Blood, Sweat & Tears is an American jazz rock music group founded in New York City in 1967, noted for a combination of brass with rock instrumentation. BS&T has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a wide range of musical styles. Their sound has merged rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band jazz.
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck is an American banjo player. An acclaimed virtuoso, he is an innovative and technically proficient pioneer and ambassador of the banjo, bringing the instrument from its bluegrass roots to jazz, classical, rock and various world music genres. He is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Fleck has won 15 Grammy Awards and been nominated 33 times.
Mungo Jerry are a British rock band, formed by Ray Dorset in Ashford, Middlesex in 1970. Experiencing their greatest success in the early 1970s, with a changing lineup always fronted by Dorset, the group's biggest hit was "In the Summertime". They had nine charting singles in the UK, including two number ones, five top 20 hits in South Africa, and four in the Top 100 in Canada.
Strawbs are an English rock band founded in 1964 as the Strawberry Hill Boys. The band started out as a bluegrass group, but eventually moved on to other styles such as folk rock and progressive rock.
Dave Cousins is an English former musician who was the leader, singer and most-active songwriter of Strawbs since 1967.
Raymond Edward Dorset is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, and founder of Mungo Jerry.
Dave Bainbridge is an English guitarist and keyboard player who has played with The Strawbs since 2015. With Dave Fitzgerald, Dave co-founded the Christian progressive and Celtic folk themed band Iona.
John Christopher Hawken is an English keyboard player, best known as a member of The Nashville Teens, Renaissance, and the Strawbs. He also played in Spooky Tooth, Third World War, Vinegar Joe, Illusion, as well as being a session musician.
John Ford is a British musician. He relocated to the United States in the mid-1980s and now resides on the North Shore of Long Island, New York.
The Manor Studio was a recording studio in the manor house at the village of Shipton-on-Cherwell in Oxfordshire, England, north of the city of Oxford.
Grave New World is the fourth studio album by English band Strawbs, their fifth overall. It was the first album to be released after the departure of Rick Wakeman, who was replaced by Blue Weaver, late of Amen Corner.
Dave Lambert is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter, who has been a member of the Strawbs at various stages of the band's career, beginning in the 1970s.
"Lay Down" is a single by the Strawbs which reached No. 12 in the UK Singles Chart in October 1972 - their first hit. It was included on their 1973 album Bursting at the Seams.
Déjà Fou is the 16th studio album by English band Strawbs. The title is a play on the phrase déjà vu, French for "already seen", as the band line-up had been seen 30 years before on the Hero and Heroine album. The phrase déjà fou literally means "already mad". The album delivers the kind of British folk rock the band had built its reputation on.
A Taste of Strawbs is a box-set album by Strawbs. Instead of being a "best of" album, the compilers have attempted to present alternative versions of some well-known songs plus some previously unreleased material. Included are some very old songs by The Strawberry Hill Boys, with Dave Cousins, Tony Hooper and Ron Chesterman, also are some very interesting songs by Sandy Denny and The Strawbs, and outtakes from different periods of the band's career.
"Hero and Heroine" is a song by English band Strawbs featured on their 1974 album of the same name. It is written by Dave Cousins and has obvious drug allusions, the main reason it didn't get much airplay on BBC radio. The song is in a similar vein to an earlier track "Witchwood" but with rather more obvious allegory.
Lay Down with the Strawbs is a live album by English band Strawbs. It was recorded at Robin 2 in Bilston and features the "Hero and Heroine line-up" of the band with a guest appearance of former member John Ford.
Courtney Johnson was an American banjo player, best known for his work as an original member of the band New Grass Revival. Influenced by Ralph Stanley and his Clinch Mountain Boys, Johnson is often considered to be an inventor of the newgrass style of banjo playing, polished and improved later on by such personalities as Béla Fleck, Alison Brown, Scott Vestal of Sam Bush Band and Jens Krüger of Kruger Brothers.
Mungo Jerry is the debut album by Mungo Jerry, released in 1970. The initial British release featured lettering on the front of the sleeve and a group photo inside which appeared to be three-dimensional when viewed through a pair of 3D red and green lenses included in the packaging. It reached No. 14 in the British charts that summer. Some foreign versions include the track "In the Summertime".
