Mark Spoelstra born 30 June 1940

Mark Warren Spoelstra (June 30, 1940 – February 25, 2007) was an American singer-songwriter and blues guitarist who was an important figure in the folk music renaissance of the 1960’s. 

Born and raised in Kansas City to a Quaker family, Spoelstra's musical journey began after a move to El Monte in California when, at the age of 11, he began taking guitar lessons. A couple of years later, the budding guitarist found himself playing at his first professional gig at a house concert in the San Marino region of the state before gaining experience by playing live at various folks clubs in the surrounding area - including a support slot for revered blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at Hollywood's influential Ash Grove nightclub. 

Before long, Spoelstra made the move to Berkeley in San Francisco and finally New York where he landed a recording contract with the pioneering Folkways Records which in turn spawned the 1963 albums 'The Songs Of Mark Spoelstra With Twelve String Guitar' and 'Mark Spoelstra Recorded At Club 47 Inc'. 

                   Here's “Stranger Blues” from above album.

                              

It was around this time that Spoelstra became friends with a certain Bob Dylan who himself was starting out as a singer/songwriter on the Greenwich Village scene. Spoelstra would find himself occasionally performing with Dylan at the plethora of folk clubs that were scattered around the 

Village and went on to play at prestigious events such as the Newport Folk Festival and the Carnegie Hall Hootenanny. Tours of Europe and Canada followed but it sparked an unease in Spoelstra that would significantly influence his later career choices. 

The decision to pull back from performing was initially taken out his hands on account of an obligation to perform alternative service in Fresno, California thanks to his stance as a conscientious objector at a time when young US men were still being compulsorily drafted into the armed forces. "Because I was raised as a Quaker in Southern California, I really believed that I was not going to put on a uniform ever except the possibility perhaps of becoming a medic and going in as a non-combatant," Spoelstra recalled later. "I really felt that it was just wiser to do something that was more positive, like community development work. That's what I did for two years." 

Following his stint of alternative service, Spoelstra went on to record two acclaimed albums for the Elektra label -  'Five & Twenty Questions' (1965) and 'State Of Mind' (1966). His songs would prove popular with audiences and fellow performers alike with upcoming socially-conscious artists such as Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte. Up until the end of the '70s, Spoelstra would record a handful of albums for different labels as well as getting involved in side projects such as appearing on the soundtrack of the 1973 film Electra Glide In Blue and setting up the short-lived Frontier Constabulary band. 

During this time, Spoelstra had taken the decision to withdraw from touring and settle down near Modesto in California where he and his wife Sherry raised a family with the couple fully embracing Christianity as a way of life. By 1974, Spoelstra had enrolled in the Two Year Discovery Art Guild Internship Program of Intensive Bible Study at Peninsula Bible Church, in Palo Alto, California, eventually leading to him becoming a minister of music. Spoelstra subsequently began issuing albums once more, such as  'Somehow I Always Knew' (1977) and 'Comin' Back To Town' (1979). 

However, Spoelstra had effectively retired from professional music by 1980 to take up a number of different day jobs including a stint as a tour bus driver at the world famous Yosemite National Park which allowed him to spend quality time with his children and subsequent grandchildren whilst still being able to connect with people on a daily basis amidst the spectacular waterfalls and granite mountains of his workplace. 

At the turn of the millennium, Spoelstra found himself back in the studio to record the well-received 2001 album 'Out Of My Hands' which saw the now seasoned singer/songwriter offer up a new set of songs under the production auspices of Michael Kieffer and Cary Ginell. It was the first record he'd made in 20 years. 

In the following few years, Spoelstra would occasionally perform on stage and would do so until the summer of 2006 when illness took its toll. Sadly, Mark Spoelstra passed away in February 2007 following complications brought on by pancreatic cancer leaving behind a small but perfectly-formed back catalogue of songs that continue to attract and inspire new listeners through reissues and the accessibility of the internet. 

(Edited mainly from a tribute by Lins Honeyman @ Cross Rhythms) 

Billy Storm born 29 June 1938

 Billy Storm (born June 29, 1938 –September 5, 1983) was a American R&B singer. 

William Hamlin Spicer was born in Daytona, Ohio, after his mother's name. He was also known, over the years, as Billy Fortune and Billy Storm. As a songwriter he used the pseudonyms John Carson and Billy Carson. 

