News & Updates — rock

Happy birthday to another one they sometimes call The Fifth Beatle, Billy Preston. The future top session man grew up in Los Angeles a piano prodigy. At 10 he was performing with Mahalia Jackson and was on TV at 11 dueting with Nat King Cole. He played a young WC Handy in the biopic St Louis Blues in '58. He joined Little Richard's group in '62 as the band organist, meeting the Beatles in Germany. In '63 he played on Sam Cooke's absolute classic Night Beat. The same year Cooke produced Preston's first album, 16 Year Old Soul. He joined Ray...

Here's a shout-out to the original scumdog of the universe, Dave Brockie, better known as Oderus Urungus of the heavy metal/comedy/theatre/shock troupe GWAR. A Canadian, Brockie played bass, guitar or sang in the bands Death Piggy, X-Cops and DBX. For GWAR he reinvented himself as the 50 billion-year old caresser of his cuddlefish, dubbing himself Oderus Urungus, spewing fluids all over his audiences in outrageous costumes with equally outrageous storylines, attracting both positive and negative mainstream attention. As Oderus, he also had a character in the nutty TV sitcom Holliston. Happy birthday Dave Brockie, RIP.

One of the fathers of rock & roll and a top blues shouter and dancer in his day, here is the guy Elvis Presley stole his stage moves from. From Omaha, Wynonie Harris got big locally in the '30s and took his show on the road: Kansas City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Harlem, Nashville and Texas were some key touch-down points. In '44 he joined Lucky Millinder's band and "Who Threw The Whiskey In The Well" was a #1 hit in '45. After that success he signed as an artist with Philo and hired Johnny Otis to put his band together, which...

One of my favorite musicians was John Lee Hooker and his deeply entrancing boogie, a droning one-chord style that is one of the more direct links from American electric blues to an ancient African sound pool. From the Mississippi Delta, his exact birth year is disputed. His earliest musical experience was with spirituals before learning to play the blues from his step-father. He left home at 14 and by the '30s was playing on Memphis' Beale Street. In 1943, after a few years in Cincinnati, he started working at the Ford Motors plant in Detroit while playing local clubs. Around this...

Happy birthday to rock hero John Graham Mellor aka Joe Strummer!! Thanks for the great music with one of the greatest rock bands ever, The Clash, as well as your other projects.