Hard rock or heavy rock is a heavier subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard rock music was produced by the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In the late 1960s, bands such as Blue Cheer, the Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Golden Earring, Steppenwolf, and Deep Purple also produced hard rock.
Electric blues is blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.
Slowhand is the fifth solo studio album by Eric Clapton. Released on 25 November 1977 by RSO Records, and titled after Clapton's nickname, it is one of his most commercially and critically successful studio albums. Slowhand produced the two hit singles "Lay Down Sally" and "Wonderful Tonight", reached various international music charts and was honoured with numerous awards and recording certifications. In 2012, a deluxe edition was released to celebrate the album's 35th anniversary.
Decade of Aggression is a double live album by Slayer, released on October 22, 1991, through Def American Records and produced by Rick Rubin. The album was recorded in three separate places on three separate dates. Its working title was Decade of Decadence until Mötley Crüe registered the name. Three of the album's tracks were included in the box set Soundtrack to the Apocalypse. The album's reception was generally positive, with Entertainment Weekly and Robert Christgau both giving the album a positive rating. The album reached number 55 in the Billboard 200 and also charted on two other charts.
The "5" Royales was an American rhythm and blues (R&B) vocal group from Winston-Salem, North Carolina that combined gospel, jump blues and doo-wop, marking an early and influential step in the evolution of rock and roll. Most of their big R&B hits were recorded in 1952 and 1953 and written by the guitarist Lowman "Pete" Pauling. Cover versions of the band's songs hit the Top 40, including "Dedicated to the One I Love", "Tell the Truth", and "Think". Brown modeled his first vocal group after the "5" Royales, and both Eric Clapton and Stax guitarist Steve Cropper cited Pauling as a key influence. The Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger covered "Think" on his 1993 solo album Wandering Spirit. The "5" Royales were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
Discography is the study and cataloging of published sound recordings, often by specified artists or within identified music genres. The exact information included varies depending on the type and scope of the discography, but a discography entry for a specific recording will often list such details as the names of the artists involved, the time and place of the recording, the title of the piece performed, release dates, chart positions, and sales figures.
Every Picture Tells a Story is the third studio album by Rod Stewart, released on 28 May 1971, by Mercury Records. It incorporates hard rock, folk, and blues styles. It went to number one on both the UK and US charts and finished third in the Jazz & Pop critics' poll for best album of 1971. It has been an enduring critical success, including a number 172 ranking on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
AllMusic is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne.
Eddie Jones, known as Guitar Slim, was an American guitarist in the 1940s and 1950s, best known for the million-selling song "The Things That I Used to Do", for Specialty Records. It is listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Slim had a major impact on rock and roll and experimented with distorted tones on the electric guitar a full decade before Jimi Hendrix.
Ruf Records is a German independent record label, which was founded in 1994 by Luther Allison’s manager, Thomas Ruf, to promote Allison's career. The motto of the blues label is "Where Blues Crosses Over". The company's office is located in Lindewerra, Germany. As of 2008, Ruf had produced 120 releases, sold over one million albums, received two Grammy nominations and ten Blues Music Award nominations.
Tons of Sobs is the debut studio album by the English rock band Free, released in the UK on 14 March 1969. While the album failed to chart in the UK, it reached number 197 in the US. Free are cited as one of the definitive bands of the British blues boom of the late 1960s, even though this is the only album of their canon that can strictly be called blues rock. It had the band's first minor hit "I'm a Mover", which was released as a single in December 1968.
The Rolling Stone Album Guide, previously known as The Rolling Stone Record Guide, is a book that contains professional music reviews written and edited by staff members from Rolling Stone magazine. Its first edition was published in 1979 and its last in 2004. The guide can be seen at Rate Your Music, while a list of albums given a five star rating by the guide can be seen at Rocklist.net.
Randy Resnick is an American guitarist, songwriter and saxophonist who has played with many prominent blues and jazz musicians, such as Don "Sugarcane" Harris, John Lee Hooker, John Mayall, Canned Heat and Freddie King. He was developing both one- and two-handed tapping style in the early 1970s. He published a CD of his own music in 1995, "To Love" under the name Randy Rare. There is an example of his tapping work in the recording from that CD below. In 2020, he began publishing new music, much of it on saxophone, on the streaming platforms like Spotify, Tidal (service) and iTunes under his own Each Hit label.
The Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings is an encyclopedia of blues music albums released on CD.
All Music Guide to Jazz: The Definitive Guide to Jazz is a non-fiction book that is an encyclopedic referencing of jazz music compiled under the direction of All Media Guide. The first edition, All Music Guide to Jazz: the Best CDs, Albums & Tapes, appeared in 1994 and was edited by Ron Wynn with Michael Erlewine and Vladimir Bogdanov. The book's fourth edition was released on November 27, 2002, and was edited by Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra and Stephen Thomas Erlewine.
"Dirty Blvd." is a song by American musician Lou Reed from his 1989 album, New York. The song contrasts the poor and the rich in New York City, and topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart for four weeks in early 1989. Live versions appear on Perfect Night: Live in London and Animal Serenade. "Dirty Blvd." was one of the four songs Reed performed with David Bowie on the latter's 50th birthday celebration in 1997. "Dirty Blvd." is a three-chord rock song featuring a progression with a repeated sequence of G D A D.
The Complete Recordings is a compilation album by American Delta blues musician Robert Johnson. The 41 songs were recorded in two sessions in Dallas and San Antonio, Texas for the American Record Company (ARC) during 1936 and 1937. Most were first released on 78 rpm records in 1937. The Complete Recordings, released August 28, 1990, by Columbia Records, contains every recording Johnson is known to have made, with the exception of an alternate take of "Traveling Riverside Blues".
Keep On Moving is the fifth album by the American blues rock band Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Released in 1969, it continues in the same R&B/soul-influenced horn-driven direction as the band's 1968 album In My Own Dream.
Blue Serge is an album by jazz baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff, and released by Capitol Records in 1956. It was recorded on March 14 and 16, 1956 at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, California.
MusicHound was a compiler of genre-specific music guides published in the United States by Visible Ink Press between 1996 and 2002. After publishing eleven album guides, the MusicHound series was sold to London-based Music Sales Group, whose company Omnibus Press had originally distributed the books outside America. The series' founding editor was Gary Graff, formerly a music critic with the Detroit Free Press.
