Decade of Difference

Best known as the founder and original bandleader for Little Feat, Lowell George first performed in public on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour at age six, playing harmonica with his brother Hampton in a duet. During his secondary school years, George began playing guitar, flute and saxophone.

George was not a rock and roll fan, preferring jazz and soul jazz. After high school, he worked odd jobs to support his studies in art history. His location in Hollywood and his family connection to the entertainment industry got George access to several unusual gigs for his first band, The Factory. The group had bit parts on several contemporary comedies, including F Troop and Gomer Pyle, USMC.

In 1968, George joined the Mothers of Invention and played on five Zappa albums. When he approached Zappa with material for the band, the two agreed that George would be best off forming his own band. That is when he and a set of musicians from the Mothers left to form Little Feat.

Lowell George remained with Little Feat through 1979. A highlight for the band was the opening spot on the 1976 tour by The Who. Internal disagreements over the band’s direction led several founding members to depart and the first disbandment of the group.

While in Little Feat, George had successful projects as a producer, including Shakedown Street for the Grateful Dead, and also worked as a session musician on albums by John Cale, The Meters, Harry Nilsson, and Jackson Browne. Possibly the most visible work by George as a session musician was his slide guitar on Robert Palmer’s first album, Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley.

Lowell George recorded one solo record in 1979. A stellar cast of supporting artists appeared on the album and George selected a mix of originals and covers to complete the record.

His overindulgent lifestyle brought on his death in 1979 while on tour to support the solo record. Binge eating and drug abuse left George morbidly obese. The morning after a show in Washington, D.C., Lowell George died of a heart attack in his motel room in Arlington.

Award winning jazz musician Herbie Hancock turns 80 today. His career spans six decades and helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section. Multiple Hancock compositions are considered jazz standards and his work in electronic music with Bill Laswell produced a chart-topping hit in the ’80s. Hancock’s tribute to Joni Mitchell, 2007’s River: The Joni Letters, was only the second jazz album to win a Grammy for album of the year.

Hancock started in music studying classical piano in his hometown of Chicago, playing his first concert at 11. Through his teens, he never had a jazz instructor, developing his sense of the genre on his own. Hancock received a dual degree from Grinnell College in electrical engineering and music in 1960 and began performing and recording soon after, releasing his first album in 1962.

The first record, Takin’ Off, produced a hit for Mongo Santamaria with Hancock’s “Watermelon Man,” but more importantly it caught the attention of Miles Davis. He personally sought Hancock to join his Second Great Quintet, a group that is still considered one of the all time greatest jazz combos.

Herbie Hancock continued in the Quintet through 1968 while simultaneously releasing his own records and working on dozens of other records. When Davis led the group towards incorporating more rock elements, Hancock reluctantly followed, a decision that would pay off with his later records.

In 1973 Hancock formed his Headhunters band and played a jazz fusion style embraced by pop audiences but criticized by jazz purists. This led on to his involvement with Bill Laswell and the Grammy winning single “Rockit.” The instrumental was the first pop hit to feature scratching. An example of Hancock’s genre-fusing performances is illustrated by a Grammy performance when Hancock played a synthesizer jam with Stevie Wonder, Thomas Dolby, and Howard Jones.

Herbie Hancock has recorded 45 albums and won 13 Grammys.

Husband and wife duo Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent play under the band name Shovels & Rope, but it was a moniker neither expected to last. Cary Ann met Michael while performing as a solo artist in Charleston during and after her days as a student at the University of Charleston, and Michael was a relocated musician from Colorado. After both released solo albums, they recorded one together titled Shovels & Rope but credited to the two artists.

Once the pair committed to the band, they began to record award-winning music. 2012’s O’ Be Joyful earned the band two Americana awards in 2013 – for Emerging Artist of the Year and for Song of the Year for “Birmingham.”

The pair were the subject of a documentary about the forming of the band, a process that was expected to take three months but extended to two years. The film, The Ballad of Shovels & Rope, was finally released around the same time as their second album, Swimmin’ Time.

Shovels & Rope have recorded five albums of original material to go along with their Busted Jukebox series, which now numbers three volumes. Busted Jukebox features the duo paired up with favorite artists covering favorite songs.

With studio albums, the covers series, a pair of films, and their hosting of an annual music festival, it would seem that their plate is full, but they recently added a new impactful event: The couple recently became parents.

The pair say that parenting has impacted their music. “It definitely did something to us,” Trent said. Hearst added, “After we became parents, music just sounded different, and we both became a little more sentimental.”

Would electronic music exist if there had been no Kraftwerk? Most likely the answer is “Yes,” but it might sound a lot different if the band had not forged a path for its development. Starting out in the Krautrock scene in Germany in the early ’70s, Kraftwerk evolved to fully embrace electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders.

