News & Updates — Celebrate Icons

Happy birthday to the Godfather of Soul, the Minister of the New New Superheavy Funk, Soul Brother #1, the hardest working man in show business, Mr Dynamite...James Brown!

The great Shawnee rocker Link Wray invented the power chord and helped set off the hard rock revolution, influencing punk, thrash & heavy metal with his 1958 hit "Rumble" spawning the future headbanger generation. He made his first record in '55, before heading to Korea with the Army. He got tuberculosis and spent a year in the hospital. A lung was removed and he was told he'd never sing again (they were wrong). So he started working out instrumentals and made several records, some of which were recorded in a makeshift studio in a chicken shack (often in partnership with...

The original Riot Grrl, long before such a phenomenon, Lesley Gore's big hits, "It's My Party", "Judy's Turn To Cry", "That's The Way Boys Are" and the feminist statement "You Don't Own Me", were all produced by Quincy Jones and released while Lesley was still in high school. She was popular in the mid '60s, appearing in films and television, before the hippy generation tossed her aside for awhile. She found some more success with the movie Fame, writing "Out Here On My Own" for Irene Cara. A lesbian herself, she hosted a LGBT rights-oriented TV show for a stretch...

One of the rumberos who helped the tradition thrive in NYC, Totico is best known for teaming with Carlos "Patato" Valdes. Born in Havana, he arrived in Boston in '59 and moved to NYC shortly after. He quickly found work as a percussionist, playing with Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln & Eric Dolphy on Roach's incredible Percussion Bittersuite album in '61. He also hooked up with Pupi Legarreta's charanga ensemble (check the Salsa Nova LP) before the absolute classic rumba album Patato & Totico on Verve ('68). The album features Arsenio Rodriguez and Cachao, and I love the killer version of...

Blues harp icon Little Walter Jacobs influenced nearly every single blues and rock harmonica player that came after him, Junior Wells included. He was hugely popular in the '50s with his loose & jazzy updates of old blues tunes, as well as original compositions hitting the charts and attaining worldwide popularity. Born and raised in Louisiana, he quit school at 12 to busk and work in various cities in the South, playing with Honeyboy Edwards and Sunnyland Slim along the way before hitting the Windy City in '45. Chicago, being the loud & buzzing town that it was, forced Walter...