Musical Memoirs Part 2 Trivia Quiz

Answer: James Brown

James Brown was born on May 3, 1933, in Barnwell, South Carolina, and died on December 25, 2006, at Atlanta, Georgia. Brown had an impoverished childhood. After his parents split up he was brought up by an aunt - in a brothel. Brown had several poorly paid jobs and developed his passion for music through singing in a church choir.

In his teenage years Brown ran wild and this led to a three-year custodial sentence for stealing a car. While inside he formed a gospel choir and met R&B singer Bobby Byrd. Several years later, the then free Brown was invited to join Byrd's band.

After gigging around without much success, Brown moved to New York and, with a new band, recorded "Try Me." It became a number one on the R&B charts. Brown barely looked back after that. He recorded regularly and toured extensively: all in the process of earning a huge reputation among his fellow musicians.

In 2017, "Billboard" magazine noted that Brown had 110 entries on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts, 17 of those reaching number one. At that time he was just behind Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder in terms of number ones. He had also had 52 entries on the Hot 200 album charts.

Brown became known as "The Godfather of Soul" and that was the title of the autobiography published in 1992. (Written with Bruce Tucker.)

Answer: Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington, and died on September 18, 1970, in Kensington, London. Hendrix was a teenage self-taught guitar virtuoso with an innovative style. When he switched to electric guitar, he used a right-handed model that he turned upside down for his own left-handed playing.

Hendrix formed his first band while serving in the US Army. On discharge, he worked as a session musician and formed Jimmy James and the Blue Flames and played on the Greenwich Village scene.

In 1966 he moved to England and set up the the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the outfit with which he was to be most noted. He jumped to widespread attention at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 when he opened his set with a rocking version of "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Hendrix had two number ones on the Billboard Hot 100 and 10 top 10's on the Billboard 200 album charts.

Hendrix was noted for his cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower". Dylan was later to say: "It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day."

"Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix" was written by Charles R. Cross and published in 2005.

Answer: Ian Hunter

Ian Hunter was born on June 3, 1939 in Oswestry, Shropshire. Hunter came to fame as lead singer of Mott The Hoople between 1969 and 1974. It was not the case of a teenage prodigy becoming an overnight success: Hunter was aged 29 at the time.

In their brief time they became popular in both the UK and the USA with songs such as "All the Young Dudes", written by David Bowie and given to the band, and Hunter's own "All the Way from Memphis", "Roll Away the Stone", and "The Golden Age of Rock'n'Roll".

But before that the band might have broken up if Bowie had not offered them "All The Young Dudes". Hunter said in a newspaper interview: "I would never have given that song away to anybody. I got the feeling he'd tried and tried, with his own version, and got bored with it. But once he was in the studio with us, he knew exactly what sound he wanted."

Hunter was noted for being...difficult. The band certainty enjoyed a rock and roll style and it took its toll.

He told the story of a US tour in his book "Diary Of A Rock and Roll Star" in 1974. The band's story was also retold in "All the Young Dudes" by Campbell Devine in 2007.

Answer: Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt was born on July 15, 1946 in Tucson, Arizona. She grew up listening to Mexican music on the radio and her father's Mexican LP's.

In the 1960s, Ronstadt became interested in the music of the Carter family and Bob Dylan. "When I heard the Byrds doing folk rock, I thought that was what I wanted to do," she said in an interview with "The New Yorker" in September 2019.

At a young age, Ronstadt dropped out of the University of Arizona to travel to Los Angeles and a music career and was a founder member of the Stone Poneys. The band did not last long, but Ronstadt went on to record 35 albums, several of which were million-sellers.

From Mexican music through traditional country, folk, and rock, Ronstadt showed her love for all musical genres when she turned to opera, including a Broadway production of "The Pirates of Penzance".

In 2013, Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson's and could no longer sing. In her "New Yorker" interview she was asked how she coped with it and said: "I've just accepted it. There's absolutely nothing I can do. I have a form of Parkinsonism that doesn't respond to standard Parkinson's meds, so there's no treatment for what I have."

The autobiography "Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir" was published in 2013.

Answer: Carole King

Carole King was born in Manhattan, New York City, on February 9, 1942 and began to learn to play piano at the age of three, encouraged by her mother. She met Gerry Goffin while they were students and they married when she was 17. They became known as one of their era's best song-writing duos.

In a long career with Goffin and other partners, she wrote 118 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100. As a performer, she had 15 entries on the Hot 100, including the double-sided number one "It's Too Late"/"I Feel the Earth Move".

