John Cipollina born 24 August 1943

John Cipollina (August 24, 1943 – May 29, 1989) was a guitarist best known for his role as a founder and the lead guitarist of the prominent San Francisco rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service.

John and his twin sister Manuela were born in Berkeley, California. He attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California, as did his brother Mario (born 1954) and sister Antonia (born 1952). Their father Gino, a realtor, was of Italian ancestry. Their mother Evelyn and godfather José Iturbi were concert pianists. John showed great promise as a classical pianist in his youth, but his father gave him a guitar when he was 12 and this quickly became his primary instrument. 

By the late fifties John had formed his first group, the Penetrators. They would soon change their name to the Deacons, aka The Swinging Deacons, and at one point they even had female background singers known as the Deacons Daughters. The group broke up by July of 1965 and John, along with his housemates Jim Murray and David Freiberg, would form the nucleus of what would later be known as Quicksilver Messenger Service, along with Casey Sonnabend and Skip Spence, who left to join the Jefferson Airplane in August 1965. John would stay with QMS until October 5, 1970, prior to the release of their fifth album What About Me. 

Cipollina had a unique guitar sound, mixing solid state and vacuum-tube valve amplifiers as early as 1965. He is considered one of the fathers of the San Francisco sound, a form of psychedelic rock. To create his distinctive guitar sound, Cipollina developed a one-of-a-kind amplifier stack. His Gibson SG guitars had two pickups, one for bass and one for treble. The bass pickup fed into two Standel bass amps on the bottom of the stack, each equipped with two 15-inch speakers. The treble pickups fed two Fender amps: a Fender Twin Reverb and a Fender Dual Showman that drove six Wurlitzer horns. 

Quicksilver Messenger Service

After leaving Quicksilver in 1971, Cipollina formed the band Copperhead with early Quicksilver member Jim Murray former Stained Glass member Jim McPherson, drummer David Weber, Gary Phillipet (a.k.a. Gary Phillips, later a member of Bay Area bands Earthquake and The Greg Kihn Band), and Pete Sears who after playing shows and recording demos with the band left to play bass with Nicky Hopkins. Sears was replaced by current and longtime Bonnie Raitt bassist James "Hutch" Hutchinson who played on the Copperhead LP and stayed with the band for its duration. 

                                   

Copperhead disbanded in mid 1974 after becoming a staple in the SF Bay Area and touring the West Coast, Hawaii at the Sunshine Crater Fest on New Years Day of 1973 with Santana; the South at opening dates for Steely Dan and the Midwest atopening dates for Focus as well once again for Steely Dan. In May 1974, Cipollina and Link Wray, whose playing and style had influenced John as a young musician and who he had met through bassist Hutch Hutchinson, performed a series of shows together along the West Coast (with Copperhead rhythm section Hutchinson & Weber and keyboardist David Bloom) culminating at The Whiskey in LA where they performed for four nights on a bill with the band Lighthouse. Cipollina continued to occasionally perform with Wray for the next couple of years. 

In 1975, the Welsh psychedelic band Man toured the United States, towards the end of which they played two gigs at Winterland in San Francisco, which were such a success that promoter Bill Graham paid them a bonus and rebooked them. While waiting for the additional gigs, the band met and rehearsed with Cipollina, who played with them at Winterland in April 1975. After this, Cipollina agreed to play a UK tour which took place in May 1975, during which their Chalk Farm Roundhouse gig was recorded. The album eventually reached #25 in the UK album charts. 

During the 1980s, Cipollina performed with a number of bands, including Fish & Chips, Thunder and Lightning, the Dinosaurs, Terry & The Pirates, Problem Child and others. He was a founding member of Zero and its rhythm guitarist until his death. Most often these bands played club gigs in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Cipollina was well-known. 

