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Alemán, Oscar Marcelo  

Mariana Isabel Lorenzetti

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

who specialized in jazz. Some sources (e.g., Ortega, 2007) give his date of birth as 20 February 1909, in the locality of Machagai, Chaco Province, in the far north of Argentina. Others (e.g., Gaffet, 2002) record his birthplace as the city of Resistencia, Chaco’s capital. Oscar Alemán was the son of Marcela Pereira—of the indigenous Qom, or Toba people—and of the amateur guitarist Jorge Alemán Moreira, who was born in Uruguay. He was the fourth of seven children in his family.

Alemán began to explore the world of music at a very young age, mostly through self-instruction. According to the family of the musician Guilldermo Iacona, at 6 years old, in 1915, Oscar belonged to a group called Moreira Sextet, along with his father and siblings Rodolfo, Carlos, Jorgelina, and Juana (Iacona et al., 2012 As a member of that group he delivered his ...

Article

Amadeo, Miguel Ángel  

Sonia Fuentes Resto

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, on 8 May 1934, to Alberto “Titi” Amadeo, a popular composer, and Vicenta Rodríguez. Miguel and his older brother Ramón were raised by their mother, who was a seamstress and homemaker. Miguel was only about a year old when his father left the family to return to New York City full-time, where he had been living on and off since 1927. In the late 1920s, the Puerto Rican music scene in New York was exploding, with Rafael Hernández, Pedro Flores, and Manuel Jiménez making a name for themselves as composers and performers. Alberto Amadeo became an accomplished songwriter himself, with many popular Latin American stars recording his songs. Miguel, however, had no relationship with his father, and although he seemed to inherit his musical talent from him, his father’s success would offer him no entrée into the industry.

After World War II ...

Article

Anderson, Pink  

Jason Philip Miller

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2018

was born Pinkney Anderson in the small town of Laurens in southwestern South Carolina. Little is known about his early years or upbringing. He apparently learned to play guitar at a very early age and by the time he was ten years old could play the open tuned guitar, common in blues music. He was something of a natural showman, earning small change by dancing for passersby on the streets of Greenville and Spartanburg, to which his family relocated during his childhood. Sometime probably around 1914 or 1915 he fell in with Frank Smiley Kerr his first name is variously recorded though whether this is due to error or because Kerr went by different names is unclear purportedly a doctor whose Indian Remedy Company peddled various potions and nostrums of a more or less fanciful nature As part of the show Anderson played his guitar between pitches Remarkably he ...

Article

Arnold, James  

Mark Steven Maulucci

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

singer and guitarist known as “Kokomo,” was born in Lovejoy Station, Georgia, a small railroad town in Clayton County, approximately twenty‐five miles south of Atlanta. He was raised on a farm and learned some guitar from a relative named John Wigges, who was an accomplished knife‐style guitarist. In 1919 Arnold moved to Buffalo, New York, where he worked in a steel mill. After stops and similar jobs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Gary, Indiana, Arnold moved to the Mississippi Delta in the late 1920s. He reportedly made a living as a bootlegger and throughout his life regarded his music as a sideline. He lived for a while in Glen Allan, Mississippi, and played with a partner named Willie Morris.

In 1930 Arnold made his recording debut as Gitfiddle Jim in a Memphis recording session for Victor The two songs Rainy Night Blues and Paddlin Madeline Blues displayed the ...

Article

Ashby, Irving C.  

Barry Kernfeld

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

jazz guitarist, was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston, the son of an apartment superintendent. His parents' names are unknown. The family was musical and closely in touch with the world of entertainment: “Fats Waller used to come by the house all the time,” Ashby told the writer James Haskins Ashby taught himself to play guitar At age fifteen he joined a band that played sophisticated arrangements for college dances and deeply embarrassed by his inability to read music he began to learn chordal notation He performed at a nightclub at Revere Beach while attending Roxbury Memorial High School Ashby s abilities as a classical guitarist won him a scholarship at an open audition for the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston but the school had no guitar teacher and thus the award went to the runner up So that s the extent of my conservatory background ...

