Tickle the Ivories Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rock and Pop

Billy Joel is nicknamed "Piano Man", ever since his popular signature song of that title came out in 1973. He wrote it while working at a piano bar in L.A. Billy's dad was a pianist, starting Billy's lessons at age four. Though he initially trained in classical piano, he says The Beatles inspired him into rock and roll and pop.

Joel was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and put out a pop single in 2024, which means he's been a piano man for over 70 years. Whatever the groove, "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me".

Answer: Rock and Pop

Sir Elton Hercules John was born in England in 1947. He started lessons at age seven on his grandmother's piano, then trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1969 his blues band released a debut album, "Empty Sky", but his first single "Your Song" (1970) was soft rock. He met Bernie Taupin in 1967. Ever since, Taupin writes the lyrics; Elton composes the music.

Through the 1970s and 80s Elton topped the charts in rock, pop, and "glam rock", while struggling with severe drug addiction, and then recovering, depicted in the 2019 movie "Rocketman". Although it was nominated for many awards, the film was banned in several countries, and John was banned from Egypt.

Elton has been married twice, to Renate Blauel in 1983-88 and to husband David Furnish since 2005. Elton and David have two sons.

Elton is so versatile and happy to collaborate, he's won Emmys, Grammys, Academy Awards and Tony Awards. There's many a duet, including with k.d. lang, Little Richard, Tammy Wynette, and even in 1996 with the late great opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti. Elton was knighted in 1998 by Queen Elizabeth for his service to music and to charities.

Elton's tour in 2023 grossed more than any before it. At age 77 in his 2024 "retirement" he put out a new album, created a musical on Broadway and wrote a book, "Farewell Yellow Brick Road: Memories of My Life on Tour".

Answer: Jazz or Blues

Born John Chatman, Memphis Slim (1915-1988) was a Memphis blues pianist, composer, singer and storyteller, starting out in gambling joints and honky-tonks in the 1930s. His 1949 release, "Every Day I Have the Blues" became a blues standard covered by artists such as Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, Ella Fitzgerald and B.B. King.

Slim performed on TV, in movies and in Europe, but as the blues lost popularity in the USA, Slim moved to Paris to live in 1962. He was named a Goodwill Ambassador, and posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1989.

Answer: Jazz or Blues

Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) started a band at age 16, toured with an evangelist at age 17, then landed a job in a Manhattan nightclub where he was active in jazz "cutting contests" with other leading talents of the 1940s.

To "cut" another piano player was to take their job by playing better than they did, where one pianist began then another "cut in" and tried to outplay the first with speed, intricacy, or complexity. Monk's participation in these contests surely influenced his unique style, called "hard-swinging", with abrupt, dramatic runs, twists and intense creative improvisation. Yet, he remained unrecognized and musically "too difficult" and irregular, not to mention plagued by racist encounters, an unjust prison term and bad luck, until his first real break in 1956.

In 1957 he led a quartet with John Coltrane, and that year they played at Carnegie Hall. But in 1958 he was beaten on the body and hands by police for asking for a glass of water in Jim Crow Delaware, and, especially thereafter, his work with other musicians could be rocky. Many just didn't understand and couldn't accompany his style, but he had odd ways, too. His wife did most of his bookings and saw that he was nicely dressed.

In 1964 Monk was featured on the cover of "Time" magazine, apparently because other jazz pianists of the time, like Ray Charles, were considered too confident and controversial.

Monk had a peculiar personality. Sometimes he paced, sometimes withdrew, he was always humming or dancing, snapping his fingers, he would use an elbow to hit the keys, and groan while he played. When a fellow band member didn't get the rhythm of his song, he would dance it out, being an accomplished tap dancer, until the person heard it. Sometimes he'd stop speaking entirely. He was then misdiagnosed and given incorrect medicines, possibly damaging his brain. To his death no one was certain what plagued him, but being utterly unique, he had more than his share of misfortune.

A 1957 album "Brilliant Corners" is considered among his best. In 2005 Monk's son helped produce a recording of Monk and Coltrane together in 1957. It became the number one best-selling recording on Amazon. So finally, we got it.

"A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination", Monk once said.

Answer: Jazz or Blues

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974) was such a huge outdoors and baseball fan, he nearly missed his childhood piano lessons, which would have cheated the world of one of the most important stride piano innovators and perhaps the greatest American composer ever known.

Ellington helped bring expressive big-band jazz and new combinations of ensemble instruments into being. About 100 of his 2,000 compositions became jazz standards. Duke called his art "American Music", not jazz, saying what he did was outside any category. He wrote movie scores, and compositions for ballet and theatre, as well as some religious songs.

In 1965 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but received it in 1999, after his death. In 1966 he was on the cover of "Time" magazine and in 1969 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

He earned the nickname Duke because of his regal manner. Ellington had one son, Mercer, who took over Duke's orchestral band when his dad passed away.

Answer: Classical

Clara Josephine (Wieck) Schumann (1819-1896) was a highly esteemed German classical pianist, composer and teacher. Both parents were accomplished pianists and taught their child prodigy, who debuted at age nine. She was close with Johannes Brahms and encouraged his career. Chopin and Franz Liszt both praised her abilities.

