Born on 29 September 1935, Jerry Lee Lewis was raised in the same Pentecostal religious tradition and cultural setting as Elvis Presley and was exposed…
Browsing: Music – 1950s
English pop singer and actress Jill Day was born Yvonne Page on 5 December 1930 in Brighton, Sussex. She became the main singer with Geraldo…
The son of an impoverished Texas farming family, Jim Reeves was actually a very successful country music recording artist before he came to the attention…
Jimmy Clanton was born in Louisiana on 2 September 1938 and formed his first band – The Rockets – in 1956 while attending Baton Rouge…
The master of down-home blues was, shockingly, turned down as an artist by Chess records in 1953, but became a best-selling performer for rival Chicago…
Jimmy Smith single-handedly took the lumbering electric organ out of the realms of bible-thumping and chapels of rest, stuck a cold beer on the lid…
John Barry first formed the group in Yorkshire in 1957, after he completed his military service in the British Army. While playing at the Rialto…
John Lee Hooker was born on a sharecropper farm in Clarkesdale, Mississippi in 1917 and became – with his distinctive heavily-rhythmic boogie style – the…
Despite being skinny, pigeon-toed, half-deaf (he partially lost his hearing as a child and had to use a hearing aid) and effeminate, this highly emotional…
John Watson Jr. was born in Houston, Texas, in February 1935. His father was a pianist and taught his son the instrument but John Jr.…
Although they scored four Top Thirty hits in their native USA, Johnny and the Hurricanes doubled that figure in Britain, where they sold almost as…
Born in Memphis on 9 June 1929, Johnny Ace (real name John Marshall Alexander Jr) returned from service in the US Navy during WWII to…
He was born J.R. Cash (‘John’ came later, and ‘Johnny’ was an invention of Sun Records chief Sam Phillips) in Kingsland, Arkansas, one of seven…
Johnny Devlin was born John Lockett Devlin on 11 May 1938 in New Zealand. In 1956, Devlin heard Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel, and overnight became…
Jean-Philippe Smet was born in Paris on 15 June 1943 to a Belgian father and a French mother. His father left them shortly after. He…
Johnny Mathis was born in September 1935 in Gilmer, Texas, and grew up in San Francisco. The son of a former Vaudeville star, Mathis was…
Born on 19 August 1940, in Houston, Texas, John Lester Nash, Jr was one of the first black entertainers to work on Houston TV. He…
Johnny O’Keefe produced more Top 40 hits than any other Australian recording artist. He had 29 hits spanning 1958 – 1974, including five number ones…
Johnny Rebb was the first Australian artist to be signed by Lee Gordon’s Leedon label in 1958. The local media dubbed Rebb the ‘Gentleman Of Rock’…
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, on 20 April 1938, Johnny Tillotson was a teenage contributor on Radio W-WPF and on the television show The Toby Dowdy…