Article

Baker, MacHouston  

Mark Steven Maulucci

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2016

guitarist and singer, was born MacHouston Baker in Louisville, Kentucky. He believed his father was a white pianist who was traveling through Louisville. His African American mother, Lillian, was just twelve years old when he was born. She was troubled and not able to properly care for him. He spent much of his youth in an orphanage. Hes felt confined, though, and often ran away, traveling to Chicago, St. Louis, and eventually New York City at age fifteen.

He took different menial jobs to survive and at nineteen wanted to pursue his passion to be a jazz musician His first instrument of choice was a trumpet but upon visiting a pawn shop he discovered he could not afford one so he bought a beat up guitar instead He took lessons from a man named Rector Bailey and learned quickly The absorption and utilization of all that he heard ...

Article

Ballivián Vásquez, Juan Carlos  

Esther Aillón Soria and Sara Busdiecker

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in La Glorieta in the Nor Yungas Province of the department of La Paz, Bolivia, on 25 March 1977. His parents, Justo Ballivián (1950– ) and Juana Vásquez Larrea (1948–2012), worked in agriculture, cultivating traditional-use coca plants and citrus fruits. His siblings include sisters Angélica (a resident of Spain), Reyna, Mari Cruz, and Saida and a brother, Jorge.

At the age of 10, upon the separation of his parents, he moved with his mother and siblings from La Glorieta to the nearby community of Tocaña. His childhood and adolescence thereafter were spent studying and working odd jobs in Tocaña, La Paz, and Coroico, the provincial capital of Nor Yungas. He graduated from Coroico’s secondary school, Colegio Guerrilleros Lanza (part of the Fe y Alegría International Federation network of schools), in 1999 He fathered a son Amanileo a resident of the United States in ...

Article

Barbieri, Guillermo Desiderio  

Mariana Isabel Lorenzetti

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

accompanied Carlos Gardel, the celebrated singer of Argentine tangos, with his compositions and music. He was born on 25 September 1894 in the neighborhood of San Cristóbal in the city of Buenos Aires. He was self-taught, and his father, Tristán Barbieri, helped him develop his talent for the guitar from a young age. At the age of 17 he married Rosario Acosta, with whom he had five children: María Esther, Carmen Luz, Adela, Guillermo Oscar, and Alfredo Barbieri (who was Carlos Gardel’s godson). He was the grandfather of Carmen Barbieri, who is today a well-known actress and comedian. The anthropologist Norberto Cirio (2012) confirmed in his writing that Barbieri’s ancestors were of African descent.

In 1916, Barbieri began to play with his accompanist Luciano Cardelli, nicknamed “El tanito,” playing serenades and baptisms in the neighborhoods of the city of Buenos Aires. According to the tango historian Horacio ...

Article

Barker, Danny  

Michael Mizell-Nelson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

jazz guitarist and banjoist, vocalist, and author, was born Daniel Moses Barker in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Moses Barker, a drayman, and Rose Barbarin Barker. Barker grew up in New Orleans with a largely absent Baptist father of rural origins and a mother whose familial connections to the Barbarin family, famed in New Orleans music, rooted him in the city's Creole of Color musical community. His childhood experiences immersed him in the cultures of both sides of his family: rural Protestant and urban Roman Catholic.

Barker's uncle, the drummer Paul Barbarin composer of the jazz standard Bourbon Street Parade started Danny on drums after trying the clarinet Danny decided to play multiple string instruments guitar banjo and ukulele A teenaged Barker played in spasm bands children s bands that featured rudimentary instruments often created from discarded objects Playing ukulele Barker led a spasm band named ...

Article

Bello Gularte, Jorge “Jorginho Gularte”  

Mario Angel Silva Castro

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

His lifelong research allowed him to re-create the candombe drum with fusions that included samba, rap, bossa nova, and funk, among other styles.