Cipollina died on May 29, 1989 at age 45. His cause of death was alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which he suffered from most of his life and which is exacerbated by smoking. Quicksilver Messenger Service fans paid tribute to him the following month in San Francisco at an all-star concert at the Fillmore Auditorium which featured Nicky Hopkins, Pete Sears, David Freiberg, and John's brother Mario, an original member of Huey Lewis and the News.  In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Cipollina 32nd on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & bio by Mike Somavilla)

 

Martial Solal born 23 August 1927

Martial Solal (born August 23, 1927) is a French jazz pianist and composer. 

Born to French parents in Algiers, North Africa, on August 23, 1927, Martial Solal grew up under the influence of his mother, an opera singer who encouraged him to learn to play piano, clarinet, and saxophone. In 1942 the Vichy government's adopted Nazi racial policies (enforced in the French colony of Algeria) resulted in his expulsion from school, solely on account of his father's Jewish ancestry. Already familiar with the classical piano repertoire from Bach to Debussy, young Solal now became a full-time musical autodidact. A turning point occurred when he pushed himself to emulate a recording he heard over the radio, unaware that he'd been listening to a piece for piano four hands. By the age of 15, Solal was performing publicly, often playing to an audience of U.S. Armed Forces personnel. 

Solal continued to study and perform while enlisted in the military, began working professionally in 1945, and moved to Paris in 1950, performing in nightclubs and making his first recordings as soloist and sideman, sometimes under the name of O.J. Jaguar. Solal formed a quartet in 1951 with trumpeter Roger Guerin, bassist Paul Rovère, and drummer Daniel Humair. He recorded with an ensemble under the direction of composer Andre Hodeir in 1952, then cut an LP with his own trio and participated in Django Reinhardt's very last session in 1953. In 1955 Solal played on what appears to have been Argentine composer and bandoneon virtuoso Astor Piazzolla's first European recording date. He jammed with guitarist Henri Crolla and progressive clarinetists/tenor saxophonists Hubert Rostaing and Maurice Meunier, and in 1956 was heard on one of earliest albums ever to appear under the name of Claude Bolling. 

                                   

Solal's artistic collaborations with visiting or expatriate U.S. jazz musicians during the '50s and early '60s included sessions with trumpeter Clark Terry, trombonist Quentin "Butter" Jackson, saxophonists Sidney Bechet, Don Byas, Lucky Thompson, and Stan Getz, guitarist Jimmy Gourley, bassist Joe Benjamin, and drummers Kenny Clarke and Roy Haynes, as well as bassist Curtis Counce among a small contingent of instrumentalists associated with bandleader Stan Kenton. In 1960, Solal achieved international fame when he scored music for the soundtrack to Jean-Luc Godard's film A Bout de Soufflé. 

Solal with Duke Ellington

A period of busy productivity ensued, including live performances and several albums with Humair and bassist Guy Pedersen. In 1963, Solal appeared live in Berlin, at the Hickory House in New York, in Montreal, and at the Newport Jazz Festival with bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Paul Motian. A brief alignment with Attila Zoller and Hans Koller resulted in a configuration remembered as Zo-Ko-So. From 1965-1969, Solal's reconstituted trio included Gilbert "Bibi" Rovère and drummer Charles Bellonzi. In 1967 Solal was heard in San Francisco and at the Monterey Jazz Festival. 

During the '60s he recorded with guitarist Wes Montgomery and trombonist Slide Hampton, initiated a long-standing artistic relationship with saxophonist Lee Konitz, and performed in duet with pianist Hampton Hawes backed by Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke. During the '70s Solal recorded as a soloist at various locales including Villingen, Germany, and Warsaw, Poland; in duets with Konitz, Stéphane Grappelli, Joachim Kühn, and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen; in trios with Pedersen, Rovère, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, and Humair; in quartets with Konitz, Pedersen, Dave Holland, guitarist John Scofield, and Jack DeJohnette; and with a band led by George Gruntz. 

