Can You Name These 40s Music Legends?

Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an actress, singer, dancer, and vaudevillian. During a career that spanned 45 years, she attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her live recording Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961).

Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was a jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, beating trumpeter Louis Armstrong to the recording studio by several months. His erratic temperament hampered his career, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim.

Frankie Laine (March 30, 1913 ‚Äì February 6, 2007) was a singer, songwriter, and actor whose career nearly spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of “That’s My Desire” in 2005. His hits included “That’s My Desire”, “That Lucky Old Sun”, among many others.

Roosevelt Sykes (January 31, 1906 ‚Äì July 17, 1983) was a blues musician, also known as “The Honeydripper”. Sykes was born in Elmar, Arkansas, and grew up near Helena. At age 15, he went on the road playing piano in a barrelhouse style of blues. Like many bluesmen of his time, he travelled around playing to all-male audiences in sawmill, turpentine and levee camps along the Mississippi River, gathering a repertoire of raw, sexually explicit material.

Josh White Joshua Daniel White (February 11, 1914 – September 5, 1969) was a singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names Pinewood Tom and Tippy Barton in the 1930s. He became a prominent race records artist, with a prolific output of recordings in genres including Piedmont blues, country blues, gospel music, and social protest songs.

Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White (November 12, 1906 ‚Äì February 26, 1977) was an African-American Delta blues guitarist and singer. Bukka is a phonetic spelling of White’s first name; he was named after the well-known African-American educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington.

Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an singer and actor. The first multimedia star, Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1931 to 1954.1:8 His early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed him, including Manny.

Orvon Grover “Gene” Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998) was a singer, songwriter, actor, musician and rodeo performer who gained fame as a singing cowboy in a crooning style on radio. Autry was the owner of a television station, several radio stations in Southern California, and the Los Angeles/California/Anaheim Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997.

Richard Edward “Eddy” Arnold (May 15, 1918 ‚Äì May 8, 2008) was a country music singer who performed for six decades. He was a Nashville sound (country/popular music) innovator of the late 1950s, and scored 147 songs on the Billboard country music charts, second only to George Jones. He sold more than 85 million records.

Carmen Mercedes McRae (April 8, 1922 – November 10, 1994) was an American jazz singer. She is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century and is remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of lyrics. McRae was inspired by Billie Holiday, but she established her own voice. She recorded over sixty albums and performed worldwide.

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 РJune 21, 2001) was a blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was a composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death over a career spanning more than fifty years. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra’s appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem.

The Ink Spots were a pop vocal group who gained international fame in the 1930s and 1940s. Their unique musical style presaged the rhythm and blues and rock and roll musical genres, and the subgenre doo-wop. The Ink Spots were widely accepted in both the white and black communities, largely due to the ballad style introduced to the group by lead singer Bill Kenny.

Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), also known as Yardbird and Bird, was a jazz saxophonist and composer. Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and advanced harmonies.

Margaret Eleanor Whiting (July 22, 1924 ‚Äì January 10, 2011) was an American popular music and country music singer who gained popularity in the 1940s and 1950s. Whiting was born in Detroit, but her family moved to Los Angeles in 1929, when she was five years old. Her father, Richard, was a composer of popular songs, including the classics “Hooray for Hollywood”, “Ain’t We Got Fun?”, and “On the Good Ship Lollipop”.

Lloyd “Tiny” Grimes (July 7, 1916 ‚Äì March 4, 1989) was a jazz and R&B guitarist. He was a member of the Art Tatum Trio from 1943 to 1944, was a backing musician on recording sessions, and later led his own bands, including a recording session with Charlie Parker. He is notable for playing the tenor guitar, a four-stringed electric instrument.

Lizzie Douglas (June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973), known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter whose recording career lasted from the 1920s to the 1950s. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being “Bumble Bee”, “Nothing in Rambling”, and “Me and My Chauffeur Blues”.

Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 ‚Äì June 13, 1986) was a jazz clarinetist and bandleader known as the “King of Swing”. In the mid-1930s, Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in the United States. His concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938 is described by critic Bruce Eder as “the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz’s ‘coming out’ party to the world of ‘respectable’ music.”