Billy Hamlin Spicer was a student at LA High School and sang in a choir with Brice Coefield. He had founded a vocal ensemble called "The Sabers" with his cousin Rip Spencer from Jordan High School, Walter Carter and a classmate named Herbie. After their first recording in 1955 for Hite Morgan, Billy joined the group, who could sing both bass and a tenor reminiscent of Clyde McPhatter. After a second recording session, the group renamed itself "The Chavelles". Jazz pianist Lloyd Glenn established a contact with the producer Bumps Blackwell of Specialty Records, who then became the manager of the group. Blackwell brought new recordings, including the Valley of Love co-authored by Billy to Vita Records. Then Herbie and Walter Carter left the band, the gap that was left was filled by singer and guitarist Chester Pipkin from the Squires. With the change of line-up, the next name was changed to The Valiants. 

Billy, who now called himself Billy Storm, had become the lead singer of the quartet with his bright tenor voice. Shortly before their first recordings for Specialty in 1957, their manager Blackwell was fired from there and they followed him to Keen Records. In two recording sessions with Don and Dewey as instrumentalists, among others, the Valiants recorded a large part of their work, including the up-tempo numbers This Is the Night and Good Golly Miss Molly. The latter was from Little Richard the year before. The very fast version of the Valiants came on the market in November 1957 before Richard's version. Blackwell also used the group as the opening act for Sam Cooke at his concerts on the west coast. This Is the Night was to be the only chart success of the Valiants and after a few more unsuccessful single releases and the looming business closure of Keen Records, Billy Storm left the band to try his hand at a solo career. 

                              

First, Billy recorded with the rest of the Squires again for Hite Morgan Every Word of the Song and Listen to Your Heart, which were released on Morgan's Dice Records label under the name "Billy Fortune & the Squires" and on Deck Records under the name "Billy Storm & the Squires”came out. A few more tracks were released on the Barbary Coast label. It wasn't until 1958, after Columbia Records bought Billy for $ 1,700 from a contract with Barbary Coast, that the singer made a 28th place on the pop charts with I've Come of Age. The recording was by Mitch Miller who worked with Billy the following year. 

In 1960 and 1961, Billy recorded R&B and pop standards for Atlantic Records under Phil Spector. Depending on his account balance, Billy also supported his old colleagues from the Valiants, who now published in different compositions as The Electras, The Untouchables or The Alley Cats. When Billy supported the Untouchables for the recording of You're on Top on Liberty Records, they were joined by Lou Adler and Herb Alpert supervised. The latter played his first trumpet solo on the piece and would later become world famous on the wind instrument. Throughout his long career Billy only had two album releases, in 1961 – ‘This Is The Night’ on Famous F-504, and later ‘Billy Storm’ (label not known).

In 1962, Billy recorded three singles for Infinity Records under John Marascalco, who with Bumps Blackwell was already the songwriter of Good Golly Miss Molly and other Little Richard hits, was in charge of Electras as A&R manager for Infinity and on his own small labels. The next station was the label Buena Vista Records of Disney Studios, where Billy not only recorded material for six singles, but also lent his voice in Disney films cartoon characters. In 1966 he sang again with the Electras on Marascalco's label Ruby-Doo Records. 

Finally, in late 1968, Billy became part of the last incarnation of The Sabers/The Valiants/The Untouchables which was the soul group Africa, recording for Lou Adler's Ode label. They recorded the album Music from Lil Brown, on which Billy Storm placed his own composition Here I Stand. The record was released, as well as two single releases and two solo singles by Billy on Ode Records. While Africa was around, most of the members turned up in the Brothers And Sisters Of Los Angeles, a 28-person group that also recorded for Ode. The guys still sometime appeared as the Valiants/Alley Cats.

Tragically at the age of 45 years old, the beautiful lead voice of the Valiants, Billy Storm, passed away on September 5, 1983 in Los Angeles.

Billy’s cousin Rip Spencer became an independent record producer, working on an album with Levon Harris. On December 9, 2009, Rip was shot and killed (at age 70) at his home in Compton, California.