During the '80s Solal led a 25-piece big band, appeared live at New York's Town Hall with an ensemble led by Daniel Humair, and continued to record as a soloist. Solal's two piano concerti, composed during the '80s, were recorded in 1989. A resurgence of activity occurred during the '90s, as he teamed up with pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque and engaged in creative duets with pianist Joachim Kühn, violinist Didier Lockwood, mouth organist Toots Thielemans, trumpeter Eric Le Lann, and tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. Solal's trios now involved bassists Marc Johnson and Gary Peacock, drummers Paul Motian and Peter Erskine. He also made an album with bassist Mads Vinding and Daniel Humair backed by the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra. 

Thoroughly versed in the tradition from New Orleans to big-band swing to bop to post-bop and beyond, Solal has also composed chamber music, written scores for more than 20 films, and recorded more than 70 albums as soloist and leader. For more than 60 years, Solal has personified the cross-pollinated splendor of European jazz by utilizing styles and influences from both sides of the Atlantic to generate and sustain musical ideas that almost invariably come across as intelligent, pleasant, and gratifying.  (Edited fom AllMusic)  

Carolina Slim born 22 August 1923

Carolina Slim (August 22, 1923 – October 22, 1953) was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer. His best-known records are "Black Cat Trail" and "I'll Never Walk in Your Door". He used various pseudonyms during his brief recording career, including Country Paul, Jammin' Jim, Lazy Slim Jim and Paul Howard. He recorded 27 songs. Details of his life outside of his music career are scant, and the reasons for the use of different names are unclear. 

Carolina Slim was born with the relatively undistinguished name of Edward P. Harris in Leasburg, North Carolina. He grew up amid the field and forest workers whose lives, exploits, and deaths have become such an integral part of his music. His father taught him to play the guitar and passed down to Slim hundreds of songs accumulated in a lifetime which began before the Civil War. 

Carolina Slim grew up to be a veritable giant of a man, standing over six and a half feet tall. As a young man, his giant strides took him into the most remote corners of every state in the South and Southwest. Influenced by Lightnin’ Hopkins and Blind Boy Fuller, he brought new songs, new stories, new joy to the cotton fields of Georgia and the Carolinas; to the bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta; to the rowdy, rollicking, turpentine camps in the Piney Woods of Texas and Arkansas. While the folk music of America is as variegated, big-hearted and broad-shouldered as the country itself, none of the music has more soul, more honesty, more ability to reach directly to the heart of human feeling and experience than the songs of the fields and work camps of the deep South where Carolina Slim roamed. 

                                     

In 1950, he relocated to Newark, New Jersey, and made his recording debut for Savoy Records, billed as Carolina Slim. His first single was "Black Chariot Blues" backed with "Mama's Boogie", recorded on July 24, 1950, and released by Acorn Records (Acorn 3015), a subsidiary of Savoy. In 1951 and 1952, he recorded eight tracks for King Records in New York City, this time using the name Country Paul. Henry Glover met Slim at these sessions and later commented that Slim was "a very sickly young man at the time". 

Slim's style blended Piedmont blues, prominent in songs such as "Carolina Boogie" and his cover version of Fuller's "Rag Mama Rag", with the influence of Hopkins steering him increasingly towards Texas blues. He occasionally incorporated a washboard as well as his guitar, as if to emphasize his Carolina roots. His recordings were not hugely popular but sold in sufficient numbers for him to retain his recording contract. In June 1952, he recorded four more tracks for Savoy, which were his final recordings. 

Slim was a messenger of music, a chronicler of life as it really happened. He was a troubadour of the Blues; a Johnny Appleseed, planting songs in the hearts of people wherever he went on his never ending pilgrimage. But death is seldom more than a stride behind any of us, and it caught up with Carolina Slim far from his beloved sunny fields and tall pine country. He died in a a hospital in Newark, New Jersey, from a heart attack, which occurred during surgery for a back complaint. He was 30 years old, but already a legend. Had he lived, he might have created a modern Piedmont style before record companies' interest in the music disappeared. 

In 1994, Document Records released a compilation album, Complete Recorded Works 1950–1952, which incorporates all of his 27 tracks.    (Edited from liner notes by Wilson Woodrow & Wikipedia)

Classie Ballou born 21 August 1937

Classie Ballou (August 21st 1937 - 27 July 2022) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. 

