News & Updates — Celebrate Icons

Here's a nod to the underknown pianist Harry Whitaker, on his day of birth. Harry was more of a behind-the-scenes guy, best known for his work with Roy Ayers' Ubiquity (he composed the classic "We Live In Brooklyn Baby") and Roberta Flack (during her peak years). From Pensacola FL, he started playing piano at 5. His family moved later to Detroit, and he got his career started there with local gigs as a teenager. In 1960 he moved to NYC. He played with Slide Hampton in '65 before taking to playing on the road in various bands. He joined Ayers...

Here's a shout-out to "The Ugly One", pioneering Jamaican dee-jay "toaster" Winston Sparkes aka King Stitt. Born with a unique face and a stuttering habit, he embraced these attributes and they became part of his public persona. He got his start as an early deejay for Coxone Dodd's Downbeat sound system in 1956 after being spotted by the OG deejay Count Machuki and went on to be a popular attraction during the ska years. In '69 he cut his first recordings for producer Clancy Eccles (not including some live action sound system recordings from '63 that weren't released until later)....

One of my very favorites of the honky/cracker artists, country music star Hank Williams had a soulful delivery and wrote some lasting classics. He came from Alabama and got his guitar lessons from a black street performer named Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne before getting his professional start in Montgomery in '37. He started out on the radio before signing a recording contract with MGM. He became very popular and was part of the Grand Ole Opry for a brief period and made some television appearances. He developed bad addictions to booze & painkillers (he was born with spinal problems) and...

Happy birthday to the lovable soul-blues icon B.B. King! A huge influence on so many electric blues guitarists & singers, soul artists as well as the rock generation, his style was immediately identifiable and his hit songs rank among the most loved in twentieth century music. From a sharecropping family in Indianola MS, he sang gospel in church and at 12 was given a guitar by his cousin Bukka White. He started his career locally in '43 and three years later moved to Memphis with White. He worked as a radio DJ and playing in clubs and recorded his early...

Julian "Cannonball" Adderley became one of the highly respected alto saxophonists of the hard bop and soul-jazz eras. Indeed, with his bluesy wail and accessible style he was one of jazz's most popular and visible artists in the late '60s and into the '70s before his death from a stroke. Originally from Tampa, he and his brother Nat, a cornetist, grew up in Tallahassee FL, both of them earning early professional experience in the early '40s backing Ray Charles in Florida. Cannon moved to Ft Lauderdale for awhile before a move to NYC in '55, the year he first recorded...