As the most prolific white rocker on Checker Records, Dale Hawkins (born Delmar A Hawkins Jr on 22 August 1936) blazed a trail of blues-drenched…
Browsing: 1950s Music
The Dallas Boys – sometimes described as “England’s first boy band” – formed in Leicester, England, and comprised four former pupils of Moat Boys School…
Danny and The Juniors (originally The Juvenairs) all attended John Bartram High School in Philadelphia and formed in 1955, practising their harmonies in a car…
This British crooner was one of the biggest home-produced names in the early and mid-1950s, The singer (who hailed from Hull) had hits including Mama, Cara Mia,…
Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio in 1917. By the age of 15, he had dropped out of high school and…
The Dells have been around so long they make The Rolling Stones look like young whippersnappers. Starting out in Chicago as a Doo Wop group called The El Rays,…
Like The Crew Cuts, whose career they so closely followed, The Diamonds also came from Canada, where Ted Kowalski (tenor), Phil Levitt (baritone) and Bill…
Richard Charles Kneller was born in Thornton Heath, Surrey. After leaving school he tried a wide variety of jobs including stonemason’s assistant, spraypainter, electric plater,…
Australian singer Digby George Richards was born the son of a policeman in Dunedoo in New South Wales on 12 September 1941. Digby (or ‘Dig’…
Born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Dinah Washington grew up in Chicago, where she sang and played the piano in a Baptist church. After…
Dorothy Squires was born Edna May Squires in Pontyberem, Carmarthenshire (South Wales) on 25 March 1915. She began to perform professionally as a singer at…
The Dovells were an American vocal group, formed at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1957, under the name The Brooktones. Their first single was No,…
Formed in 1953 in New York at the behest of Atlantic Records, The Drifters were consistent US hit makers until 1964. A few years later their…
Duane was born in Corning in far upstate New York, 150 miles from the Canadian border. He grew up there and in other small upstate…
Eddie Cochran was born on 3 October 1938, the youngest of five children. The Cochran family home was in Oklahoma City but shortly after Eddie…
Born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1917, Ella Fitzgerald never knew her father – he left the family while she was an infant – and…
Despite his brief career – spanning little more than a decade before his early death in 1963 – bluesman Elmore James affected rock and roll…
Elvis Aron (Aaron) Presley was born on 8 January 1935 to a poor family from Tupelo, Mississippi, and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his parents…
Kids today want designer names, the genuine thing. But in the 1950s and 1960s when money was in short supply, they were happy to buy…