(Edited from Wikipedia, Marv Goldberg & IMDb)

Out of Los Angeles, this disc released in June of 1966 is the only single issued by Billy Storm on the Hanna-Barbera label.  'Please Don't Mention Her Name', written by Pat Vegas and Gene McDaniels, is an explosive dancefloor number with an arrangement that no doubt was inspired by the hits coming out of Detroit on the Motown label.

Don Swan born 28 June 1904

Wilbur Clyde Schwandt (June 28, 1904 in Manitowoc, Wisconsin – July 23, 1998 in Miami, Florida) was an American musician, author, composer and conductor, best known for his song "Dream a Little Dream of Me" with Fabian Andre. He frequently used the stage name Don Swan and released Latin jazz albums in the 1950s and 1960s.

Born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, he studied composition at the University of Chicago under teachers with formidable names like Sigvart Holland and Emil Soderstrom. He became an arranger for various big bands, even working with comedian Bob Hope's touring show. In 1940, he was hired as an arranger for Xavier Cugat's orchestra, a post he would hold off and on for the next 20 years.

Don Swan's toe-tickling products for the Cugat Orchestra of the pre-war years were largely responsible for the group's success in making the United States "Latin conscious" during that period. Don's arrangement of "Tico-Tico" for Xavier Cugat gave Cugat one of his all-time best record sellers. Swan's resulting experience and familiarity with Latin music helped put his services in great demand -- not only as an arranger, but also as a composer, for both white big bands (Skinnay Ennis, Freddy Martin) and Latin dance orchestras (Perez Prado, Desi Arnaz).

                      Here's "Ain't She Sweet" from above LP

                             

Swan signed to Liberty Records as a recording artist circa 1956-1957, and recorded a string of five Latin lounge LPs, beginning with Mucho Cha Cha Cha. Subsequent LPs like All This and Cha Cha Too, Hot Cha Cha, and two volumes of Latino! found Swan heading up all-star groups of West Coast session men, walking the line between Latin jazz and exotic gimmickry. 

The success of his albums allowed Swan to form a touring group, and he played extensively in New York and Las Vegas performing in leading night clubs and making numerous television appearances. Don often spent a few months each year in Miami or Havana in order to keep his finger on the constant pulse of Latin rhythms.

He also wrote a number of instructional books, including Cha Cha for the Hammond and Tango for the Spinet, before retiring in the mid-1960s.He eventually moved to Miami,Florida, where he died on July 23, 1998, at the ripe old age of 94. 

(Scarce information edited from AllMusic SpaceAgePoP & 317x.com) (There are very few photos of Don on the web. They were all supposed to be Don Swan, but I have my doubts.  Hopefully some of you eagle eyed music lovers will let me know if the first portrait is wrong.)

Magali Noel born 27 June 1931

Magali Noël (27 June 1931 – 23 June 2015) was a French actress and singer.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the French actress and singer Magali Noël was as popular as Brigitte Bardot, Annie Girardot, Jeanne Moreau and Sophia Loren in continental Europe. A striking brunette, she acted in close to 100 films and was first directed by the French cinema luminaries René Clair, Jules Dassin, Julien Duvivier, Sacha Guitry and Jean Renoir in a series of decorative roles – ingénue, chanteuse, soubrette, femme fatale – whose limitations she transcended.

Her subsequent career combined theatre and television as well as more challenging film parts. Famously, she appeared in three of Federico Fellini’s most celebrated and memorable films – La Dolce Vita, Satyricon and Amarcord – and became known as the Italian director’s muse. However, the exact nature of their relationship remained unsubstantiated. “It was a great relationship,” said Stéphanie Vial-Noël, her daughter with the actor Jean-Pierre Bernard. “Platonic or not at the start, I do not know. Federico called any time of day or night. He was like another dad for me.”

Born Magali Françoise Noëlle Camille Guiffray to French parents in the diplomatic corps, she grew up in what is now Izmir, Turkey, where she began singing in her teens. Moving to Paris in 1951, she was the wife of the popular star Bourvil in Hervé Bromberger’s gentle comedy Seul Dans Paris (Alone in Paris), and was soon appearing alongside Bardot in Le Fils de Caroline Chérie (1955), Jean Devaivre’s Napoleonic drama, and Clair’s romantic Les Grandes Manœuvres (Summer Manœuvres, 1955), as well as opposite the monstre sacré Jean Gabin in Henri Decoin’s taut thriller Razzia Sur La Chnouf (Chnouf, also 1955).