Classie Ballou was born in the tiny country town of Elton, Louisiana. His folks sharecropped cotton, potatoes, and corn, he was one of two children, although his younger sister passed away at the age of six months, leaving him an only child. Classie learned to play accordion from an uncle, and joined his first band at age nine, playing the rubboard. 

He soon picked up the guitar, and in 1952 the family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana. In Lake Charles he acquired a  Fender Telecaster and hooked up with a drummer named Kee-Dee, and soon the two were appearing in night clubs in Lake Charles, although Classie also had a day job in construction. 

Technically he was still too young to play in clubs but nobody seemed to notice, and he found regular work plentiful, even putting in a stint with Clifton Chenier's band for six months. Lake Charles had a rich R&B scene at the time, and young Classie was soon playing with Shelton Dunaway and Ernest Jacobs (later of Cookie & the Cupcakes of Mathilda and I'm Twisted fame). 

He then formed his first band - Classie Ballou and the Tempo Kings which featured Dunaway on sax and vocals, another sax player known simply as Biscuit, and eventually Cookie Thierry himself joined the group. They played John's Bar and Ball's Auditorium, doing covers of tunes by Fats Domino, Guitar Slim and Gatemouth Brown. Soon he was the hottest thing in Lake Charles. Eddie Shuler, owner of the Lake Charles based Goldband label, one of the greatest recording companies of all time with a mind numbing number of great records (blues, R&B, cajun, country, rockabilly) and artists (including a young Dolly Parton), got wind of Classie through Guitar Gable and hired him to play guitar on Boozoo Chavis' chaotic classic Paper In My Shoe (the recording of which ended with Boozoo falling off his stool, accordion and all), the record that would be the blue print for all zydeco music to come. 

                                    

Classie cut his first disc for Goldband 1956-- Lovin' Huggin' Kissin' My Baby. A year later he was recorded by Jay Miller in the studio in the back of his Crowley, Lousiana record store. This session was sold to Nasco who issued two tunes--- Confusion b/w Crazy Mambo the same year. Both tunes are wild guitar dominated instrumentals with pronounced Afro-Cuban feel to them. In 1958 he recorded one last time for Miller, in a session that included the great Jockey Etienne on drums and Tal Miller on piano, these sides were released on Nasco's sister label Excello with it's classic blue and orange label-- Hey! Pardner b/w Dream Love .These three singles are the entire 50's output of Classie Ballou, he would not record again under his own name until 1968 when he cut Classie's Whip b/w Soul Philly (Soulsville 1001) for a tiny, San Antonio based label. 

From there Classie headed for Dallas where he went to college and worked for a promoter named Howard Lewis who had him backing up touring artists like Floyd Dixon, Wilbert Harrison, Chuck Berry, Etta James, and whoever else came through town without their own band. He put in some time touring in Rosco Gordon's band, playing on his Vee Jay hit-- Just A Little Bit, that's Classie playing the classic guitar lick, as well as Gordon's remake of No More Doggin. The Blues Discography credits Lefty Bates with playing on Just A Little Bit, but Classie insists that it is him and not Bates. 

In the late 50's Classie Ballou was based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, where he held a three year residency at the Flamingo CLub, playing with the likes of Fenton Robinson, B.B. King, and Wayne Bennett. He moved to Los Angeles in '62 where he cut some sides for Token, then settled in Waco, Texas where he played six or seven nights a week ever since. He made an excellent 45 for Lanor in '83. He started his own label--Yeah, Baby in 1994, releasing a bluesy disc called The Real Deal produced by his son Cranston. 

While many in Waco knew Ballou primarily for his years of local performances, he had fans in his home state Louisiana and abroad. Ballou and his band made regular appearances at the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and he and his wife connected with French jazz fans who knew him from his 1950s recordings during a 2003 visit to France. 

