The “5” Royales began life in the 1940s as a gospel group called The Royal Sons Quintet but rechristened themselves The Royals after going secular…
Browsing: 1950s Music
The 2i’s Coffee Bar was an integral part of British pop music history. Although London’s first skiffle bar was the Gyre & Gimble in Charing Cross,…
Jasper Cini was born in Philadelphia on 7 October 1927. After serving in the US Navy during World War II – where he was injured…
The Disc Jockey widely believed to have first coined the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll” began life as a jazz trombonist with a band called Sultans…
Alma Angela Cohen was born in London in May 1932. The family name was originally Kogin, from which emerged the stage name Alma Cogan. Following…
The Ames Brothers were a singing quartet from Massachusetts (USA) who became famous in the 1950s for their traditional pop music hits. The Ames Brothers…
Howard Andrew Williams was born in Wall Lake, Iowa and started singing professionally with his three older brothers – Bob, Don and Dick – as…
Born Patricia Jacqueline Sibley on 10 November 1923, Anne Shelton, came to be known as the “Forces’ Favourite” on wartime radio. A singer with a…
Anthony George Newley was born on 24 September 1931. He grew up around Hackney in the East End of London and began acting in his…
Arthur Crudup (pronounced Crude-up) was born in 1905 in Jackson, Mississippi, and grew up in Forest, a town 40 miles west. He worked mainly as…
Atlantic Records has introduced the world to some of the most influential musicians this planet has ever produced; Jazz icons such as John Coltrane, Charles…
He says he can’t sing and keep rhythm on the guitar at the same time, but the unquestionable king of the blues – in both…
The Bell Notes formed in the East Meadow area of Long Island in New York. The group were regular performers in The Bronx in the…
The “Big Bopper” was born Jiles Perry Richardson on 24 October 1930, in Sabine Pass, Texas. Following military service in the Army, he worked as…
Joe Turner was born in Kansas City on 18 May 1911, and by the late 1920’s he was a singing bartender in a town where…
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, on 11 December 1926, Willie Mae Thornton’s father was a minister, and as a young girl, she and her six brothers…
Bill Haley, who had been singing and playing guitar with a country & western combo since 1940 – when he was 15 years old -…
Born Eleanora Fagan on 7 April 1915 and abandoned by her parents as a baby, former teenage prostitute Billy Holiday’s troubled upbringing in 1920’s Maryland…
Billy Riley was born in 1933 in Pocahontas, Arkansas, and grew up hard through the Great Depression, with his father taking jobs wherever he could,…
Otha Ellas Bates was born on 30 December 1928 in McComb, Mississippi, and at the age of five, moved with his family to the south-side of…