Dino Paul Crocetti (June 7, 1917 ‚Äì December 25, 1995), known famously as Dean Martin, was an American actor, comedian and singer. One of the most popular and enduring American entertainers of the mid-20th century, Martin was nicknamed “The King of Cool” for his seemingly effortless charisma and self-assurance.

Hoagland Howard “Hoagy” Carmichael (November 22, 1899 ‚Äì December 27, 1981) was a singer, songwriter, and actor. American composer and author Alec Wilder described Carmichael as the “most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented of all the great craftsmen” of pop songs in the first half of the twentieth century. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s.

Lil Green (December 22, 1919 – April 14, 1954) was a blues singer and songwriter. She was among the leading female rhythm and blues singers of the 1940s, with a sensual soprano voice, she possessed with an ability to bring power to ordinary material and compose superior songs of her own, with gospel singer R.H. Harris, lauding her beautiful voice, and her interpretation of religious songs.

Una Mae Carlisle (December 26, 1915 – November 7, 1956) was a jazz singer, pianist, and songwriter. Carlisle was born in Zanesville, Ohio, the daughter of Edward and Mellie Carlisle. Trained to play piano by her mother, she was performing in public by age three. Still a child, she performed regularly on radio station WHIO (AM) in Dayton, Ohio.

Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was a jazz singer. Nicknamed “Sassy” and “The Divine One”, she won four Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. She was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Critic Scott Yanow wrote that she had “one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century”.

James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was a Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. After forming a new band, The Playboys, and relocating to Waco, Wills found enough popularity there to decide on a bigger market. They left Waco in January 1934 for Oklahoma City. Wills soon settled the renamed Texas Playboys in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and began broadcasting noontime shows over the 50,000 watt KVOO radio station.

Joseph Christopher “Joe” Liggins, Jr. (July 9, 1916 ‚Äì July 26, 1987) was an R&B, jazz and blues pianist and vocalist who led Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers in the 1940s and 1950s. His band appeared often on the Billboard magazine charts. The band’s biggest hit was “The Honeydripper”, released in 1945. Joe Liggins was the older brother of R&B performer Jimmy Liggins.

Coleman Randolph Hawkins (November 21, 1904 ‚Äì May 19, 1969) was a jazz tenor saxophonist. One of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument, as Joachim E. Berendt explained: “there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn”. Hawkins biographer John Chilton described the prevalent styles of tenor saxophone solos prior to Hawkins as “mooing” and “rubbery belches.”

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 ‚Äì July 17, 1959), better known as Billie Holiday, was a jazz singer with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.

Benjamin Clarence “Bull Moose” Jackson (April 22, 1919 – July 31, 1989) was a blues and rhythm-and-blues singer and saxophonist, who was most successful in the late 1940s. He is considered a performer of dirty blues because of the suggestive nature of some of his songs, such as “I Want a Bowlegged Woman” and “Big Ten Inch Record”.

Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 ‚Äì May 14, 1998) was a singer, actor and producer who was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the “bobby soxers”.

Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 -August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was a jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his techniques served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul. Paul taught himself how to play guitar, and while he is mainly known for jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music.

Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975) was a musician, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as “The King of the Jukebox”, his highest profile came towards the end of the swing era. Jordan was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and he fronted his own band for more than twenty years.

Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 ‚Äì June 29, 2002) was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the song “Come On-a My House”, which was followed by other pop numbers such as “Botch-a-Me”, “Mambo Italiano”, “Tenderly”, “Half as Much”, “Hey There” and “This Ole House”. She also had success as a jazz vocalist. Clooney’s career languished in the 1960s, partly due to problems related to depression and drug addiction, but revived in 1977, when her White Christmas co-star Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (July 14, 1912 ‚Äì October 3, 1967) was a singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music; his music, including songs, such as “This Land Is Your Land”, has inspired several generations both politically and musically. He wrote hundreds of political, folk, and children’s songs, along with ballads and improvised works. His album of songs about the Dust Bowl period, Dust Bowl Ballads, is included on Mojo magazine’s list of 100 Records That Changed The World.