Family was extremely important to Classie, who raised his own band, billed as The Classie Ballou Family Band he worked with his son Cedric (bass), grandson Cedryl (accordion, drums), and daughter CeChaun (drums, sax, accordion, she also fronted her own all girl Zydeco band-- the Zydeco Posse when not working with her father). His wife mans the merch table. Playing mostly in the greater Waco area they called up tunes from Brick House to Sweet Home Alabama and give them all Classie's unique stamp. 

He died at his Waco home on July 27, 2022 after suffering from Alzheimer’s and Dementia in his later years. He was 84.   (Edited from a blog post by James "The Hound" Marshall & Legacy)  

Sky Saxon born 20 August 1937

Sky "Sunlight" Saxon (August 20, 1937 – June 25, 2009) was an American rock and roll musician best known as the leader and singer of the 1960s Los Angeles psychedelic garage rock band The Seeds. 

He was born Richard Elvern Marsh in Salt Lake City, Utah, in a year he variously gave as 1937, 1945 and 1946, and moved to Los Angeles when he was (probably) 18 to pursue a musical career. He later claimed to have been a classical music fan and to have studied piano briefly at UCLA, but he first appeared on disc as an R&B singer, releasing several singles in 1963-64 and billing himself as Little Richie Marsh. 

He changed his name to Sky Saxon because, as he would explain: "Sky Saxon to me was like my hero, Errol Flynn. The name sounded great and he was great and made great movies." After stints with the Soul Rockers and the Electra Fires, he answered an advertisement for a front man placed by guitarist Jan Savage, drummer Rick Andridge and organist Daryl Hooper. They gave him the job. The Seeds were formed and they secured a deal with the GNP Crescendo label. Their first single, Can't Seem to Make You Mine (1965), provoked minor interest and was reissued to greater acclaim in 1967.

Their debut album, The Seeds, epitomized the garage band ethos of short, punchy songs powered by fuzzy guitars, clattering drums and crude organ, with Saxon's Jagger-like yowl on top. Its highlight was Pushin' Too Hard, a deliciously dim classic that never rose higher than 37 on the charts but is renowned as a benchmark of its genre. It became a local favourite along with the efforts of other LA luminaries such as the Doors, the Byrds and Love. The second album, A Web of Sound, followed in short order, and the band could be heard picking up elements of psychedelia and flower power. The trance-like single Mr Farmer was another local hit, even though many radio stations banned it because of its druggy allusions. 

                                   

The Seeds greeted the summer of 1967 with Future, an album of full-on psychedelia bristling with exotic instruments and wrapped in a plush gatefold sleeve. It became the band's biggest seller, though it charted no higher than 87, and the group were vogueish enough to land a cameo in Roger Corman's teen movie Psych Out (1968), starring Jack Nicholson. However, drugs and fast living were eroding the Seeds, and by 1968 Andridge and Savage had quit, the latter later joining the LAPD. Saxon and Hooper then formed the Sky Saxon Blues Band and recorded A Full Spoon of Seedy Blues, with sleeve notes by Muddy Waters, but a subsequent effort to revive The Seeds failed. 

Saxon now retreated into the Source Family, a religious sect formed by beatnik Jim Baker, alias Father Yod. Saxon became Sky Sunlight Saxon and recorded with a cult-related band that went by names such as Source, Yodship and YaHoWha 13 and featured the musicians Djin, Octavious and Sunflower Aquarian. Saxon also made recordings of his own, usually limited to mail-order release, but his former fans had moved on. 

This changed in the 1980s, when the Seeds experienced a revival of interest (LA girl band the Bangles often played Pushin' Too Hard). The UK-based Psycho label recruited Saxon to record the Starry Ride album, assisted by Mars Bonfire from Steppenwolf and members of Iron Butterfly and Fraternity of Man. Saxon and Bonfire then formed Firewall, who recorded a couple of neo-psychedelic albums, and, in 1989, Saxon resurrected the Seeds to headline the Summer of Love tour, which featured such fellow California veterans as Arthur Lee and Love, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. 

