Who were the great lyricists before Dylan? Well, from the fifties into the sixties you would probably say the men that wrote the words for the musicals, writers like Lorenz Hart. Hart wrote the lyrics for The Lady Is A Tramp and My Funny Valentine and was Richard Rodgers partner till alcoholism (Hart died tragically of […]
As I am near Bonn, it seemed only right to visit Beethoven’s birthplace. He was born in a house on Bonngasse 18-26 (now a museum) in 1770 and died in Vienna in 1827 aged 56. An autopsy revealed serious liver damage, probably from alcohol consumption. In the later part of his life his deafness was so […]
The first recording of Fever was by the legendary Detroit singer Little Willie John in 1956. It topped the R&B chart and made No.24 on the Billboard Hot 100. It is still considered the classic version of the song but not the best known. Peggy Lee recorded Fever two years later in 1958 and it became her […]
Ella Fitzgerald was one of the great Jazz singers of the 20th century, in this performance she uses her voice as an instrument – she finds the note, hits the vibrato pedal, then sustains, she holds a small cloth to wipe away her perspiration. She famously recorded a series of ‘Songbook albums’ that represented the […]