this new genre, an emerging set of young black singers such as Chaka Khan and Donna Summer began to eclipse Franklin's career. She found a brief respite from slumping sales with 1976's soundtrack to Sparkle, as well as an invitation to perform at the 1977 presidential inauguration. In 1978, she married actor Glynn Turman.

In her personal life, however, Franklin seemed to be going through some challenging times. She announced that she was getting married to her "forever friend" William "Willie" Wilkerson in January 2012 and they planned to tie the knot in that summer. Only a short time later, Franklin told the press that the wedding off. The couple had "decided we were moving a little too fast, and there were a number of things that had not been thought through thoroughly."

More than a week after breaking off her engagement, Franklin suffered another great personal loss. The death of her goddaughter, Whitney Houston, on February 11, 2012, deeply saddened her. "It's so stunning and unbelievable," Franklin wrote on her Facebook page. "My heart goes out to Cissy, her daughter Bobbi Kris, her family and Bobby."

გამოყენებულია:

http://www.biography.com/people/aretha-franklin-9301157?page=3

http://www.aretha-franklin.com/

Michael Jackson - The King

The Bio History of Michael Joseph Jackson began when he was born on the 29th of August 1958 in Gary, Indiana. He was the 7th of nine children. Michael began his musical career at the age of 5 as the lead singer of the Jackson 5 who formed in 1964. In these early years the Jackson 5, Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and lead singer Michael played local clubs and bars in Gary Indiana and moving further afield as there talents grew and they could compete in bigger competitions. From these early days Michael would be at the same clubs as big talented stars of there days, such as Jackie Wilson and would be learning from them even back then.

In 1982 Michael Jackson released the world's largest selling album of all time, 'Thriller'. This album produced 7 hit singles, breaking yet again more records, and went on to sell over 50 million copies worldwide. Michael was keen to use music video or short films as he called them to promote his singles from the album. He worked with the best directors and producers, using the latest technology and special effects for the hit song 'Billie Jean' The short film 'Thriller' used the latest make-up artists technolgy combined with fantastic dancing and cherography, to produce a 14 minute video, with a start, a middle and an ending. So successful was this video that 'The Making Of Michael Jackson's Thriller' became the world's largest selling home video combined with soaring album sales. In 1983 Michael performed the now legendary moonwalk for the first time on the 'Motown 25 years' anniversary show. This performance alone set Michael undoubtable into the realm of a superstar.
In 1984 Michael won a record breaking 8 Grammy awards in one night. The awards were for his work on the 'Thriller' album and his work on the narrative for the 'ET Storybook'.

In 1993, allegations of child molestation against Jackson emerged. A 13-year-old boy claimed that the music star had fondled him. Jackson was known to have sleepovers with boys at his Neverland Ranch, but this was the first public charge of wrongdoing.

In August 1994, Jackson announced that he had married Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of rock icon Elvis Presley. The couple gave a joint television interview with Diane Sawyer but the union proved to be short-lived. They divorced in 1996. Some thought that the marriage was a publicity ploy to restore Jackson's image after the molestation allegations.
Later that same year, Jackson wed nurse Debbie Rowe. The couple had two children through artificial insemination. Son Prince Michael Jackson was born in 1997 and daughter Paris Michael Jackson was born in 1998. Rowe and Jackson divorced in 1999 with Jackson receiving full custody of their two children. He would go on to have a third child, Prince Michael Jackson II, with an unknown surrogate.

Jackson would never get to experience the success of his comeback tour. On June 25, 2009, Jackson suffered cardiac arrest in his Los Angeles home. He was rushed to the hospital after his heart stopped and CPR attempts failed, but he died later that morning. He was 50 years old at the time of his death.

News of Jackson's death resulted in an outpouring of public grief and sympathy.



გამოყენებულია:
http://www.allmichaeljackson.com/biography.html
http://www.biography.com/people/michael-jackson-38211?page=5
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/michael-jackson/5649814/Michael-Jackson-100-facts-about-the-king-of-pop.html

Whitney Houston - The One, The Voice, The Legend

Early Years

Born August 9, 1963 in Newark, New Jersey, Whitney Houston almost seemed destined from birth to become a singer. Her mother Cissy Houston, cousin Dionne Warwick and godmother Aretha Franklin were all legendary figures in American gospel and soul music. Cissy Houston was the choir minister at New Hope Baptist Church, and it was there that a young Whitney got her start. Even as a child, Whitney was able to wow audiences; she later told interviewer Dianne Sawyer that a rapturous response from the congregation at New Hope had a powerful effect upon her: "I think I knew then that [my singing ability] was an infectious thing that God had given me."