Huddie William Ledbetter (January 20, 1888 – December 6, 1949) was a folk and blues singer, musician and songwriter notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced. He is best known as Lead Belly. Though many releases credit him as “Leadbelly”, he himself wrote it as “Lead Belly”, which is also the spelling on his tombstone and the spelling used by the Lead Belly Foundation.

Artie Shaw (May 23, 1910 ‚Äì December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, and actor. Also an author, Shaw wrote both fiction and non-fiction. Widely regarded as “one of jazz’s finest clarinetists”. Shaw led one of the United States’ most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Though he had numerous hit records, he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine”.

Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones (December 14, 1911 – May 1, 1965) was a musician and bandleader specializing in satirical arrangements of popular songs and classical music. Ballads receiving the Jones treatment were punctuated with gunshots, whistles, cowbells and outlandish and comedic vocals.

Hiram King “Hank” Williams (September 17, 1923 ‚Äì January 1, 1953) was a singer-songwriter and musician. Regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century, Williams recorded 35 singles (five released posthumously) that reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart, including 11 that ranked number one (three posthumously).

Joseph Amos Milburn (April 1, 1927 ‚Äì January 3, 1980) was a rhythm-and-blues singer and pianist, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Houston, Texas, and died there 52 years later. One commentator noted, “Milburn excelled at good-natured, upbeat romps about booze and partying, imbued with a vibrant sense of humour and double entendre, as well as vivid, down-home imagery in his lyrics.”

William James “Count” Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording.

James Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. He was known as “JD”. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards “I’m Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)” and “It’s The Dreamer In Me”.

Connie Curtis Crayton (December 18, 1914 ‚Äì June 25, 1985), known as Pee Wee Crayton, was an R&B and blues guitarist and singer. In 1948 he signed a recording contract with Modern Records. One of his first recordings was the instrumental “Blues After Hours”, which reached number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart late that year. Its B-side, the pop ballad “I’m Still in Love with You”, and the quicker “Texas Hop” are good examples of his work.

Vaughn Wilton Monroe (October 7, 1911 ‚Äì May 21, 1973) was a baritone singer, trumpeter, big band leader, actor, and businessman, most popular in the 1940s and 1950s. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; for recording and radio. Monroe was born in Akron, Ohio, United States, on October 7, 1911. He graduated from Jeannette High School in Pennsylvania in 1929, where he was Senior Class President and voted “Most Likely to Succeed.

Eugene Bertram Krupa (January 15, 1909 ‚Äì October 16, 1973) was a jazz drummer, band leader, actor, and composer known for his energetic style and showmanship. His drum solo on “Sing, Sing, Sing” (1937) elevated the role of the drummer as a frequently used solo voice in the band. Krupa is considered “the founding father of the modern drumset” by Modern Drummer magazine.

Charles Daly Barnet (October 26, 1913 ‚Äì September 4, 1991) was a jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. His major recordings were “Skyliner”, “Cherokee”, “The Wrong Idea”, “Scotch and Soda”, “In a Mizz”, and “Southland Shuffle”.

Hudson Whittaker (January 8, 1903 – March 19, 1981), known as Tampa Red, was a Chicago blues musician. Tampa Red is best known as a blues guitarist who had a distinctive single-string slide style. His songwriting and his bottleneck technique influenced other leading Chicago blues guitarists, such as Big Bill Broonzy, Robert Nighthawk and Muddy Waters, and many others, including Elmore James and Mose Allison.

Julia Lee (October 31, 1902 ‚Äì December 8, 1958) was a blues and dirty blues musician. Her inclusion in the latter category is mainly due to a few numbers she performed, e.g. “King Size Papa” and “Snatch and Grab It” and “I Didn’t Like It The First Time (The Spinach Song)”. She first recorded on the Merritt record label in 1927 with Jesse Stone as pianist and arranger, and launched a solo career in 1935.

