"Big Mama" Thornton (1926 - 1984)

Willie Mae ("Big Mama") Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984) was an American rhythm and blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record the hit song "Hound Dog" in 1952. The song was #1 on the Billboard R&B charts for seven weeks. The B-side was "They Call Me Big Mama," and the single sold almost two million copies. Three years later, Elvis Presley recorded his version, based on a version performed by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys. In a similar occurrence, she wrote and recorded "Ball 'n' Chain," which became a hit for her. Janis Joplin later recorded "Ball and Chain," and was a huge success in the late 1960s.

As an influence over the music and musicians which followed her, her importance cannot be overstated. Her name and legacy will forever remain among the very greatest of blues legends. Thornton's mighty voice, take-no-guff attitude, and incendiary stage performances influenced generations of blues and rock singers and carried on the tradition of tough "blues mamas" like Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, and Ma Rainey.

Thornton is also the namesake of the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls.

Willie Dixon, Memphis Slim, T-Bone Walker Play The Blues!

Blues emerged as an accessible form of self-expression in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of African influences. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music, as it became the roots of jazz, rhythm and blues, bluegrass and rock and roll.

After World War II and in the 1950s, new styles of electric blues music became popular in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis. Electric blues used amplified electric guitars, electric bass, drums, and harmonica played through a microphone and a PA system or a guitar amplifier. Chicago became a center for electric blues in the early 1950s. Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by the Mississippi blues style, because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region. Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. J. T. Brown who played in Elmore James's bands, or J. B. Lenoir's also used saxophones, but these were used more as "backing" or rhythmic support than as solo instruments.

Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) are well known harmonica (called "harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. B. B. King and Freddie King (no relation), who did not use slide guitar, were influential guitarists of the Electric blues style, even though they weren't from Chicago. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices.

Bassist and composer Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many standard blues songs of the period, such as "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters) and, "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records label. Other prominent blues labels of this era included J.O.B. Records and Vee-Jay Records.

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry (24 October 1911, Greensboro, North Carolina - 11 March 1986, Mineola, New York[1]) was a blind blues musician. He was most widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.

Walter Brown ("Brownie") McGhee (November 30, 1915 - February 16, 1996) was a folk-blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.

At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois, but his real success came after he moved to New York City in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 as Blind Boy Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success; as well as recording, they toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending eleven months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.

Despite their later fame as "pure" folk artists playing for white audiences, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to be successful black recording performers, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, variously calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots music and their white customers.

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"Lady Day" Billie Holiday

In 1987, Billie Holiday was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1994, the United States Postal Service introduced a Billie Holiday postage stamp, she ranked #6 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock n' Roll in 1999, and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Over the years, there have been many tributes to Billie Holiday, including "The Day Lady Died", a 1959 poem by Frank O'Hara, and "Angel of Harlem", a 1988 release by the group U2.

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Billie Holiday (1915 - 1959)

Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan Gough; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Ladybug" by her sometime collaborator Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style — strongly inspired by instrumentalists — pioneered a new way of manipulating wording and tempo, and also popularized a more personal and intimate approach to singing. Critic John Bush wrote that she "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", and "Lady Sings the Blues". She also became famous for singing jazz standards written by others, including "Easy Living" and "Strange Fruit."

Neville Brothers "Brother John and Iko Iko"

Happy Mardi Gras from the Silver Spring Town Center, Inc!

Bernie Mac (1957 - 2008)

Bernard Jeffrey McCullough (October 5, 1957 – August 9, 2008), better known by his stage name Bernie Mac, was an American actor and comedian. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Mac gained popularity as a stand-up comedian. He joined comedians Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer, and D.L. Hughley as The Original Kings of Comedy.

After briefly hosting the HBO show Midnight Mac, Mac appeared in several films in smaller roles. His most noted film role was as Frank Catton in the remake Ocean's Eleven and its two sequels. He also starred in several films, including Mr. 3000. He was the star of The Bernie Mac Show, which ran from 2001-2006, earning him two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. His other films included starring roles in Friday, Bad Santa, Pride, and Soul Men which was one of his final two films.

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Richard Pryor - Comedian (1940 - 2005)

Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an African-American comedian, actor and writer.

Pryor was a storyteller known for unflinching examinations of racism and customs in modern life, and was well-known for his frequent use of colorful, vulgar and profane language and racial epithets. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations. He is widely regarded as one of the most important stand-up comedians of all time: Jerry Seinfeld called Pryor "The Picasso of our profession"; Whoopi Goldberg cited him as her biggest influence, stating "The major influence was Richard - I want to say those things he's saying."[citation needed] Bob Newhart has called Pryor "the seminal comedian of the last 50 years."

His body of work includes such concert movies and recordings as Richard Pryor: Live and Smokin' (1971), That Nigger's Crazy (1974), ...Is It Something I Said? (1975), Bicentennial Nigger (1976), Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979), Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982) and Richard Pryor: Here and Now (1983). He also starred in numerous films as an actor, usually in comedies such as Silver Streak, but occasionally in dramatic roles, such as Paul Schrader's film Blue Collar and epic roles like Gus Gorman from Superman III (1983). He also collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder. He won an Emmy Award in 1973, and five Grammy Awards in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1981, and 1982. In 1974, he also won two American Academy of Humor awards and the Writers Guild of America Award.

Joshua Nelson

Joshua Nelson is an American gospel singer and Hebrew teacher. Nelson transcends differences between races and faiths through his music. He is both an up-and-coming Jewish Gospel singer in the tradition of Mahalia Jackson, and a Hebrew teacher full-time in the Hebrew school at Sharey-Tefilo-Israel, a Reform synagogue in South Orange, NJ, when he is not on the road. He also serves as director of music at Hopewell Baptist Church in Newark, NJ, which is housed in a former synagogue (the former B’nai Jeshurun.

Through his composing, gospel singing, and chanting Torah, Nelson is the musical embodiment of cultural harmony, with his rich voice, charismatic personality, and personal mission to build bridges between the races.

Nelson created a new sound that blends Jewish liturgical and African American spiritual styles.

Nelson has performed with musical legends including Wynton Marsalis and Aretha Franklin and Stephanie Mills and Billy Preston, as well as gospel singers Albertina Walker, the Barret Sisters, Hezekiah Walker, Kirk Franklin, Dottie Peoples, Dorothy Norwood, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Reverend Timothy Wright, and Bobby Jones & New Life. Nelson also performs frequently with the Jewish Klezmer band The Klezmatics, and performed with the late jazz greats Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie.

Nelson sang before Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, and performed for an audience in Jerusalem that included then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

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Marion Williams - American Gospel Singer

Marion Williams (August 29, 1927 – July 2, 1994) was an American gospel singer. She was born in Miami, to a religiously devout mother and musically inclined father. She left school when she was nine years old to support the family. She worked as a maid and a nurse and in factories and laundries. Even then, she was singing before audiences. As was common in the area, Williams was exposed to African American blues and jazz, alongside Caribbean calypso. Poverty caused Williams to leave school at fourteen, working with her mother at a laundry. She was singing at church and on street corners, inspired by a wide range of musicians including Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Smith Jubilee Singers. She stuck with gospel, however, in spite of pressure to switch to popular blues tunes or the opera.

In 1946, while visiting her sister in Philadelphia, she happened to sing before an audience that included Clara Ward and Gertrude Ward. They recognized her talent and offered her a job. A year later, she became a part of the famous Ward Singers. Her growling, hands-on-the-hips vocal style made her the group's undisputed star.

In 1958, she and other members of the Ward group formed the Stars of Faith. In 1965, began her solo career. For the next 15 years she toured the United States, Africa and the West Indies.