Career

In 1985, she released her debut album Whitney Houston and almost immediately became a smash pop sensation. Over the next year, her hit singles "Saving All My Love for You" and "How Will I Know" helped the album reach the top of the charts, where it stayed for fourteen non-consecutive weeks. Houston won a Grammy in 1986 for "Saving All My Love for You"; the award was presented to the singer by her cousin Dionne Warwick. Houston followed the monumental success of her first album with a second release,Whitney, in 1987. That record, too, went platinum many times over and won more Grammy Awards, leading to a successful world tour. During this time, the singer also appeared at a concert for Nelson Mandela's birthday and founded the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, a nonprofit organization that funds projects to help needy children over the world.

By 1992, Whitney Houston was on top of the world, but her life was about to get very complicated very quickly. That year she married the R&B singer Bobby Brown, formerly of New Edition, after a three-year engagement.

She sold more than 170 million albums, but perhaps her crowning achievement was her 1992 cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love Tou", from her starring role in the film "The Bodyguard" with Kevin Costner. 

Houston's first two albums brought seven consecutive number one hits, surpassing a record set by The Beatles and The Bee Gees. 

She went on to become music's most awarded female artist of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Houston won six Grammys, two Emmys, 16 Billboard Music Awards and 23 American Music Awards, and was named Female Artist of the Decade at the Soul Train Music Awards in 2000. 

Personal Life 

But behind closed doors, her life was far from the romantic dreams she captured so brilliantly in her singing. She struggled for years with drug and alcohol problems, entering rehab again as recently as May 2011.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Houston's increasingly rocky marriage, struggles with drugs and health problems threatened to derail her career. In 2004, Bobby Brown began filming a reality show for Bravo entitled Being Bobby Brown; Houston received substantial airtime. The show aired during the worst years of the couple's crumbling marriage; drug use, lifestyle excess and bad behavior were all caught on tape and Houston's reputation sunk to new lows. Houston tried to ignore the controversy, charging ahead with her music by releasing Just Whitney… to combat her detractors, but it did not match the success of her earlier works.

Over the next few years, Houston attempted to repair her marriage and to break her drug habit, but after several relapses her mother, Cissy, had to step in. As Whitney Houston explained to Oprah Winfrey in 2009: "[My mother] walks in with the sheriff and she says: 'I have a court injunction here. You do it my way or we're not going to do this at all. You're going to go on TV, and you're going to retire. And say you're going to give this up because it's not worth it.'" Whitney took a break from her career, divorced Bobby Brown in 2007, and won sole custody of their child, Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown.

After almost a decade of struggling with her personal life, Houston seemed to be pulling herself together. She released a new album,I Look To You, in 2009. "The songs themselves will speak to you and you'll understand where I am and some of the changes I've gone through for the better," Houston told Entertainment Tonight.

End

Whitney Houston died on February 11, 2012, in Los Angeles. Houston had been seen out in the days before her death, including at one of the pre-Grammy Award parties. According to a report released by the Los Angeles County coroner's office on March 22, 2012, the official cause of her death was accidental drowning. The effects of heart disease and cocaine found in her system were contributing factors. With her passing, the music world has lost one of its most legendary stars. Her longtime supporter and mentor Clive Davis once said that Houston "is in the great tradition of great, great singers, whether it's Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughn or Gladys Knight."Her death came just over two years after a 2009 comeback following the end of a turbulent 14-year marriage to singer Bobby Brown. She is survived by their daughter, Bobbi Kris.  Multi-Grammy award winning singer; has had an unequaled run of seven consecutive #1 records (1980s) in the USA, and held the #1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 for 14 weeks with "I Will Always Love You" from November 28, 1992 to February 27, 1993.

-

She always will be one and only, who had the rarest talent. Her life touched so many people all around the world that everyone should be thankful for her achievement in little children's life and life of every single fan of hers. She was the one, the voice, the legend.

გამოყენებულია:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/12/usa-whitneyhouston-profile-idUSL2E8DC02920120212

http://www.biography.com/people/whitney-houston-9344818?page=3

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/science/oldest-musical-instruments-are-even-older-than-first-thought.html?_r=0

სრული ბიოგრაფია იხილეთ : http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001365/bio