Quincy Jones

If you tried to check all the boxes for Quincy Jones, you’d run out of ink. At age eleven he touched a piano for the first time. At 14 he…

Some guitar players make the instrument moan, groan, scream or whine. Dickey Betts always made it sing. With lyrical lines that flowed like Bourbon whiskey, he stepped out from under…

Sergio Mendes was a Brazilian musician. He released 35 albums and was primarily known for playing Bossa Nova. Mendes was primarily known in the United States, where his albums were…

Dave Loggins’ most famous song was inspired, he claimed, by a fit of divine inspiration that overtook him one night in the early 70s. But while “Please Come to Boston”…

With ten gallon swagger and talent to match, Toby Keith was a one-man Country Music hit machine. As both a writer and performer, he stormed the charts, logging more than…

To the discriminating music lover of the time, it might have seemed like Angela Bofill was born in 1978 when she emerged as a full-blown vocal virtuoso with the release…

Duane Eddy was an American rock and roll guitarist. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he had a string of hit records produced by Lee Hazlewood which were noted…

The story of Kris Kristofferson’s life is something between a fairy tale and an after-school special. The son of an Air Force Major General, he excelled in all sports, earned…

Master saxophone legend Benny Golson played an integral role in the transition from bebop to hard bop through his short but vital tenure with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and with…

In 1972, a young elementary school teacher in El Paso packed his guitar case to make a fresh start in Greenwich Village as a folk troubadour like so many others…

Will Jennings was an American lyricist. He was known for writing the songs “”Up Where We Belong,” “Higher Love,” “Tears In Heaven,” and “My Heart Will Go On.” He was…

Greg Kihn was an American rock musician, radio personality, and novelist. He founded and led The Greg Kihn Band and he wrote several popular horror novels. He is best known…

At age three, he was in an iron lung with Polio. On a doctor’s advice, he took up the saxophone at age eleven. At 14, he was backing up Little…

Victor Bailey, Michael and Randy Brecker, Eric Clapton, Billy Cobham, George Duke, Bill Evans, Roberta Flack, Bob James, Marcus Miller, David Sanborn, and Joe Zawinul.

Some artists wear their influences on their sleeve. But the musician Karl Wallinger, who recorded as World Party, wore his influences proudly and prominently across his chest.

Eric Carmen was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Though classically trained in piano, Carmen decided to teach himself guitar as well. He is perhaps best known as the lead vocalist…