The band’s first two albums were recorded mostly with traditional instruments, but the sound of the all instrumental records was altered in the studio. By their third record they moved to electronic instruments, and by 1975’s Autobahn, the band had grown to four members and played a style they described as robot pop, combining electronic instruments with repetitive pop style hooks while dressed in stylish matching suits .

Kraftwerk’s biggest successes came in the mid ’70s through the ’80s starting with Autobahn in 1974. When the album peaked at number 5 in the US, Kraftwerk’s label supported an international tour, bringing the group to North America for the first time. Their following Radio-Activity album drew interest from David Bowie and he asked the band to tour with him – an offer they declined.

Kraftwerk did not tour again until 1981, after the extensive modifications they had made to their studio could be made portable, and it was taken on the road with the band. Despite their on again, off again style of tours putting them in the public eye, the band is notoriously reclusive, providing rare interviews, using life-size mannequins and robots to conduct official photo shoots, refusing to accept mail and not allowing visitors at their studio, the precise location of which they used to keep secret.

David Bowie’s interest in the band did not diminish despite his multiple attempts to collaborate having never materialized. “V-2 Schneider” on his Heroes album is a tribute to Florian Schneider. A diverse group of acts including U2, Blondie, Simple Minds, and Joy Division cite Kraftwerk as an influence on their work.

After a career spanning more than five decades, singer-songwriter Janis Ian plans to bid farewell with her latest album and tour. The Light at the End of the Line is her first new original material in fifteen years and marks the close of her long recording career.

Ian started writing songs as a twelve-year-old and that was far along in her musical journey. At her own insistence, she began piano lessons as a two-year-old and by her teens had mastered multiple instruments.

Janis Ian had her first hit single with a controversial song about interracial romance. “Society’s Child” was released three times between 1965 and 1967, finally becoming a hit after Leonard Bernstein featured it on a CBS television special.

“Society’s Child” reached No. 14 on Billboard’s Hot 100. It also drew controversy due to its subject matter. Ian said that the response, which included threats to her and her family, was scary, but it taught her a lesson about the power that a three-minute song could have.

“It was very difficult, and again, very scary,” Ian said. “But in retrospect, when I started being able to look at it with a little perspective, it was a great lesson. I still get people whose lives were changed by it, coming up to me and sending me emails letting me know that, so it’s also a privilege.”

Following her North American tour, Ian plans to tour Europe. After that, she said “I honestly don’t know” what’s in store. She’s looking forward to the idea of a week off email and the Internet, or going to a show in her hometown – now as an attendee rather than the performer.

“I’d like to just have the opportunity to get bored,” Ian said. “I think that would be amazing.”

On this day in 1937, Country Music Hall of Fame member Merle Haggard was born in Oildale, California. Haggard recorded 38 #1 country songs in the ’60s thru the ’80s, but he started out on a much different path.

After his father died, Haggard became rebellious, committing many minor crimes that landed him in juvenile detention. After escaping and being returned multiple times, Haggard finally ended up in San Quentin prison and was paroled in 1960. After digging ditches for a while, Haggard returned to music and by 1964 had his first #1 song. In 1968 Haggard wrote “Mama Tried,” a song that won him a Grammy and was a look back at the pain and suffering he caused his mother by being incarcerated at San Quentin.

Merle Haggard’s string of successful songs brought many admirers, including Gram Parsons. Initially, Haggard agreed to produce Parsons’ first album, but backed out. Later he had this to say about Gram Parsons: “Hell, he was just a long-haired kid. I thought he was a good writer. He was not wild, though. That’s what’s funny to me. All these guys running around in long hair talking about being wild and rolling stones. I don’t think someone abusing themselves on drugs determines how wild they are. It might determine how ignorant they are.”

Merle Haggard won multiple Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, the same year he received a Kennedy Center Honors award. He passed away on his 79th birthday in 2016.

Playing at the blues bars of Chicago’s South Side in the 1940s, Muddy Waters began to assemble what appeared to be an early incarnation of a rock band.

Waters found he couldn’t command much attention unamplified in a crowded, noisy club. So in 1944, he bought his first electric guitar. As a vocalist, he developed a raw and impassioned shouting style.

His groups, which played with all amps cranked, consisted of bass, drums, second guitar, piano, and harmonica, with Waters on slide guitar and vocals. He and a shifting company of stellar sidemen played hard-edged, unadulterated blues, but his bands had the earmarks—in size, volume and attitude—of rock combos to come.

Chess Records did not allow Waters to use his own band on early records, inserting studio musicians in their place.

