Egocentrics

Edith Piaf: Edith Piaf was one of France’s most beloved singers, with much success shortly before and during World War II. Her music reflected her tragic life, with her specialty being the poignant ballad presented with a heartbreaking voice. The most famous songs performed by Piaf were La Vie en Rose (1946), Milord (1959), and Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (1960).

Cowboy Junkies @Facebook : Three of the band’s members – singer Margo Timmins; songwriter, producer and guitarist Michael Timmins; and drummer Peter Timmins – are siblings, and bassist Alan Anton has been a member since the group formed in Toronto in 1985. Few bands have lasted nearly as long with their original line-up intact, and fewer still have created as consistently satisfying a body of work.

Patience & Prudence @Ear Candy Mag : Patience & Prudence were actually sisters and the daughters of orchestra leader Mack McIntyre. Patience (11 years old) and Prudence (14 years old) McIntyre were encouraged by their father, who was already a well know piano player and songwriter (who also co-wrote the B-sides of their two hits). Mack McIntyre brought his daughters into the Liberty Records recording studios in Los Angeles in the summer of 1956. One of the songs from their audition tape was a cover of the 1927 hit by Gene Austin called, “Tonight You Belong to Me”.

Blues On Stage : The second set was all Little Charlie and the Nightcats. Charlie Baty was the man I came to see, and words really can’t describe what a joy it was to watch him play and spend some time visiting with him before and after the show. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Charlie is the difference in sound between his Gibson and his Strat playing.

Julie Doiron : Doiron started playing guitar (later switching to bass) in Eric’s Trip at the age of eighteen, having joined the band at the insistence of her then-boyfriend, Rick White, also of Eric’s Trip. Shortly before the band’s break-up in 1996, she released a solo album under the name Broken Girl, which followed two previous 7″ EPs also released under that name. All of her subsequent material has been released under her own name.

Horace Silver : He is a prolific composer, and one of very few jazz musicians to record almost exclusively original material; his work consistently combines simplicity and profundity in a rhythmically infectious style which, despite its sophistication, sounds completely natural. Several of his compositions have become jazz standards, including “The Preacher,” [mp3] “Doodlin’,” “Opus de Funk,” “Senor Blues,” “Nica’s Dream,” “Sister Sadie” and “Song for my Father.

Gretchen Parlato : Gretchen Parlato’s 2009 sophomore breakthrough, In a Dream, signaled the arrival of an incredibly inventive modern jazz singer. Her follow-up, The Lost and Found, demonstrates that she has staying power. In a Dream garnered international acclaim with Billboard magazine hailing it as “the most alluring jazz vocal album of 2009”; it also made it onto the top year-end polls for Jazz Times, the Boston Globe, the Village Voice and NPR.

Michael Bublé : Bublé’s interest in jazz music began around age five when his family played Bing Crosby‘s White Christmas album at Christmas time. The first time that his family noticed his singing talent was at Christmas time when Bublé was 13 years old, and they heard him powerfully sing the phrase “May your days be merry and bright” when the family was singing to the song “White Christmas” in a car ride.

[/toggle]