She had three number ones on the album charts, inducing the highly rated "Tapestry" in 1974. "Billboard" magazine calculated that 400 King songs had been recorded by 1,000 artists, including the number ones "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" by The Shirelles, "The Loco-Motion" by Little Eva, and "Girl" by Donny Osmond.

The title of her memoirs is based on the song that King and Goffin wrote for Aretha Franklin in 1967, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."

Answer: B. B. King

Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, in Berclair, Mississippi, and died on May 14, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada. As a "New York Times" obituary noted: "Mr. King married country blues to big-city rhythms and created a sound instantly recognizable to millions."

From a poor background, King was to become blues royalty, with his name mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Muddy Water and Howlin' Wolf. While baptised Riley, he used the nickname "B. B.", which stood for "Blues Boy".

He first hit the top of the R&B charts in 1951 and toured and recorded for the rest of his life. Among those said to have been influenced by his guitar style were Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. He gave his guitars the name "Lucille" after an incident in which he ran into a burning dance hall to save his guitar. The fire had been started by two men in a fight over a woman called Lucille.

King had 10-songs in the Billboard R&B charts. Six of his albums hit the Billboard 200 charts, including the number one "Live In Cook County Jail" in 1973.

"Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King", written with David Ritz, was published in 1996.

Answer: Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt was born on March 7, 1944, in Fort Worth, Texas, and died on January 1, 1997 in Smyrna, Tennessee. Van Zandt came from a well-off family and dropped out of school to follow a career in music.

That career probably never reached the heights that his songwriting deserved, but those songs were quickly picked up by others. One of his most famous was "Pancho and Lefty", which was a Billboard Hot Country number one for Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.

Van Zandt had been diagnosed as a young age as a manic depressive and many of his songs were on the dark side. Still, fellow musicians loved his songs. Nanci Griffith described him as "the greatest folk songwriter that my native Texas has ever given birth to".

In 2007, John Kruth borrowed the title of a Van Zandt song and added it to an album title to write the biography "To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great, Townes Van Zandt".

Answer: Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar was born on January 10, 1953, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City. Her mother was a trained opera singer and Benatar sang her first solo in performance at the age of eight.

Benatar married young and seemed to have given up any thoughts of a performance career for several years. She then joined a band and and after gigging in Virginia made it back to New York City where she caught the attention of Chrysalis Records. She became involved professionally and personally with the guitarist Neil Girado and her career surged forward.

She became one of the most powerful female singers in the music business, picking up eight number one singles and four Grammy Awards, one of those for "Love Is A Battlefield" in 1983. Although the hits seemed to dry up after the 1980s, Benatar and Giraldo remained busy performers.

"Between a Heart and a Rock Place: A Memoir" was written by Benatar with Patsi Bale Cox and was published in 2010.

Answer: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan turned up at an open mic night at the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village in 1961 with a guitar and a set list of Woody Guthrie covers. He was just 20 years old and established performers began to sit up and take notice. Dylan was born on May 24 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota.

Dylan was soon singing his own songs and caught the attention of John Hammond, then one of the most influential producers on the scene. He recorded his first album "Bob Dylan" in 1962.

For the early part of his career, Dylan was true to the acoustic folk movement of the time. That changed in 1965 when he performed an electrified folk-rock set at the Newport Folk Festival. The purists hated it. An enraged Pete Seeger wanted an axe to cut the power supply. When he played a show at Manchester, England, in 1966, a heckler called out "Judas".

There is not enough space here to go into the twists and turns of a career of a songwriter and performer who has garnered such a mixed reputation among acolytes and detractors. In 2016 he won a Nobel Prize for literature.

The autobiography "Chronicles, Volume One" was published in 2004.

Answer: Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett was born on August 3, 1926 in Long Island, New York, and was still performing, at the age of 93, when this quiz was written in July 2020.

Bennett was 'discovered' by actress and singer Pearl Bailey, who asked him to open her Greenwich Village show. Bob Hope was an early admirer and was the man who advised him to change his name. He had his first hit in 1951, and they kept on comng. Laid-back jazz was his noted style and "I Left My Heart In San Francisco", released in 1962, became the song most closely associated with him.

It has been estimated that Bennett sold 50 million albums during his career. That included 45 on the Billboard 200, and 81 singles IMDb credits Bennett with 18 acting roles, often playing himself. In 2018, Bennett was estimated to have a net worth of $200m - not bad for a crooner with few writing credits.

The autobiography "The Good Life" was published in 2010.