                              

Her recording career began in France in 1956, and her most famous song was "Fais-moi mal, Johnny" ("Hurt me Johnny"), a duet sung with Boris Vian who had written the lyrics and with music composed by Alain Goraguer. In this torrid rock in French, the singer declared love "the love that goes boom!" ". Words deemed sulphurous for the time, to such an extent that the song had been banned from the radio in 1956. "It took the playfulness of Magali Noël to sing it”, recalled the pianist Hervé Sellin, who accompanied her for about thirty years.

Her Fellini roles proved equally sulphurous, starting with Fanny, the dancer in La Dolce Vita (1960), continuing with Fortunata in Satyricon (1969) and concluding with La Gradisca, the Hollywood-fixated glamorous hairdresser who is the object of many a male fantasy in fascist Italy in Amarcord, which won a Foreign Language Oscar in 1974. Costa-Gavras cast her in his controversial political thriller Z, winner of the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1970. In total, she has appeared in about sixty films, the last being in 2003, Nothing But Happiness , by Denis Parent. While Z and Amarcord remained her high watermarks, she easily moved into older roles and worked with Chantal Akerman, Tonie Marshall and Jonathan Demme.

 She was also active in television well into the 1990s, appearing  in about thirty TV films (including the saga Les Cœurs brûlés , on TF1 in 1992)  and also in the American cable-TV series The Ray Bradbury Theater, among other projects.. She took her theatrical bow in 2008 with Le Clan, her acclaimed musical homage to Vian, Jacques Prévert and Raymond Queneau.

Noël had a daughter with actor Jean-Pierre Bernard, and two boys, whom she adopted after her remarriage. She died in the retirement home where she was staying at Châteauneuf-Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, France four days before her 84th birthday on 23 June 2015,

(Edited mainly from an article by Pierre Perrone @ The Independent)

Richard Maltby Sr. born 26 June 1914

Richard Eldridge Maltby Sr. (June 26, 1914 – August 19, 1991) was an American musician, conductor, arranger and bandleader, most notable for his 1956 recording "(Themes from) The Man with the Golden Arm". He was also the father of the Broadway lyricist and director Richard Maltby Jr.

Born in Chicago, he studied music from a young age and wrote his first arrangement when he was around 13. By his late teens he was playing and arranging for jazz and dance bands. He briefly studied music at Northwestern University before leaving to play music full-time. During the late-1930s Maltby performed with and arranged for Little Jack Little, Roger Pryor, Bob Strong, and Henry Busse. In 1940 he was hired as a staff composer-arranger by radio station WBBM, CBS, in Chicago.

He moved to New York City in 1945 to become an arranger-conductor on network radio, where he worked with Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, and the Radio City Music Hall band. Goodman recorded Maltby's Six Flats Unfurnished IN 1942, which became a hit.

                             

Maltby recorded many albums and singles in the 1950s and 1960s for Camden, Columbia, RCA (Vik, and X labels), Ranwood, and Roulette, and he began leading his own band as trumpet soloist. He had two hit singles: St. Louis Blues Mambo was in the top 40 in 1954, and (Theme from) The Man with the Golden Arm made the top 20 in 1956. "The St. Louis Blues Mambo," infuriated Perez Prado by scoring higher on the Billboard Hot 100 chart than any of Prado's own mambo tunes.

Maltby was the musical director for the SESAC Radio Transcription Service from 1950 to 1965, and recorded hundreds of songs for Muzak. He found the experience rewarding. "They were willing to experiment and let me use any kind of instrumental combination and pattern," he later told Down Beat magazine.As a conductor, he worked with Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughn, Johnny Ray, Vic Damone, and Ethel Merman.

In the 1960s, Maltby arranged and conducted for Lawrence Welk's television show and recordings. He wrote commercial jingles and published music for grade school and high school concert and stage bands; composed pieces for orchestra and choir; and was the featured guest conductor with the United States Marine, Navy, and West Point Bands, and the Symphony of the Air. He wrote a serious piece, "Threnody: Requiem for John F. Kennedy" after the President's assassination.

