Let's Hear it for the Girls Trivia Quiz

Answer: USA

Melody Gardot was born in New Jersey in 1985. She started to play the piano at age nine and began her music career by playing in bars in Philadelphia at sixteen. Her mother was a photographer who travelled a great deal so she was more or less raised by her grandparents. Because of the frequent moves she experienced as a child and the career she has chosen, she doesn't stay in one place long enough to call anywhere home. During the recuperative period following her accident, she taught herself the guitar and began to write songs.

Her debut album, "Worrisome Heart", released in 2008, reached number two on the US Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart. All brilliant songs but my personal favourite is "Goodnite."

Answer: Joan Baez

Mercedes Sosa was born in 1935 of French, mestizo and Diaguita Amerindian ancestry in Argentina. She was wildly popular throughout Latin America for her nueva cancion style of music despite it being considered a most radical form of expression by the military dictatorship under which she lived.

She was forced into exile after her arrest in 1979 but returned to her homeland in 1982 as the junta's power waned. Over the course of a career which spanned almost six decades, she released 70 albums and took her music to the world.

She won three Latin Grammy Awards for Best Folk Album in 2000, 2003 and 2006. After her death on October 4, 2009, her body lay in state at Argentina's National Congress. President Fernández de Kirchner declared three days of national mourning.

A reporter noted that she "fought South America's dictators with her voice and became a giant of contemporary Latin American music." She did indeed. I attended her concert in Calgary in the late '90s, something I'll cherish forever.

Answer: Elvis Costello

Born into a musical household, Diana couldn't, nor would she have wanted to, escape the effect it had on her life. She played the piano at age four and won a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston before deciding to move to Los Angeles in the early '90s to play her jazz.

Her music rocketed her up the jazz charts to cement her success as an artist. In the midst of this acclaim, her mother, Adella, and her musical mentors, Rosemary Clooney and Ray Brown, all died within a few months of each other in 2002 making it a very difficult year for her. Happily, earlier that year, she had encountered Costello at the Grammy Awards when they were due to present an award together.

The rest, as they say, is history. They have since married and have twin boys, Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James. Diana has played with some of the greats - Ray Charles, Paul McCartney and Tony Bennett.

Her rendition of Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" remains my favourite.

Answer: Dave Stewart

An only child, Annie was born into a working-class family in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1954. Despite the family's lack of financial resources, she started taking piano lessons at age seven and eventually won a spot at the Royal Academy of Music in London studying classical music and the flute.

She became disenchanted with the rigours of student life and eventually became a full-time performer with bands such as Dragon's Playground and The Tourists where she met Dave Stewart. Eurythmics came into being in 1980 after The Tourists disbanded.

The band's success was phenomenal with follow-up hits such as "Would I Lie To You," "Here Comes the Rain Again" and "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves." In 1990, Annie began her solo career which has gone from strength to strength.

Her work with, most notably, Amnesty International, UNESCO and for AIDS/HIV awareness was rewarded in 2010 with an OBE from Queen Elizabeth. Nae bad for a wee lassie from Aberdeen.

Answer: Chanel No. 5

Nina Simone began her music career at the age of three and at age 17 moved to New York to study at the Julliard School of Music. Despite her considerable talent, she was rejected for a scholarship at Philadelphia's prestigious Curtis Institute of Music supposedly, according to a school insider, due to the colour of her skin.

Despite this setback, she garnered much success as a professional musician although she didn't seem to care if she was successful as long as she could play her music. She eventually settled in Aix-en-Provence, France in 1993. Over the course of her lifetime, she received many accolades for her music and, in a strange twist of irony, two days before she died in 2003, she was awarded an honorary degree by the Curtis Institute. My all-time favourite Nina Simone song is "Feeling Good." How could you not feel good after listening to that?

