The Gun Club were an American post-punk band from Los Angeles that existed from 1979 to 1996. Created and led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce, they were notable as one of the first bands in the punk rock subculture to incorporate influences from blues, rockabilly, and country music. The Gun Club has been called a "tribal psychobilly blues" band, as well as initiators of the punk blues sound cowpunk – "He (Pierce) took Robert Johnson and pre-war acoustic blues and 'punkified' it. Up until then bands were drawing on Iggy & The Stooges and the New York Dolls but he took it back so much further for inspiration."
James Sclavunos is an American drummer, multi-instrumentalist musician, record producer, and writer. He is best known as a drummer, having been a member of two seminal no wave groups in the late 1970s. He is also noted for stints in Sonic Youth and the Cramps, and has been a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds since 1994. Sclavunos has led his own group the Vanity Set since 2000.
James Luther Dickinson was an American record producer, pianist, and singer who fronted, among others, the band Mud Boy and the Neutrons, based in Memphis, Tennessee.
R. L. Burnside was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played music for much of his life but received little recognition before the early 1990s. In the latter half of that decade, Burnside recorded and toured with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fan base in the punk and garage rock scenes.
Tav Falco's Panther Burns, sometimes shortened to (The) Panther Burns, is a rock band originally from Memphis, Tennessee, United States, led by Tav Falco. They are best known for having been part of a set of bands emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s who helped nationally popularize the blending of blues, country, and other American traditional music styles with rock music among groups playing in alternative music and punk music venues of the time. The earliest and most renowned of these groups to imbue these styles with expressionist theatricality and primitive spontaneity were The Cramps, largely influenced by rockabilly music. Forming just after them in 1979, Panther Burns drew on obscure country blues music, Antonin Artaud's works like The Theater and Its Double, beat poetry, and Marshall McLuhan's media theories for their early inspiration. Alongside groups like The Cramps and The Gun Club, Panther Burns is also considered a representative of the Southern Gothic-tinged roots music revival scene.
Charles Arthur Feathers was an American musician most associated with the rockabilly scene of the 1950s. Although not initially recognized for his contributions to rockabilly, over time his presence would become greatly elevated and he has been cited as an influence by a number of musicians.
Easley McCain Recording is an American recording studio, based in Memphis, Tennessee, notable for recording musicians such as Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Oblivians, Grifters, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Come, White Stripes, Townes Van Zandt, Pezz, Jeff Buckley, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Guided by Voices, Lydia Lunch, Box Tops, Rufus Thomas, Wilco, Cat Power, Modest Mouse, The Amps, The Cooters, The Walkmen, and The Cuts.
Mud Boy and the Neutrons was a Memphis rock music band who influenced the Memphis alternative rock scene from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Jessie Mae Hemphill was an American electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist specializing in the North Mississippi hill country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage.
Paul Burlison was an American pioneer rockabilly guitarist and a founding member of The Rock and Roll Trio. Burlison was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, where he was exposed to music at an early age. After a stint in the United States Military, Burlison teamed up with Johnny and Dorsey Burnette to form The Rock and Roll Trio. The band released several singles, but failed to attain chart success. Paul is sometimes credited with being the first guitarist to intentionally record with a distorted electric guitar on the 1956 recordings, "Lonesome Train on a Lonesome Track" and "Honey Hush." The trio disbanded in the fall of 1957 and Burlison moved back to Tennessee to start a family. There he started his own electrical subcontracting business which he ran faithfully for twenty years, taking a break when the trio reunited in the early 1980s. He released his only solo album in 1997, which received positive reviews. Burlison remained active in the music scene until his death in 2003.
Gregory Johnathon Cartwright, also known by his stage name Greg Oblivian, is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist from Memphis, Tennessee. From 2001 to 2022 he fronted Reigning Sound which was signed to Merge Records. After moving away from Memphis in the mid-2000s, he has since lived with his family in Asheville, North Carolina.
Erik Morse, is an American underground author, rock writer and journalist. Morse was born and grew up in the small town of Conroe, Texas near a farm where Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs once lived in the 1940s. Despite a tumultuous teenage life in a Houston private school where juvenile crime ultimately led him to a stint in rehab, Morse went on to graduate from New York University with a degree in film and philosophy.
Al Bell is an American record producer, songwriter, and record executive. He is best known as having been an executive and co-owner of Stax Records, based in Memphis, Tennessee, during the latter half of the label's 19-year existence.
Panther Burn is a census-designated place and unincorporated community located along U.S. Route 61 in northwestern Sharkey County, Mississippi, United States. It has a post office with the ZIP code of 38765.
Alex Chilton was an American musician, singer-songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was never repeated in later years with Big Star and in his subsequent indie music solo career on small labels, but he drew an intense following among indie and alternative rock musicians. He is frequently cited as a seminal influence by influential rock artists and bands, some of whose testimonials appeared in the 2012 documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.
James Duckworth is an American blues guitarist. He was a member of Memphis group Tav Falco's Panther Burns alongside Alex Chilton in the early 1980s. He played with Charlie Pickett on the latter's 1986 album, Route 33, and was also a member of the Los Angeles punkabilly blues band The Gun Club joining in January 1983. He formed the Wallendas in 2006 and is currently the lead guitarist for Buffalo Jack & The Parlor Snakes. In between bands, Duckworth did a lot of session work.
Cloudland Canyon is an experimental rock/psychedelic rock band originally from New York, USA.
Victor Mac who is better known as Little Victor, The Beale Street Blues Bopper, and also DJ Mojo Man, is an Italian-American blues and roots singer, guitarist and harmonica player, as well as a record collector, musicologist, entertainer, disc jockey and record producer. He is best known for his association with Louisiana Red, on the albums Back To The Black Bayou and Memphis Mojo.
Robert Gordon is an American writer and filmmaker from Memphis, Tennessee. His work has focused on the American south—its music, art, and politics—to create an insider's portrait of his home, both nuanced and ribald.
Mario Monterosso is an Italian-born musician, producer, songwriter, and cabaret and theater performer. Originally from Sicily, Monterosso worked professionally in Rome, and is currently based in Memphis, Tennessee in The United States. He is best known for his production work with rock and roll musician Tav Falco, and is a current member of his backing band Tav Falco's Panther Burns.