A heart condition in his later years forced him into retirement, and he underwent several operations prior to his death. He died August 19, 1991 in Santa Monica, California, aged 77. 

(Edited from The New York Public Library archives)

Don Varner born 25 June 1943

Don Wilson Varner (25 June 1943 – 7 October 2002) was an American soul singer. If you're a connoisseur of Northern Soul you'll recognise Don's name. Don's husky baritone sang a soulful storm on the Muscle Shoals floor-filler "Tear Stained Face".

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Varner grew up in the same neighborhood as Eddie Kendricks co-founder of The Temptations. Varner starting singing in high school and relocated to Chicago after graduation to pursue his music career; he found work in clubs but recording opportunities didn't come his way, and after six years, he returned South because of all the hoopla taking place in Muscle Shoals, AL, home of Rick Hall's Fame Records, who was scorching the charts with recordings by artists like Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Candi Staton, and others.

                              

He befriended Jerry Wexler, Franklin's producer, and got the opportunity to write (with William Crump) "I Keep Holdin' On" for Sam & Dave. Varner worked extensively with Quinn Ivy at Ivy's Sheffield, AL, studios, recording productions by the late Eddie Hinton: "Masquerade," "Down in Texas," and "Tear Stained Face," released on Ivy's South Camp Records (distributed by Atco/Atlantic) in the late '60s.

Most of his recording projects never got out the studio, but he kept busy during live shows in the South with some of soul's major artists. He moved to California in the mid-'80s and embarked on an extensive tour as the lead singer of the Johnny Otis Show. He toured numerous European music festivals in 1985.

Varner settled in Moreno Valley, CA, in the late '80s with his wife Francine and began recording and publishing gospel music for Retour Records and Ceevee and Gospel Truth publishing companies; the couple also ran a concert promotion business. He died in Moreno Valley, California in 2002 of a heart attack at the age of 59.

An album of his music entitled Finally Go Over! was released posthumously.

(Edited from Wikipedia)

Lester Williams born 24 June 1920

Lester B. Williams (June 24, 1920 – November 13, 1990 was an American Texas blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his song "Winter Time Blues" and "I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use". His main influence was T-Bone Walker. Williams released several singles in the 1950s. His recording career lasted from 1949 to 1956, but he remained a stalwart of the Houston blues circuit for decades.

Williams was born in Groveton, Texas. When he was a young boy he sang in church choirs. His family relocated to Houston where he became familiar with the recordings of Blind lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson. After serving in World War II, Williams sang with Ike Smalley’s band at Houston's Eldorado Ballroom, but quit and enrolled at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, to study piano and voice. He did not graduate, and he returned to Houston, where he taught himself to play the guitar and started to write songs. It was in Houston that he heard T-Bone Walker.

Walker's influence inspired Williams, who said to himself, "I could learn to play guitar and pull in some of that money that T-Bone made". Having formed his own group he began performing at Don Robey’s Bronze Peacock Club. In 1949, he wrote "Winter Time Blues", which came from his own experience when his wife and daughter traveled to Los Angeles for the summer, leaving him to contemplate the winter alone. He signed a recording contract with Macy's Recordings, and Steve Poncio produced "Winter Time Blues" which was a regional hit. His next few releases did not fare well commercially and, by 1951, Williams had moved to Specialty Records. His first disc for them was his biggest success, "I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use" (1952).

                             

Possessing a flexible voice with good tone and buttressed by horns as well as his own guitar, Williams’s material cut across genres. At the same time he was cutting pure blues songs he was also delving into rock ‘n’ roll from the start with the flip side of his debut record and some of his most well remembered records to come were firmly in the rock field.

His notability rose to the extent that he appeared in February 1953 at Carnegie Hall, in New York, on a bill that included Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine and Nat King Cole. The song "I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use" was covered a decade later by B.B. King.

His success was short-lived, as subsequent releases did not sell well. By 1954, Williams was performing regularly on the Houston radio station KLVL, and he began a constant touring regime across the South. Additional singles were released by Duke and by Imperial, the latter in 1956. but not having achieved any chart success with his singles he was resigned to being a local act across the south primarily concentrating on the blues.

Williams remained a fixture in blues circles for years, touring Europe in the 1980’s and singing until his death in November 1990, in Houston at the age of seventy.