Jorge Damião Bello Gularte, known as “Jorginho,” was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on 16 February 1956. The son of José Bello and “Martha” Gularte, a well-known figure within Afro-Uruguayan culture, he spent his childhood moving between Uruguay and Brazil. When he definitively settled with his mother and sister, Katy, in Montevideo, they found a home on Curuguaty Street in the Barrio Sur, barely a block from the emblematic tenement house “Mediomundo” (a significant space for African candombe). From a young age, he was involved in music, taking piano lessons in Porto Alegre, and by the age of 11 he was already playing the candombe drums and participating in his mother’s groups. He also began to teach himself to play the guitar in 1969 ...

Article

Ben Jor, Jorge  

Tshombe L. Miles

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born Jorge Duilio Lima Menezes in Rio de Janeiro, on 22 March 1942. Ben Jor is of mixed African and European heritage, including a grandfather on his mother’s side who came to Brazil from Ethiopia. In November 2009, in an interview for Trip magazine, he described his youth as a time when all of his basic needs were met. He received a good education, at Colégio Diocesano São José in Rio de Janeiro, and even studied at a seminary, also in Rio de Janeiro, where he had the opportunity to read philosophy. This would have a profound effect on his development. As a youth he also proved to be a talented soccer player, and he has devoted many songs to the sport.

Ben Jor is a self taught guitarist singer and songwriter Over the course of his musical career he has experimented with a variety of musical ...

Article

Benjor, Jorge  

Christopher Dunn

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in Rio de Janiero, Jorge Duílio Lima Menezes began his music career in the early 1960s using the stage name Jorge Ben, taken from the surname of his Ethiopian mother, who gave him his first guitar. He divided his energies between rock and roll and bossa nova, the sophisticated new style based on Samba rhythms and Jazz harmonies. In 1963 he recorded his first LP album, Samba Esquema Novo, followed by Sacudim Ben Samba and Ben é Samba Bom in 1964. He scored an international hit with “Mas que nada,” which inspired versions by Sérgio Mendes, South African diva Miriam Makeba, and Hugh Masekela.

In the late 1960s his music was embraced by the innovative tropicalist movement led by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso who celebrated his electric fusions of international black popular music while others criticized him for deviating from authentic Brazilian ...

Article

Bennett, Wayne  

Mark Steven Maulucci

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2016

guitarist, was born in Sulfer, Oklahoma. His father, DeWitt Bennett, was a chef on the train, El Capitan, which was on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line running from Chicago to Los Angeles. The elder Bennett was a major influence on Wayne and strongly emphasized the importance of education. The family moved to Madill, another small Oklahoma town, and when he was thirteen or fourteen, his mother bought him a guitar and he taught himself to play by listening to country and western, big band jazz, and the rhythm and blues orchestras of T-Bone Walker, and Louis Jordan and Lionell Hampton on the radio. Interestingly, that area of the United States gave birth to a good many trailblazing guitarists like Walker, Charlie Christian, Gatemouth Brown, Freddie King, and Albert Collins.

Bennett attended high school in nearby Ardmore Oklahoma where he played ...

Article

Benson, George  

Jason Philip Miller

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

jazz guitarist, musician, and singer was born in the Hill District the African American center of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Little information about his early life is available except that Benson enjoyed a musical upbringing and was considered something of a wunderkind Indeed he won his first singing contest at the age of four and before he was ten years old he was performing publicly winning more music contests and appearing on local radio broadcasts His favorite instrument was the guitar he d actually first picked up a ukulele that had been handmade for him by his stepfather but he sang as well and at the age of ten he recorded his first single She Makes Me Mad for an offshoot of the RCA label At first he was interested in rhythm and blues and rock and roll but soon he fell under the influence of the jazz greats ...

Article

Berry, Charles Edward Anderson (Chuck)  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Few performers have had a more profound effect on American popular music than Chuck Berry. The staccato guitar cadenzas with which he opened songs such as “Maybellene” (1955) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958) helped define the new guitar idiom of rock and roll. His lyrics, celebrating teen freedom, music, dancing, and the pleasures of automobiles gave substance to the rock genre. Berry's influence shaped the music of later musicians from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to artists of the present.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was first exposed to music when the choir of his parents' Baptist church gathered to rehearse in the front room of his childhood home. An avid fan of the Blues Berry took up guitar as a hobby at age fourteen He worked in an automobile factory and as a hairdresser before turning to his guitar playing and ...