Harry Haag James (March 15, 1916 – July 5, 1983) was a musician who is best known as a trumpet-playing band leader who led a big band 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.

Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 ‚Äì November 23, 1992) was a country music singer, fiddler, and promoter, freemason. Known as the “King of Country Music,” Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and “hoedown” format to the singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.

Charles Melvin “Cootie” Williams (July 10, 1911 – September 15, 1985) was a jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Williams began his professional career at the age of fourteen with the Young Family band, which included saxophonist Lester Young. According to Williams he acquired his nickname as a boy when his father took him to a band concert. When it was over his father asked him what he’d heard and he replied, “Cootie, cootie, cootie.”

Nellie Rose Lutcher (October 15, 1912 – June 8, 2007) was an African-American R&B and jazz singer and pianist, who gained prominence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Lutcher was most recognizable for her diction and exaggerated pronunciation and was credited as an influence by Nina Simone among others.

Erskine Ramsay Hawkins (July 26, 1914 – November 11, 1993) was a trumpeter and big band leader from Birmingham, Alabama, dubbed “The 20th Century Gabriel”. He is most remembered for composing the jazz standard “Tuxedo Junction” (1939). The song became a popular hit during World War II, rising to No. 7 nationally (version by the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra) and to No. 1 nationally (version by the Glenn Miller Orchestra).

Wynonie Harris (August 24, 1915, – June 14, 1969), was a blues shouter and rhythm-and-blues singer of upbeat songs, featuring humorous, often ribald lyrics. He had fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952. Harris is attributed by many music scholars to be one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.

Joseph Vernon “Big Joe” Turner Jr. (May 18, 1911 ‚Äì November 24, 1985) was a blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to songwriter Doc Pomus, “Rock and roll would have never happened without him.” His greatest fame was due to his rock-and-roll recordings in the 1950s, particularly “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, but his career as a performer endured from the 1920s into the 1980s.

Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 -February 17, 1982) was a jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including “‘Round Midnight”, “Blue Monk”, “Straight, No Chaser”, “Ruby, My Dear”, “In Walked Bud”, and “Well, You Needn’t”. Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed more than a thousand pieces, whereas Monk wrote about 70.

Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed “Pres” or “Prez”, was a jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist. Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie’s orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument. Known for his hip, introverted style, he invented or popularized much of the hipster jargon which came to be associated with the music.

Walter Brown “Brownie” McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an African-American folk music and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry. McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. His brother Granville “Sticks”(or “Stick”) McGhee, who also later became a musician and composed the famous song “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee,” was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart.

Ruth Alston Brown (January 12, 1928 ‚Äì November 17, 2006) was a singer-songwriter and actress, sometimes known as the “Queen of R&B”. She was noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, such as “So Long”, “Teardrops from My Eyes” and “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean”.

Marie Magdalene “Marlene” Dietrich (27 December 1901 ‚Äì 6 May 1992) was a German-American actress and singer. Throughout her long career, which spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s, she continually reinvented herself.

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz.

Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter. He is widely regarded as the most influential dancer in the history of film. His stage and subsequent film and television careers spanned a total of 76 years, during which he starred in more than 10 Broadway and London musicals, made 31 musical films, 4 television specials, and issued numerous recordings.

Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was a jazz pianist and vocalist. He recorded over one hundred songs that became hits on the pop charts. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Cole also acted in films and on television and performed on Broadway. He was the first African American man to host an American television series.

Arthur William “Big Boy” Crudup (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was a Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known, outside blues circles, for his songs “That’s All Right” (1946), “My Baby Left Me” and “So Glad You’re Mine”, later recorded by Elvis Presley and other artists.

Roy Bunny Milton (July 31, 1907 ‚Äì September 18, 1983) was an R&B and jump blues singer, drummer and bandleader. Milton’s grandmother was Chickasaw. He was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, and grew up on an Indian reservation before moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He joined the Ernie Fields band in the late 1920s as singer and, later, drummer.

Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953) stage name Django Reinhardt, was a Belgian-born Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer, regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. He was the first jazz talent to emerge from Europe and remains the most significant. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Reinhardt formed the Paris-based Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934.