(Edited from Wikipedia & Handbook of  Texas Music)

Debbie Taylor born 23 June 1947

Debbie Taylor (born 23 June 1947) is a highly acclaimed but relatively obscure soul singer who released nine singles and an album during an eight-year period from 1967 to 1975, during the ‘golden days’ of soul music. Three of her 45s reached the R&B charts but, despite her obvious talent, she failed to make a significant impact in commercial terms and her name was soon forgotten by most.

She was born Maddie Bell Galvin in Norfolk, Virginia. Her first name was pronounced "Maydie", a spelling she later adopted. As a young child she sang gospel in her father's church, and while a teenager toured nationally as a gospel singer. She began performing with a jazz trio led by her high school music teacher, Reginald Walker, and also toured with a gospel group who performed at the 1965 World Fair. Because of her family's religious views, she adopted the stage name Debbie Taylor when singing in clubs in Norfolk with R&B musicians, and in 1967 she was seen there by Joe Medlin, a regional talent scout for Decca Records.

                              

After her mother signed a contract with Decca allowing her to record as Debbie Taylor, she began recording at the Royal Studio owned by Willie Mitchell in Memphis, Tennessee. Her first session in 1968 produced the tracks “I Get the Blues" and "The Last Laugh Is on The Blues” (Decca 32090), followed by "Check Yourself" / "Wait Until I'm Gone" (Decca 32259). Written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, who produced an unreleased version of the song by Ruby Johnson, Taylor's version of "Check Yourself" reached #37 on the R&B chart in 1968. The song, "a haunting blues-flavoured ballad", featured an "emotive performance" by Taylor.

In March 1969 she started recording for the New York based GWP label started by Gerard Purcell, which ran its affairs from 150 East 52nd Street. Her first record, "Never Gonna Let Him Know" (GWP 501), launched the label and reached #18 on the national R&B chart and #86 on the pop chart. However, later releases on GWP were less commercially successful.

 In 1972, she left the GWP label. Purcell teamed her with Terry Phillips and Boo Frazier at Perception Records, and they recorded her first album, Comin’ Down On You, produced by David Jordan, arranged by Patrick Adams, and issued by the Today label. Jordan also produced sessions with her backed by MFSB in Philadelphia, which included the single "I Have Learned To Do Without You", co-written by Jordan with J. J. Barnes and Don Davis, which was issued by Polydor Records in late 1973. However, commercial success still eluded her.

In 1975 she recorded "I Don’t Wanna Leave You" with Jordan in New York, with a full band and orchestra featuring Earl Van Dyke on keyboards. The recording was leased to Arista Records, and the single rose to #32 on the R&B chart and #100 on the pop chart at the end of 1975. The single was also released in the UK and Europe but in an inferior edited version. In later years, the song and its B-side, "Just Don't Pay", both written by Jordan, became popular on the Northern Soul scene in the UK. However, the relative failure of her career in the US, and her unwillingness to sign an exclusive deal with Arista, led Taylor to retire from the music business for several years.

After a short-lived marriage in the 1970s she was known privately as Maydie Miles. In the early 1980s she relocated to Stamford, Connecticut, where she joined a band called NiteSprite, a versatile, professional outfit that played clubs, weddings, and high profile corporate events. She worked as their lead vocalist for the next fifteen years. Her NiteSprite connections also got her into the jingles business, and she sang on quite a few, becoming the commercial voice for clients that included Diet Dr. Pepper, Ford, J.C. Penny, Johnson & Johnson, and The National Nurses' Association.

She moved to nearby Norwalk in 2003, where she was the featured vocalist on several dance tracks issued by K4B Records between 1994 and 1998. As Maydie Myles, she also performed with her band in local clubs, and recorded radio sessions, advertisements and jingles. At that time, it was not known publicly that she had previously recorded as Debbie Taylor; the whereabouts of Debbie Taylor were unknown.

In early 2011, Maydie Myles self-released a jazz CD, The Ones I Love, and revealed her earlier career as Debbie Taylor. This resulted in substantial new interest in her career, and a remixed version of "Just Don't Pay" was issued in the UK in late 2011. In November 2013, she performed a sell-out one-off show in the UK.