Article

Berry, Chuck  

Timothy D. Taylor

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
01 December 2006

(b St Louis, 18 Oct 1926; d Wentzville, MO, 18 March 2017). American rock and roll singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Born into a solid working-class black family, he worked at a variety of jobs before pursuing a career in music. He achieved success rather late; his first number one hit, Maybellene, was recorded in 1955 when he was 29. During the 1950s and 60s he wrote a number of hit songs which have become rock and roll standards, including Roll over Beethoven, Too Much Monkey Business, Brown-Eyed Handsome Man, School Days, Back in the USA, Little Queenie, Memphis, Tennessee, and Johnny B. Goode Berry s songs were based on 12 bar blues progressions with variations ranging from 8 to 24 bars played at fast tempos with an emphasis on the backbeat He ...

Article

Berry, Chuck  

John Edwin Mason

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

singer, songwriter, and guitarist, was born Charles Edward Anderson Berry in St. Louis, Missouri, the fourth of six children of Henry William Berry, a carpenter and handyman, and Martha Bell Banks. The industrious Henry Berry instilled in his son a hunger for material success and a prodigious capacity for hard work, traits that were not entirely apparent in Berry as a youth. Martha Berry, a skilled pianist and accomplished singer, passed on to her son her love for music. By the time he was a teenager, however, Berry preferred jazz, blues, and the “beautiful harmony of country music” to his mother's Baptist hymns (Berry, 14).

In 1944 Berry and two friends hatched an ill considered plan to drive across the country to California They soon ran out of money and committed a series of armed robberies in an attempt to return home All three were ...

Article

Berry, Chuck  

Timothy J. O'Brien

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

rock-and-roll pioneer. Chuck Berry is truly the father of rock and roll. His vibrant songwriting, innovative guitar playing, and live performances inspired legions of followers, and he was the single most important figure in defining a new genre that mixed country and rhythm and blues.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born to Henry William Berry Sr., a carpenter, and Martha Bell Banks, a housewife, in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1926. The family belonged to a Baptist church, and Berry's earliest memories were of his parents singing gospel songs around the house. His first try at show business, singing “Confessin’ the Blues” to a friend's guitar accompaniment at a high school talent show, inspired him to play guitar.

While still in high school in Saint Louis he left for a trip to California with two friends When their money ran low they robbed a few small businesses and ...

Article

Bikoko, Jean-Aladin  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 January 2020

was born in the village of Messondo not far from Yaoundé Cameroon His father was a lay Catholic catechist and Bikoko sang in the church choir He also participated in dances in the Assiko rhythm a music and dance style associated with the Bassa ethnic group After spending several years in primary school at the Catholic mission in Eséka Bikoko dropped out while still an adolescent to try to make a living He became a cook and servant at a timber camp in the village of Bonepoupa about 104 kilometers from Eséka While in Bonepoupa he began to play guitar He learned from local musicians Albert Dikoumé and Henri Hiag and made his own instrument from bark and bamboo It was the beginning of his slow ascent to the summit of the Cameroonian music scene Leaving Bonepoupa for the town of Songmbenguè located near the city of Edéa Bikoko played ...

Article

BO Diddley  

Frank E. Dobson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. The blues performer known as Bo Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates in McComb, Mississippi, to Eugene Bates, a father whom he never knew, and Ethel Wilson, a teenage mother. He was raised by his mother's first cousin Gussie McDaniel, and when his adoptive father, Robert McDaniel, died in 1934, Gussie moved the family to Chicago.

Diddley first studied music as a child under Professor O. W. Fredrick while attending Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago While attending Foster Vocational High School in Chicago he studied various instruments including the guitar harmonica and trombone His sister bought his first guitar for him when he was twelve During his high school years he also formed a band the Hipsters later called the Langley Avenue Jive Cats In the late 1940s Diddley tried his hand at a number ...