Muddy Waters was born in Mississippi in 1913 or 1915 – there is conflicting information on the date. His mother died when he was young and was raised by his grandmother. She gave him the nickname ‘Muddy’ for his love of playing in muddy water around the house.

Waters was introduced to music in church. He sold the family’s last horse, splitting the proceeds with his grandmother, and used a part of it to purchase his first guitar. Waters began playing clubs as a teen. His first recording was made by Alan Lomax for the Smithsonian, recorded in his home. It was an inspiration for Waters, who loved hearing his own voice coming from the recording equipment.

Muddy Waters recorded songs that on rose the R&B charts in the ’50s, before crossing over to a more rock-oriented sound for his later records in the ’70s and ’80s. Those later records won four Grammys and resuscitated his career.

Muddy Waters died in 1983 of complications from cancer.

Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970s work was an important foundation for the development of rap music, a mix of no-nonsense street poetry that was politically and socially conscious. His work inspired a generation of rappers who valued his intelligent songwriting.

Scott-Heron was born in Chicago but relocated to Tennessee, then spent most of his high school years in the Bronx, where he experienced firsthand some of the issues he raises in his music. His writing began as a preteen, completing his first book of poetry at 13. Moving to Pennsylvania for college, Scott-Heron lasted a year before dropping out to focus on his writing. His first novel The Vulture came soon after that.

Gil Scott-Heron’s parents divorced when he was young and he was sent to Tennessee to be raised by his grandmother. She introduced him to literature and music but it was there he experienced prejudice. He was one of three children picked to integrate an elementary school in nearby Jackson. The abuse proved too much to bear, however, and the eighth grader was sent to New York to live with his mother.

Gil Scott-Heron was encouraged to record in the late ’60s by producer Bob Thiele, who had worked with jazz greats including Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane. His early work focused heavily on spoken word versions of his poetry and placed him on the jazz charts.

Scott-Heron met his first musical partner Brian Jackson during his brief time as a student at Lincoln University. Jackson’s departure in 1978 led Scott-Heron in a different musical direction – one that brought some success on the R&B charts in addition to jazz. Heron stopped recording in 1982 and did not return for 12 years.

While Gil Scott-Heron is credited as a godfather of rap, he is ambivalent about that recognition, remarking in 2010 in an interview for the Daily Swarm: “I don’t know if I can take the blame for [rap music]”. Scott-Heron died in 2011 from an unspecified illness.

Ryan Bingham’s career has the unusual distinction of earning him a Grammy, a Golden Globe and an Oscar. His career started with music, but it was not an instant connection for the teen. His mother bought him a guitar when he was 16, which he left unused in his closet. When he decided to hitchhike to Texas a year later, he took the guitar along with him.

In Laredo, he learned a mariachi tune – but nothing else until he relocated to Stephenville. While a student at Tarleton State University, he began to learn more about music and also joined the school rodeo team. A missed opportunity for a job in Paris, France left him broke, so he started busking to earn enough money to return to Texas.

On his return, he started his band Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses. Marc Ford from the Black Crowes saw them perform in a nearly empty bar and was impressed enough to offer the group a chance to record an album.

Ryan Bingham’s first major label record came in 2007 with Mescalito. While the album was well received, it was his composition of “The Weary Kind” for the movie Crazy Heart that brought the most attention to the artist. Bingham also appeared in the film.

Crazy Heart led to more soundtrack and acting opportunities which Bingham has pursued in parallel with his recording career that now includes 7 albums. Most recently, Bingham has appeared in the TV series Yellowstone. Bingham says that “I knew the guy that’s directed and written the show, Taylor Sheridan, from a few years back. When Yellowstone came about, he initially just contacted me about writing some songs for the show. Once we met and hung out a bit, he found out that I used to rodeo and grew up ranching… He said, ‘Man, I got to get you in the show if you can do all that stuff.’”

Tracy Chapman burst onto the music scene with her debut album in 1988. That first record received six Grammy nominations and was a 6x platinum seller. She won three Grammys for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist, and Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Born in Ohio, Chapman received her first musical instrument when she was three when her mother gave her a ukulele. Subjected to racially motivated bullying as a child, Chapman was accepted into a program that supported her attendance at a boarding school. She went from there on to Tufts University. At Tufts she began performing and was signed to a record deal before her graduation in 1987.

Tracy Chapman won a fourth Grammy in 1997 for “Give Me One Reason” from her fourth album. In addition to the music on her records, she has been active in theater and film, composing for the American Conservatory Theater and serving as a jurist at the Sundance Film Festival.

She has continually refused to allow her music to be sampled and successfully defended that policy in court when Nicki Minaj used her material. She blocked release of a song and was awarded a six-figure settlement.

A very private person, Chapman draws a clear distinction between her personal and public lives.