Curated playlist
20th-century American singer-songwriters
- Bob DylanBob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on the 24th of May, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His Hebrew name was Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham. He grew up in a small, close-knit Jewish community, and by the time he reached…
- Jimi HendrixJimi Hendrix died in London on the 18th of September 1970, at the age of 27, from barbiturate-related asphyxia. He was, by then, the world's highest-paid rock musician. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted his band in 1992, calls…
- MadonnaMadonna Louise Ciccone arrived in New York City in 1978 with thirty-five dollars in her pocket. It was the first time she had ever flown on a plane or ridden in a taxi. She would later call leaving college the bravest thing she had ever…
- Buddy HollyBuddy Holly was 22 years old when he died in a cornfield five miles northwest of Clear Lake, Iowa, on the 3rd of February 1959. He had been performing for less than a decade. He had topped the charts on two continents. He had shaped the…
- Marvin GayeOn the 1st of April 1984, in a house in the Western Heights area of West Adams in Los Angeles, Marvin Gaye was shot twice by his own father. One bullet pierced his heart. He was pronounced dead at 1:01 p.m., one day before he would have…
- Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald walked onto the stage of the Apollo Theater on the 21st of November 1934, planning to dance. She was 17 years old, and she had recently survived a state reformatory, homelessness, and years of grief. She had no…
- Little RichardIn October 1947, a fourteen-year-old boy was singing Sister Rosetta Tharpe's songs to himself before her performance at the Macon City Auditorium. Tharpe overheard him, invited him onstage to open her show, and paid him afterward. That…
- James BrownJames Brown was supposed to be named Joseph James Brown. A clerk reversed his first and middle names on his birth certificate, and the mistake stuck. He was born on the 3rd of May 1933, in a small wooden shack in Barnwell, South Carolina,…
- Charles MansonCharles Milles Manson was born on the 12th of November 1934, in Cincinnati General Hospital to Ada Kathleen Maddox, a 16-year-old woman from Ashland, Kentucky. His biological father appears to have been Colonel Walker Henderson Scott Sr.,…
- Jim MorrisonJim Morrison was found dead in a Paris bathtub on the morning of Saturday, the 3rd of July, 1971. He was 27 years old. No doctor had been called. No autopsy would be performed. The cause of death listed as heart failure was a placeholder,…
- Johnny CashJohnny Cash began his concerts the same way for decades, walking to the microphone and saying four words: "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." The man who said them was born J. R. Cash on the 26th of February 1932, the son of poor cotton farmers in…
- Missy ElliottMissy Elliott was born Melissa Arnette Elliott on the 1st of July, 1971, at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Portsmouth, Virginia. At four years old, she was already performing for her family, and her biographer Veronica A. Davis later…
- Hank WilliamsHank Williams was dead in the back seat of a car before anyone in the front realized it. On New Year's Day 1953, a college student named Charles Carr pulled into a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, and discovered that rigor mortis…
- Brian WilsonBrian Douglas Wilson was born on the 20th of June, 1942, in Inglewood, California, and by the age of two he could reproduce a melody after hearing only a few verses of a march song. That detail, remembered by his father, points to…
- Jerry Lee LewisJerry Lee Lewis walked into Sun Records in Memphis in November 1956 with nothing but nerve. Label owner Sam Phillips was out of town, so producer Jack Clement hit record anyway, capturing Lewis playing Ray Price's "Crazy Arms" and one of…
- Eddie CochranEddie Cochran played his last concert on the night of the 16th of April 1960, at the Bristol Hippodrome. He was 21 years old. Within hours, a cream-coloured Ford Consul was speeding toward London along the Bath Road when the teenage driver…
- Dolly PartonDolly Rebecca Parton was born on the 19th of January 1946 in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, Tennessee. She was the fourth of twelve children. Her father could not read or write. Her family was,…
- Gene VincentGene Vincent was born Vincent Eugene Craddock on the 11th of February 1935 in Norfolk, Virginia, and he died at 36, largely forgotten in his home country, while sitting with his father in Saugus, California. Between those two points lay a…
- Roy OrbisonRoy Kelton Orbison left a room feeling different after he sang. Where other male performers of his era projected confidence and ease, Orbison sang about fear, grief, and longing with a voice that one conductor described as causing the hair…
- Frank ZappaFrank Vincent Zappa was born on the 21st of December, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland, into a household where Italian was spoken by his grandparents and gas masks hung by the door. His father, a chemist and mathematician who worked in the…
- Roger McGuinnJames Joseph McGuinn III arrived in Chicago on the 13th of July 1942. His parents worked in journalism and public relations during his childhood years. They wrote a bestseller titled Parents Can't Win while raising him in that city. He…
- Townes Van ZandtJohn Townes Van Zandt was born on the 7th of March 1944 in Fort Worth, Texas, into a family with deep roots in the region. His great-great-great-grandfather Isaac Van Zandt had been a prominent leader of the Republic of Texas, and his…
- Carl PerkinsCarl Lee Perkins grew up in the cotton fields of Tiptonville, Tennessee, dragging a homemade guitar fashioned from a cigar box and a broomstick. He was born on the 9th of April, 1932, to sharecroppers so poor they could not buy a real…