As of 2016 Maydie was still performing at Jazz festivals and local venues.      (Edited from Wikipedia & The Hour.com)

Kris Kristofferson born 22 June 1936

Kristoffer Kristofferson (June 22, 1936 – September 28, 2024) was an American country singer, songwriter, and actor. He was a pioneering figure in the outlaw country movement of the 1970s. Among his songwriting credits are the songs "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night", all of which were hits for other artists.

As a teenager, Kristoffer Kristofferson was an accomplished writer and athlete. He attended Pomona College in California, where he played football and became a Golden Gloves boxer, a cadet commander of his ROTC battalion, the sports editor of the school paper, and an honour student in English. He also won awards for his short-story writing in a competition sponsored by the Boston-based journal The Atlantic Monthly. He received a Rhodes scholarship to attend the University of Oxford in England, where he studied the poetry of William Blake and earned a master’s degree.

Kristofferson  joined the U.S. Army in 1960, becoming a U.S. Army Ranger and learning to fly helicopters while stationed in what was then West Germany. His studies in literature and poetry prompted an interest in songwriting, and, while he was in the army, he put together a band. When he finished his military tour, he turned down a teaching position at West Point Academy and instead settled in Nashville, where, despite his parents’ objections, he began to pursue a career in music. Kristofferson began selling his songs and working day jobs. 

He had the good fortune to meet Johnny Cash, who was already a star and took Kristofferson under his wing. Cash introduced Kristofferson at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival, where the struggling singer-songwriter first performed for a big audience and, subsequently, gained some footing in the music industry.  Although Kristofferson released an eponymous solo album in 1970 with Monument Records, he continued to be recognized primarily for his songwriting, which was sought after by country and pop singers alike. He also collaborated with poet and cartoonist Shel Silverstein, who cowrote songs such as “Your Time’s Comin’ ” (recorded by Faron Young in 1969) and “Once More with Feeling” (recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis in 1970). “Me and Bobby McGee.”

                        

He continued to produce hits, such as “For the Good Times,” recorded by Ray Price and then named song of the year for 1970 by the Academy of Country Music. That same year Cash’s recording of Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” was named song of the year by the Country Music Association. In 1971 three of the five Grammy Award nominations for best country song were for songs written by Kristofferson, as were two of the five nominations for song of the year. He won his first Grammy for 1971’s best country song: “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” He recorded about a dozen of his own albums during the 1970s, three of which were collaborations with country singer Rita Coolidge, who was his wife from 1973 to 1979

While he continued to write songs, record, and perform, Kristofferson was also gaining a reputation as a movie actor. His first notable performance was in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), in which he played the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid opposite James Coburn. Othet movies of note include  Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974),  The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976),  and A Star Is Born (1976), opposite Barbra Streisand.

Still moving forward with his music career, Kristofferson during the 1980s started a band with fellow country musicians Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. The band recorded a single and then an album titled Highwayman (1985). Both the single and the album rose to number one on the Billboard country music charts. The group, which became known informally as the Highwaymen, released three albums over the course of a decade, with Highwayman 2 in 1990 and their last one, The Road Goes On Forever, in 1995.

In 1996 Kristofferson was cast as a corrupt sheriff in the John Sayles film Lone Star. His performance was a critical success, revived his acting career, and won him many more roles through the rest of the 1990s, including that of a vampire hunter in Blade and its two sequels. Kristofferson acted in a steady stream of feature films well into the turn of the century.

In the early 21st century Kristofferson released several albums of original material. This Old Road (2006) was his first collection of new songs in more than 10 years. He followed with Closer to the Bone (2009) and Feeling Mortal (2013). In 2016 he offered a two-disc box set of his best-known songs, The Cedar Creek Sessions, which had been recorded in 2014.

Kristofferson was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004. He won numerous awards, among them the Songwriters Hall of Fame Johnny Mercer Award (2006) and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2014). His final film role was in the Ethan Hawke-directed drama Blaze (2018), and his most recent album was 2016’s The Cedar Creek Sessions. His final concert was held in Fort Pierce, Florida, at the Sunrise Theatre on February 5, 2020, accompanied by the Strangers. In January 2021, he announced his retirement. 

Kristofferson died at his home in Maui on September 28, 2024, at the age of 88.

(Edited from Britannica.com & Wikipedia)