Answer: Dusty Springfield

Blossom Margrete Dearie was an American jazz singer born in 1924. She was a student of classical music but, in her teens, switched to jazz and moved from East Durham, NY to New York City after completing high school to sing with the likes of the Woody Herman Orchestra and Alvino Rey before embarking upon a solo career.

After stints in Paris working with Michel Legrand and in London where she often played at Ronnie Scott's, she eventually returned to New York, and, although not a huge commercial success, she enjoyed a steady and interesting career.

Her voice was delicate and lovely and bewitching. As a young girl, I first heard her music on the Bernard Braden show from the UK and immediately fell in love with her voice. She died in 2009 at age 84.

She performed almost up to the end of her life. What a girl! And oh what a voice!

Answer: Memphis

Dusty Springfield was born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in 1939 in West Hampstead, London. She enjoyed the life of a middle class girl, raised in a musical home and educated in a convent school, and began her music career by singing with her brother Tom Springfield, eventually forming The Springfields. They recorded their first American album in 1963 in Nashville; however, she left the band soon after and embarked upon her solo career becoming a major recording artist in her own right. By 1968 she was performing in cabarets and working men's clubs so, to give new life to her career, she signed with a new label and travelled to Memphis where she recorded the album, "Dusty in Memphis" which featured the hit single "Son of a Preacher Man." The album has been considered by Rolling Stone magazine to be among the greatest of all time.

Dusty had been profoundly troubled throughout her life and suffered from severe drug and alcohol addictions. She died of breast cancer in 1999 in Henley-on-Thames in England, just two months after she was inducted into the Order of the British Empire and a mere two weeks before her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her voice will live on for those of us who love her music.

Answer: Adkins

Adele was born in North London, England in 1988. She was raised by her mother after her father walked out on the family when she was two. As a young child, Adele would entertain her family with renditions of Spice Girls songs. Her fascination with voices led her to be interested in many vocal styles until she eventually found her own voice.

She graduated from the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology at age 18 in 2006. Four months after graduating, she received a phone call from a record producer who had seen her demo video.

She was signed to XL Records in September of 2006 and within a year released her breakthrough song, "Hometown Glory." "19" entered the charts at number one in January of 2008. Her rise to fame has been meteoric to say the least. We'd be here all day if I tried to list the awards she's won but her nine Grammies probably top the list.

In June 2013, she was awarded a Member of the British Empire medal in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Quite a satisfactory life for a 25-year-old I'd say.

Answer: Maya Rudolph

Minnie Julie Riperton Rudolph was born in Chicago in 1947. She was a student of music, dance and drama at Chicago's Lincoln Center. Her professional music career began while in her teens, starting with a girl-band, The Gems, and later becoming widely used as a back-up singer for Chess Records with the likes of Etta James and Chuck Berry.

She became an instant star when "Lovin' You" hit the charts. Less than a year after its release, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was given six months to live.

Despite her illness she continued to perform and became a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. She died in 1979 at age 31, her beautiful voice lost to us forever.

Answer: Brazil

Astrud Evangelina Weinert was born in Bahia, Brazil in 1940 of mixed German and Brazilian heritage, and was raised in Rio de Janeiro. Astrud's first foray into the music world began after her marriage to the Brazilian musician, Joao Gilberto in 1959.

She had never performed professionally until she recorded "The Girl From Ipanema" with her husband and Stan Getz on the album "Getz/Gilberto" in 1964. The Bossa Nova style of music was just coming into its own at that time and this song transformed Astrud into an international star.

She and Gilberto had moved to the US in 1963 and toured extensively bringing the Brazilian Bossa Nova sound to the rest of the world. After divorcing her husband in the mid-60s, she and Getz became romantically involved and toured together for a time.

She eventually began to record her own compositions and toured as an artist in her own right. She is an ardent animal rights activist and her last album, "Jungle", released independently in 2002, is dedicated to her cat, Precious, the apple of her eye.

She lives a quiet life in Philadelphia with her cats, shying away from all manner of media attention.