Born Adrian Hill in Hull, in January 1926, Ronnie Hilton was one of the great UK singers of the 1950s. He was actually working a…
Browsing: Music – 1950s
These days the late Rosemary Clooney is probably most famous for being George Clooney’s auntie. But in the 1950s, she was briefly one of the…
Roy Kelton Orbison was born on 23 April 1936 in Vernon, Texas. Not long after, his family moved to nearby Wink, and when Roy was…
Ruby Florence Murray was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1935 – the youngest child in a Protestant family. She began working in Northern Ireland…
Born on 26 March 1917 in Cayce, Mississippi, Rufus Thomas first hit the stage as a dancer and comedian with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. In…
Russ Conway (real name Trevor Herbert Stanford) was born on 2 September 1925, in Bristol. After leaving school he trained as a solicitor’s clerk, but…
Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1928, Ruth Brown (real name Ruth Alston Weston) won an amateur night competition at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1948 and was…
Sam Cooke was born one of eight children in Chicago on 22 January 1931, into a strong church-going family. His father was a local minister.…
Sarah Vaughan was already one of jazz’s most beloved divas when she opened a week-long run at the Chicago nightspot Mister Kelly’s in the summer…
Jalacy J. Hawkins was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929. He spent his early years in an orphanage before enrolling at high school to study piano,…
David Edward Sutch (formerly a plumber’s mate from Harrow) based his act on Screaming Jay Hawkins and presented his musical horror show around British clubs in the…
James ‘Shep’ Sheppard’s career began in St. Alban’s Park, New York, in 1954 when, in the fashion of the day, his vocal group was having…
The legend that is Dame Shirley Bassey began life in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, in January 1937. The daughter of a Nigerian father and English mother,…
Born in New Orleans on 19 June 1936, Shirley Goodman was 16 years old when she signed to Aladdin, the jazz and R&B label that was…
This American doo-wop group from Pittsburgh hit the top 40 with Since I Don’t Have You (1959) This I Swear (1959) and Pennies from Heaven (1960). Their…
Discovered by Elvis Presley’s manager ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker in the late 40s, Slim Whitman became known for an easy demeanour, his romantic ballads offset by…
Hailing from New Orleans, Smiley – real name Overton Lemons – recorded initially for Deluxe before joining Imperial Records in 1950. His rich, blues-based voice…
Alec Rice Miller was born into a sharecropper’s family around 1897 in Mississippi and travelled from town to town trying to eke out a living. By…
Rockabilly bombshell Sparkle Moore was born Barbara Morgan on 6 November 1936 in Omaha, Nebraska. The quintessential bad girl, she dressed in leather (and often in…
Fronted by Marie Benson, The Stargazers formed in 1949 and became the most popular British vocal group of the Fifties. They were the first British…