Roy James Brown (September 10, 1920 or 1925 – May 25, 1981) was a singer, songwriter and musician, who had a significant influence on the early development of rock and roll and the direction of R&B. His original song and hit recording “Good Rockin’ Tonight” has been covered by many artists including Wynonie Harris, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Pat Boone, ano James Brown. Brown was the first singer in recording history to sing R&B songs with a gospel-steeped delivery, which was then considered taboo by many churches.

Ida Cox (February 26, 1888 – November 10, 1967) was a singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings. She was billed as “The Uncrowned Queen of the Blues”. Cox joined the local African Methodist Choir at an early age and developed an interest in gospel music and performance.

Lucius Venable “Lucky” Millinder (August 8, 1910 – September 28, 1966) was a rhythm-and-blues and swing bandleader. Although he could not read or write music, did not play an instrument and rarely sang, his showmanship and musical taste made his bands successful. His group was said to have been the greatest big band to play rhythm and blues, and gave work to a number of musicians who later became influential at the dawn of the rock and roll era.

Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker (May 28, 1910 ‚Äì March 16, 1975) was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues and electric blues sound. In 2018 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 37 on its list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.

Woodrow Charles Herman (May 16, 1913 – October 29, 1987) was a jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, singer, and big band leader. Leading various groups called “The Herd”, Herman came to prominence in the late 1930s and was active until his death in 1987. His bands often played music that was cutting edge and experimental for its time; they received numerous Grammy nominations and awards.

Dinah Washington (August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963) was a singer and pianist, who has been cited as “the most popular black female recording artist of the ’50s”. Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of “Queen of the Blues”.

Stan Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was a jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as “The Sound” because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman’s big band, Getz is described by critic Scott Yanow as “one of the all-time great tenor saxophonists”.

William Smith Monroe (September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) was a mandolinist, singer, and songwriter, who helped to create the style of music known as bluegrass. Because of this, he is commonly referred to as the “Father of Bluegrass”. The genre takes its name from his band, the Blue Grass Boys, named for Monroe’s home state of Kentucky. Monroe’s performing career spanned 69 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader.

Adam Morse was born in Mansfield, Texas. She was hired by Jimmy Dorsey when she was 14 years old. In 1942, at the age of 17, she joined Freddie Slack’s band, with whom in the same year she recorded “Cow Cow Boogie”, the first gold record by Capitol Records. “Mr. Five by Five” was also recorded by Morse with Slack, and they had a hit recording with the song in 1942 (Capitol 115). She also originated the wartime hit “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet”, which was later popularized by Nancy Walker in the film Broadway Rhythm.

Ernest Dale Tubb (February 9, 1914 – September 6, 1984), nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was a singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, “Walking the Floor Over You” (1941), marked the rise of the honky tonk style of music. In 1948, he was the first singer to record a hit version of Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson’s “Blue Christmas”, a song more commonly associated with Elvis Presley and his late-1950s version.

Édith Piaf (19 December 1915 ‚Äì 10 October 1963) was a French vocalist, songwriter, cabaret performer and film actress noted as France’s national chanteuse and one of the country’s most widely known international stars. Her most widely known songs include ;La Vie en rose” (1946), “Non, je ne regrette rien” (1960), “Hymne l’amour” (1949), “Milord” (1959), “La Foule” (1957), L’Accordéoniste (1940), and “Padam, padam…” (1951).

James Houston Davis (September 11, 1899 – November 5, 2000) was a singer and songwriter of both sacred and popular songs, as well as a politician and former governor of Louisiana. A politician as well as a songwriter, Davis was elected for two nonconsecutive terms from 1944–48 and from 1960–64 as the governor of his native Louisiana. He ran both campaigns as a controversial advocate for impoverished and rural white Louisianians.

Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was a big-band trombonist, arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best-known big bands. Miller’s recordings include “In the Mood”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Pennsylvania 6-5000”, and “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. In just four years Glenn Miller scored 16 number-one records and 69 top ten hits.

