List of notable events in music that took place in the year 1966.
Harry Haag James was an American musician who is best known as a trumpet-playing band leader who led a big band to great commercial success from 1939 to 1946. He broke up his band for a short period in 1947, but shortly after he reorganized and was active again with his band from then until his death in 1983. He was especially known among musicians for his technical proficiency as well as his tone, and was influential on new trumpet players from the late 1930s into the 1940s. He was also an actor in a number of films that usually featured his band.
Samuel Timothy McGraw is an American country singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He has released 16 studio albums. 10 of those albums have reached number one on the Top Country Albums charts, with his 1994 breakthrough album Not a Moment Too Soon being the top country album of 1994. In total, McGraw's albums have produced 65 singles, 25 of which have reached number one on the Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts. Three of these singles – "It's Your Love", "Just to See You Smile", and "Live Like You Were Dying" – were respectively the top country songs of 1997, 1998, and 2004 according to Billboard Year-End. He has also won three Grammy Awards, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and three People's Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II Tour, which was done in partnership with his wife, Faith Hill, is one of the highest-grossing tours in country music history, and one of the top five among all genres of music. He has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
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 line-up 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.
Norman Jeffrey Healey was a Canadian blues, rock and jazz guitarist, singer and songwriter who attained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. He reached No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Angel Eyes" and reached the Top 10 in Canada with the songs "I Think I Love You Too Much" and "How Long Can a Man Be Strong".
Mindi Abair is an American saxophonist, vocalist, author, and National Trustee for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization that puts on the Grammy Awards show.
Susan Tedeschi is an American singer and guitarist. A multiple Grammy Award nominee, she is a member of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, a conglomeration of her band, her husband Derek Trucks’ band, and other musicians.
Madeleine Peyroux is an American jazz singer and songwriter who began her career as a teenager on the streets of Paris. She sang vintage jazz and blues songs before finding mainstream success in 2004 when her album Careless Love sold half a million copies.
Scott Henderson is an American jazz fusion and blues guitarist best known for his work with the band Tribal Tech. He was born in West Palm Beach and raised in Lake Worth Beach.
Mint Condition is an American R&B band from Minneapolis, Minnesota. The band is focused on diverse genres such as jazz, hip hop, funk and dance. Mint Condition has also been nominated for one Grammy and three Soul Train Awards. The group is credited with being one of the last major funk bands to chart before hip-hop and new jack swing dominated black music in the 1990s.
Samuel Fischer is an Australian pop rock singer-songwriter and musician. Fischer released music independently before signing with RCA Records in 2019. RCA re-released his debut EP Not a Hobby in January 2020.
"Feelin' Alright?", also known as "Feeling Alright", is a song written by Dave Mason of the English rock band Traffic for their eponymous 1968 album Traffic. It was also released as a single, and failed to chart in both the UK and the US, but it did reach a bubbling under position of #123 on the Billboard Hot 100. Joe Cocker performed a more popular rendition of the song that did chart in the U.S. Both Traffic's and Cocker's versions appear in the 2012 movie Flight. The song had also been featured in the 2000 film Duets, sung by Huey Lewis.
Marty Morell is a jazz drummer who was a member of the Bill Evans Trio for seven years—longer than any other drummer. Before joining Evans, he worked with the Al Cohn-Zoot Sims Quintet, Red Allen, Gary McFarland, Steve Kuhn, and Gábor Szabó.
The Tedeschi Trucks Band is an American blues and blues rock group based in Jacksonville, Florida. Formed in 2010, the band is led by married couple Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. Their debut album, Revelator (2011), won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Blues Album. The band has released five studio and three live albums.
The Jazz Professors is a sextet of American jazz musicians who are all both working music professionals in their own right and faculty members of the Jazz Studies program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. They release albums annually on the Flying Horse Records label, a professional label within the school. Their first two albums both made the JazzWeek charts, with The Jazz Professors: Live at the UCF-Orlando Jazz Festival topping out at No. 19 in 2012, and their second album, Do That Again (2013) charting as high as No. 6 nationally
Jeff Rupert is an American jazz saxophonist and professor at the University of Central Florida.
Flying Horse Records is a professional jazz record label operated by the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, Florida.
Milky Chance is a German rock band originating in Kassel. It consists of vocalist and guitarist Clemens Rehbein, bassist and percussionist Philipp Dausch, and their band members, Antonio Greger and Sebastian Schmidt.
9 Horses is a chamber jazz group from the United States consisting of composer and mandolinist Joseph Brent, violinist Sara Caswell, and bassist Andrew Ryan, originating from New York City.
Trilogy is a three-disc box set album by saxophonist Sam Rivers and his Rivbea Orchestra. Discs one and three were recorded live at the Plaza Theatre in Orlando, Florida, on November 12, 2008, and April 8, 2009, respectively, while the second disc was recorded at Sonic Cauldron Studios in Casselberry, Florida, on February 27, 2008. The album, which features 22 original compositions by Rivers, was released in limited quantities in 2011 by Mosaic Records as part of their Mosaic Select series.
