News & Updates — soul!

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...

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...

Happy birthday to the jump-blues icon Roy Brown, one of the foundational artists of rock & roll and the composer of the massive 1948 hit "Good Rocking Tonight", which was successful for both Brown and Wynonie Harris that same year. From New Orleans, he went to Los Angeles in the '40s to be a pro boxer and work in the sugarcane fields. He moved to Texas in '46, where he wrote and started performing "Good Rocking Tonight". "Hard Luck Blues" was another big one for him in 1950. After defeating King Records in court in 1952 for unpaid royalties, the...

Happy birthday to one of the greatest soul men to ever live, the irreplaceable Otis Redding!