Stanley Newcomb Kenton (December 15, 1911 – August 25, 1979) was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward looking.

Ernest Jansen “Red” Ingle (7 November 1906 ‚Äì 6 September 1965) was a musician, singer and songwriter, arranger, cartoonist and caricaturist. He is best known for his comedy records with Spike Jones and his own Natural Seven sides for Capitol. Ingle was born in Toledo, Ohio on 7 November 1906. He was taught basic violin from age five by Fritz Kreisler, a family friend.

McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician who is often cited as the “father of modern Chicago blues”, and an important figure on the post-war blues scene. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (October 21, 1917 ‚Äì January 6, 1993) was a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 ‚Äì October 9, 1973) was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She is referred to as “the original soul sister” and “the Godmother of rock and roll”.

Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1903 – August 14, 1958) was a blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class African-American audiences.

Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was a jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996.

Cabell Calloway (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer, dancer, and bandleader. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, where he was a regular performer. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States’ most popular big bands from the start of the 1930s to the late 1940s.

Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002), known professionally as Peggy Lee, was a jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress, in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman’s big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer.

Woodward Maurice “Tex” Ritter (January 12, 1905 – January 2, 1974) was a country music singer and actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter acting family (son John and grandsons Jason and Tyler). He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

James Columbus “Jay” McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006) was a jazz pianist and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Ben Webster, and Walter Brown. McShann moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1936, and set up his own big band. His first recordings were all with Charlie Parker, the first as the Jay McShann Orchestra on August 9, 1940.

Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers was a popular African American vocal group in the 1940s and 1950s. The original members were Johnny Moore (October 20, 1906 – January 6, 1969), Charles Brown (September 13, 1922 – January 21, 1999), and Eddie Williams (June 12, 1912 ‚Äì February 18, 1995).

The Orioles were an American R&B group of the late 1940s and early 1950s, one of the earliest such vocal groups who established the basic pattern for the doo-wop sound. The Orioles are generally acknowledged as R&B’s first vocal group. Baltimore natives, they blended rhythm with group harmonies. They brought their winning formula to their first charted hit “It‚Äôs Too Soon To Know”; a #1 record in November 1948.

The Mills Brothers, originally known as the Four Kings of Harmony, were an African-American jazz and pop vocal quartet who made more than 2,000 recordings that sold more than 50 million copies and garnered at least three dozen gold records. The Mills Brothers were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998. The Mills Brothers were born into a family of nine in Piqua, Ohio, twenty-five miles north of Dayton.

The Andrews Sisters were a close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia, soprano Maxene Anglyn, and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie “Patty”. Throughout their career, the sisters sold over 75 million records (the last official count released by MCA Records in the mid-1970s).

Alton Delmore (December 25, 1908 – June 8, 1964) and Rabon Delmore (December 3, 1916 – December 4, 1952), billed as The Delmore Brothers, were country music pioneer singer-songwriters and musicians who were stars of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s. The Delmore Brothers, together with other brother duos such as the Louvin Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, the Monroe Brothers, the McGee Brothers, and The Stanley Brothers, had a profound impact on the history of country music and American popular music.

Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1923 ‚Äì January 2, 1977) was a jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad “Misty”, has become a jazz standard. Scott Yanow of Allmusic calls him “one of the most distinctive of all pianists” and a “brilliant virtuoso.” He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6363 Hollywood Blvd.

Ivory Joe Hunter (October 10, 1914 – November 8, 1974) was a rhythm-and-blues singer, songwriter, and pianist. After a series of hits on the US R&B chart starting in the mid-1940s, he became more widely known for his hit recording “Since I Met You Baby” (1956). He was billed as The Baron of the Boogie, and also known as The Happiest Man Alive. His musical output ranged from R&B to blues, boogie-woogie, and country music, and Hunter made a name in all of those genres.

Samuel John “Lightnin'” Hopkins (March 15, 1912 ‚Äì January 30, 1982) was a country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Centerville, Texas. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 71 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Robert “Mack” McCormick opined that Hopkins is “the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act”.