Jamesetta Hawkins, known professionally as Etta James, was an American singer and songwriter who performed in various genres, including gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, rock and roll, and soul. Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as "The Wallflower", "At Last", "Tell Mama", "Something's Got a Hold on Me", and "I'd Rather Go Blind". She faced a number of personal problems, including heroin addiction, severe physical abuse, and incarceration, before making a musical comeback in the late 1980s with the album Seven Year Itch.
Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He was among the most influential early bebop musicians. Gordon's height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and performance career spanned more than 40 years.
William Thomas "Champion Jack" Dupree was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer. His nickname was derived from his early career as a boxer.
Robben Lee Ford is an American blues, jazz, and rock guitarist. He was a member of the L.A. Express and Yellowjackets and has collaborated with Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Larry Carlton, Rick Springfield, Little Feat, and Kiss. He was named one of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of the 20th Century" by Musician magazine.
The Montreux Jazz Festival is a music festival in Switzerland, held annually in early July in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline. It is the second-largest annual jazz festival in the world after Canada's Montreal International Jazz Festival.
David William Sanborn was an American alto saxophonist. Sanborn worked in many musical genres; his solo recordings typically blended jazz with instrumental pop and R&B. He began playing the saxophone at the age of 11 and released his first solo album, Taking Off, in 1975. He was active as a session musician, and played on numerous albums by artists including Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Sting, the Eagles, Rickie Lee Jones, James Brown, George Benson, Carly Simon, Elton John, Bryan Ferry and the Rolling Stones. He released more than 20 albums and won six Grammy awards.
Otis Rush Jr. was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter. His distinctive guitar style featured a slow-burning sound and long bent notes, sometimes two and three at a time. Compared to other groups at the time where the sound of the band was the focus, he, along with Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, is credited with bringing the guitar to the forefront with a sound that became known as West Side Chicago blues which influenced many musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green and Eric Clapton.
Kim Wilson is an American blues singer and harmonica player. He is best known as the lead vocalist and frontman for The Fabulous Thunderbirds on two hit songs of the 1980s, "Tuff Enuff" and "Wrap It Up."
Ronnie Earl is an American blues guitarist and music instructor.
Michael John "Duke" Robillard is an American guitarist and singer. He founded the band Roomful of Blues and was a member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Although Robillard is known as a rock and blues guitarist, he also plays jazz and swing.
Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection.
Philip Sayce is a Welsh-born-American-Canadian guitarist, singer, songwriter, performer, and producer.
Barbara Ann "Bobbi" Humphrey is an American jazz flautist and singer. She has recorded twelve albums over the course of her career, mostly playing jazz fusion, funk, and soul-jazz. In 1971, she was the first female instrumentalist signed by Blue Note and in 1994, she founded the jazz label Paradise Sounds Records.
Ernest Harold "Benny" Bailey was an American jazz trumpeter.
Roomful of Blues is an American jump blues and swing revival big band based in Rhode Island. With a recording career that spans over 50 years, they have toured worldwide and recorded many albums. Roomful of Blues, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Swagger, sway and swing with energy and precision". Since 1967, the group’s blend of swing, rock and roll, jump blues, boogie-woogie and soul has earned it five Grammy Award nominations and many other accolades, including seven Blues Music Awards. Billboard called the band "a tour de force of horn-fried blues…Roomful is so tight and so right." The Down Beat International Critics Poll has twice selected Roomful of Blues as Best Blues Band.
Guy Lafitte was a French jazz saxophonist.
Harold Joseph Singer, also known as Hal "Cornbread" Singer, was an American R&B and jazz bandleader and saxophonist.
Paulinho da Costa is a Brazilian percussionist. Beginning his career as a samba musician in Brazil, he moved to the United States in the early 1970s and worked with Brazilian bandleader Sérgio Mendes. He went on to perform with many American pop, rock and jazz musicians and participated in thousands of albums. DownBeat magazine call him "one of the most talented percussionists of our time." He played on such albums as Earth, Wind & Fire's I Am, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Madonna's True Blue, Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love, hit singles and movie soundtracks, including Saturday Night Fever, Dirty Dancing and Purple Rain among others. He has also toured with Diana Krall. He plays over 200 instruments professionally, and has worked in a variety of music genres including Brazilian, blues, Christian, country, disco, gospel, hip hop, jazz, Latin, pop, rhythm and blues, rock, soul, and world music. He was signed to Norman Granz's Pablo Records for three of his solo albums, Agora, Happy People and Sunrise, as well as Breakdown. da Costa received the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' Most Valuable Player Award for three consecutive years. He also received the Musicians Emeritus Award.
"Farther Up the Road" or "Further on Up the Road" is a blues song first recorded in 1957 by Bobby "Blue" Bland. It is an early influential Texas shuffle and features guitar playing that represents the transition from the 1940s blues style to the 1960s blues-rock style.
Live at Montreux 1986 is a concert film featuring the British blues rock guitarist and singer Eric Clapton. The video release consists of live footage that was recorded while Eric Clapton and his band played for over one and a half hours at the 1986 Montreux Jazz Festival. The set list includes Clapton's signature songs such as "I Shot the Sheriff," "Cocaine," "Layla" and "Let It Rain" as well as his Cream-era hits "Crossroads," "White Room," "Badge" and "Sunshine of Your Love." Drummer Phil Collins also sang his 1981 hit "In the Air Tonight." The video taping was released on 19 September 2006 on DVD format. A Blu-ray disc was also released in 2014. The release was mildly successful and it gained critical praise and various music recording certification awards around the world.