At age 20 she wished to marry the older Robert Schumann, but her dad refused permission, so they took him to court in 1840, won, married, and had eight children together. Sadly Robert suffered with depression, and died in an asylum.

Clara Schumann became the only woman on the faculty of the visionary Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt, training advanced students from around the globe. Her composition style is described as elegant and complex.

Answer: Classical

Say "Symphony 5" and the German Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) springs to mind. This genius classical composer changed music forever, even as he completely lost his hearing and died at just age 56. The exact day of his birth is undetermined, but likely the 16th of December.

His grandfather was an eminent musician; his dad a drunken court singer. It is said Ludwig's dad was brutal, cruel and demanding as he taught his young son music, without sparking result. Once his father died, however, Ludwig sought out Haydn and other gifted musicians, coming into his incredible mastery and gaining recognition.

Beethoven was ugly, shy, bad-tempered and miserable. In 1802 however, Ludwig wrote in testament, "how greatly you wrong me", to think ill of him.

Somehow this anguished, astounding person composed extraordinary opera, symphony, concerti, quartets, sonatas, 72 songs, and more, possibly the greatest classical works ever created.

Modern analysis suggests Ludwig had a medical condition, perhaps lead poisoning, or arterial disease, with his hearing loss attributed to a bout of typhus. He pined for his "immortal beloved", a woman he never won, so he died without love, or family. His fame however, is legend.

Answer: Classical

Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) was born in or near what is now Kyiv, Ukraine. He died in New York City as an American virtuoso with many "Best Classical Performance", "Best Classical Album", and "Best Instrumental Soloist" Grammy Awards, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for "especially meritorious contribution".

Horowitz rose from the Russian poverty of WWI to a stunning debut in St. Petersburg, Russia at age 20. His payments were most often chocolates or bread, so destitute was the country.

Horowitz secretly immigrated to Germany in 1925, and debuted in the USA at Carnegie Hall in 1928. He moved to the USA in 1940 with his wife Wanda, and became a US citizen.

Due to depression and stage fright Horowitz stepped away from the concert stage from 1953 to 1965, and again at other times, though repeatedly his return proved he was still among the greatest pianists in history.

Horowitz was admired for uncanny technical precision and an impressive classical range, as well as an astounding ability to excite his listeners. His style was intense and bold, played with an unusual hand position, held below the keyboard, the pinkie in a curl.

Answer: Jazz or Blues

Nina Simone (1933-2003) born Eunice Waymon was a legendary jazz, blues and folk singer active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Simone began playing piano at age three and attended the Julliard School of Music in New York City, as she dreamed of becoming the first Black concert pianist. She had to quit for lack of funds, though, then was denied entry to the less expensive Curtis Institute of Music. She had to make a living, so she turned to the jazz and blues clubs to begin a singing career and eventually recorded over 40 albums.

She is known for "Mississippi Goddam" written in reply to both an assassination and a church bombing that killed four Black girls. Simone believed she was boycotted by the US music industry for this song; it was banned by several states, and many radio stations broke the album and sent it back to the promoter. Nonetheless Simone performed the song on TV, at Carnegie Hall and at the Selma/Montgomery march. It's on the Rolling Stone "Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. In 2019 the song was preserved by the Library of Congress for its great significance.

About 1970 Simone visited many countries, then made her home in France where she sang brilliantly in a jazz club, though she could be hostile, and was often drunk. Still she produced "My Baby Just Cares for Me" which reached number four in the UK. In time Simone moved to the Netherlands where she was relatively stable and happy, diagnosed and treated for bi-polar disorder and looked after by friends.

Simone appears on many lists as "one of the greatest singers of all time". Her autobiography is aptly titled, "I Put a Spell on You".

Answer: Rock and Pop

Nearly everyone recognizes "Tutti Frutti", "Good Golly Miss Molly", and "Long Tall Sally" by the boisterous, screaming, pounding rock and roll innovator Little Richard.

Born in Georgia as Richard Wayne Penniman (1932-2020) Little Richard was active in church with his extended family of preachers, singing gospel and playing piano. But at age 13 Richard was kicked out by his dad who hated Richard's emerging Gayness. A white family who owned a club took him in, and soon Richard skyrocketed to success with a row of hits, appearances in movies, multiple awards and eventually a 1986 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

His style was called "thunderous" and "electrifying", helping move rhythm and blues into the era of Rock and Roll. But Richard worried he was damned, that rock and roll was "of the Devil", so he withdrew from the rock scene, married and became a minister (1958). He adopted a toddler son.

By 1963 he was back, going on tour with the Beatles and then the Rolling Stones, taking in a new guy called Jimi Hendrix to play in his band. In 1977 Richard again recorded only gospel, explaining in 1980 he believed he had to repent for being Gay as well as for drug use. By 1986 though he came to a peace with himself, wrote the song track for a movie, got a hit with "Great Gosh A'Mighty" and starred in a film.

He continued to perform, to duet with the greatest like Bon Jovi and Hank Williams Jr, and to knock the house down even from a wheelchair, until his last concert in 2014. A long list of greats including Elvis, Dylan, Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger cite Richards as their major influence. Rolling Stone lists Little Richard as the eighth greatest artist of all time.