Vicki Spencer (born 1945) is an American pop and rock singer.
Spencer is the daughter of dancer Lou Spencer (of the Dunhill Trio dance team). She appeared as a teenage ingénue singer in two 1961 teen-oriented movies, Teenage Millionaire (starring Jimmy Clanton) and Twist Around the Clock (featuring Clay Cole). [1] In both films she played herself, and most of her on-screen time was spent singing. Her song "I Wait" from Teenage Millionaire was released as a single, as was "Too Many Boyfriends" from Twist Around The Clock. Spencer wrote both songs.
Spencer was later in pop and rock bands, some that included two of her brothers, Daniel Spencer and William Spencer. She was the singer for the Bubble Gum Machine (which included the Spencer brothers), who released an eponymous album on Senate Records in 1967. [2] Wes Farrell produced the album and co-wrote some of the songs. Other bands Spencer toured and recorded with were the Rottin Kids (who appeared on The Tonight Show ), the Fabulous Fakes, and Horatio.
Spencer is married to Harry Perlow. Her daughter Jamie Perlow is also a singer and musician.
Lesley Sue Goldstein, known professionally as Lesley Gore, was an American singer, songwriter, actress, and activist. At the age of 16, she recorded the pop hit "It's My Party", a US number one in 1963. She followed it up with ten further Billboard top 40 hits including "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own Me".
The Runaways were an all-female American rock band who recorded and performed from 1975 to 1979. The band released four studio albums and one live album during its run. Among their best-known songs are "Cherry Bomb", "Hollywood", "Queens of Noise" and a cover version of The Velvet Underground's "Rock & Roll". Never a major success in the United States, the Runaways became a sensation overseas, especially in Japan, thanks to the single "Cherry Bomb".
Harry "Sweets" Edison was an American jazz trumpeter and a member of the Count Basie Orchestra. His most important contribution was as a Hollywood studio musician, whose muted trumpet can be heard backing singers, most notably Frank Sinatra.
The twist is a dance that was inspired by rock and roll music. From 1959 to the early sixties it became a worldwide dance craze, enjoying immense popularity while drawing controversies from critics who felt it was too provocative. It inspired dances such as the Jerk, the Pony, the Watusi, the Mashed Potato, the Monkey, and the Funky Chicken, but none were as popular.
The Marcels were an American doo-wop group known for turning popular music songs into rock and roll. The group formed in 1959 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and signed to Colpix Records with lead Cornelius Harp, bass Fred Johnson, Gene Bricker, Ron Mundy, and Richard Knauss. The group was named after a popular hair style of the day, the marcel wave, by Fred Johnson's younger sister Priscilla.
Strawberry Alarm Clock is a psychedelic rock band formed in 1967 with origins in Glendale, California, a city about ten miles north of downtown Los Angeles. They are best known for their 1967 hit single "Incense and Peppermints". Categorized as acid rock, psychedelic pop and sunshine pop, they charted five songs, including two Top 40 hits.
William Famous Williamson was the American steel guitar player for Bill Haley and His Saddlemen, and its successor group Bill Haley & His Comets, from 1949 to 1963.
Tomorrow were an English musical group active in the 1960s, whose music touched on psychedelic rock, pop and freakbeat. Despite critical acclaim and support from DJ John Peel, who featured them on his "Perfumed Garden" radio show, the band was not a great success in commercial terms. They were among the first psychedelic bands in England, along with Pink Floyd and Soft Machine. Tomorrow recorded the first ever John Peel show session on BBC Radio 1 on 21 September 1967. The band included Steve Howe on guitars, who would later join the British prog band Yes.
Unit 4 + 2 were a British pop band, who had a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart in 1965 with the song "Concrete and Clay". The track topped the UK chart for one week.
George Warren Barnes was an American swing jazz guitarist. He was also a conductor and arranger of music, and became the youngest ever for NBC when he was hired by them in that role at the age of seventeen. At this age he was considered a great player by many musicians including Tommy Dorsey, and Jimmy McPartland. George also later became a recording engineer. During his career Barnes recorded with singers Mel Tormé, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Patti Page, Dinah Washington, Lena Horne, Billy Eckstine and Johnny Mathis among many others. He was an inspiration and influence to the musician Roy Clark and guitarists Herb Ellis and Merle Travis, among others.
David Spencer, known professionally as Ricky Valance, was a Welsh pop singer. He was best known for the UK number one single "Tell Laura I Love Her", which sold over a million copies in 1960. He was the first male Welsh singer to have a UK number one single hit.
"I Had the Craziest Dream" is a popular song which was published in 1942. The music was written by Harry Warren, the lyrics by Mack Gordon.
Twist Around the Clock is an American musical film released in 1961. It was a remake of Sam Katzman and Robert E. Kent's Rock Around the Clock. Like Rock Around the Clock, which was followed by a sequel titled Don't Knock the Rock, the film was followed by a sequel titled Don't Knock the Twist.
A teenage tragedy song is a style of ballad in popular music that peaked in popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Examples of the style are also known as "tear jerkers", "death discs" or "splatter platters", among other colorful sobriquets coined by DJs that then passed into vernacular as the songs became popular. Often lamenting teenage death scenarios in melodramatic fashion, these songs were usually sung from the viewpoint of the dead person's sweetheart, as in "Last Kiss" (1961), or another witness to the tragedy, or the dead person. Other examples include "Teen Angel" by Mark Dinning (1959), "Tell Laura I Love Her" by Ray Peterson (1960), "Ebony Eyes" by the Everly Brothers (1961), "Dead Man's Curve" by Jan and Dean (1964), and "Leader of the Pack" by the Shangri-Las (1964). The genre's popularity faded around 1965, but inspired a host of similar songs and parodies over the years.
Amanda Christian Amaya-Shaw is an American Cajun fiddler, singer, and actress from Mandeville, Louisiana. She was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2020.
"Waking the Demon" is a song by Welsh heavy metal band Bullet for My Valentine. The song is released as the third and final single from their second album Scream Aim Fire. The video for the song was written and directed by Max Nichols.
Alan Tarney is an English record producer and musician. He was born in Northside, Workington, Cumberland, but spent his teenage years in Adelaide, Australia, where he met his songwriting and musical partner Trevor Spencer. He is best known for his association with Cliff Richard and producing "Take On Me" by a-ha.
Una Theresa Imogene Healy is an Irish singer. She rose to fame in 2008 as a member of five-piece girl group The Saturdays, who are signed to Fascination and Polydor Records. In 2006, she represented Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest, where she sang with Brian Kennedy on the song "Every Song Is a Cry for Love"; they placed tenth overall. Healy then auditioned for the Saturdays in 2007, after struggling to find success in her native country. Once she had successfully auditioned, she began recording music and releasing a number of hits.
Diamond Records was a record label for Hong Kong and the far East. It featured a good amount of Hong Kong's most popular recording acts and attractions in its catalogue.
California Nights is a 1967 album by Lesley Gore, the last of her seven albums released on the Mercury Records label. The title track on the album, California Nights, peaked at #16 and was Gore's last Top 20 hit. Bob Crewe produced seven of the tracks on the album, while Quincy Jones produced three. The album was reissued in 2015 as part of a compilation in both album and CD format by Ace Records, which included 15 bonus tracks from her Mercury catalogue.