Saxon spent part of the 1990s ensconced in domestic bliss with his then wife Marianna DaPello, and put together a wooden box of discs called God and Hair, comprising music by Sky Sunlight Saxon as well as YaHoWha recordings. He took The Seeds back on the road in 2003, and they continued to perform, albeit with shifting personnel, up to Saxon's death, releasing the albums Red Planet and Back to the Garden. In June 2007, he married Sabrina Smith, who also became his business partner. 

In 2008 he released The King of Garage Rock, a collection of his old hits and some cover versions, and worked on new recordings with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins. His death was first announced on Facebook by Sabrina, who has also revealed that Saxon's birthday was August 20 while not specifying which year. On June 25, 2009, at age 71, Saxon died unexpectedly in an Austin, Texas, hospital of heart and renal failure due to a simple untreated infection that had spread throughout his organs. Saxon's death was overshadowed by the death of Farrah Fawcett, which in turn was heavily overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson, all on the same date.

(Edited from Adam Sweeting obit @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)

 

Billy J. Kramer born 19 August 1943

William Howard Ashton (born 19 August 1943), known professionally as Billy J. Kramer, is an English pop singer. With The Dakotas, Kramer was managed by Brian Epstein during the 1960s and scored hits with several Lennon–McCartney compositions never recorded by the Beatles. He achieved U.S. success as part of the British Invasion. Since the end of the beat boom, Kramer has continued to record and perform. 

Kramer grew up as the youngest of seven siblings and attended the St George of England Secondary School, Bootle. He then took up an engineering apprenticeship with British Railways and in his spare time played rhythm guitar in a group he had formed himself, before switching to become a vocalist. The performing name Kramer was chosen at random from a telephone directory. It was John Lennon's suggestion that the "J" be added to the name to further distinguish him by adding a 'tougher edge'. Billy soon came to the attention of Brian Epstein, ever on the look-out for new talent to add to his expanding roster of local artists. Kramer turned professional but his then backing band, The Coasters, were less keen, so Epstein sought out the services of a Manchester based band, The Dakotas. 

Even then, The Dakotas would not join Kramer without a recording deal of their own. Once in place, the deal was set and both acts signed to Parlophone under George Martin. Collectively, they were named Billy J. Kramer with The Dakotas to keep their own identities within the act. Once the Beatles broke through, the way was paved for a tide of "Merseybeat" and Kramer was offered the chance to cover a song first released by the Beatles on their own debut album, Please Please Me. 

                                    

The track had been allegedly turned down by Shane Fenton (later Alvin Stardust) who was looking for a career reviving hit. With record producer George Martin, the song "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" was a number two UK Singles Chart hit in 1963, and was backed by another tune otherwise unreleased by The Beatles, "I'll Be on My Way". After this impressive breakthrough another Lennon/McCartney pairing "Bad to Me" c/w "I Call Your Name" reached number one. "I'll Keep You Satisfied" ended the year with a respectable number four placing. 

Billy with the Beatles

Billy was given a series of songs specially written for him by John Lennon and Paul McCartney which launched him into stardom and a proper place in the history of Rock and Roll. I'll Keep You Satisfied, From A Window, I Call Your Name and Bad to Me all became international million sellers for Billy, and won him appearances on the TV shows Shindig!, Hullabaloo and The Ed Sullivan Show. 

The three big hits penned by Lennon and McCartney meant that Kramer was always seemingly in the Beatles' shadow, unless he did tried something different. Despite being advised against it, he insisted on recording the Stateside chart hit "Little Children" - the lyrics were allegedly about getting his girlfriend's brothers and sisters out of the way so they could have an intimate time together. It became his second chart topper and biggest hit. It was Kramer's only major hit outside of the UK. In the U.S., this was followed up with "Bad to Me" which reached number nine. Despite this success Kramer went backwards with his second and last UK single of 1964; another Lennon/McCartney cast-off "From A Window", which only just became a Top Ten hit. 

The year 1965 saw the end for the Merseybeat boom, and the next Kramer single was "It's Gotta Last Forever", which harked back to a ballad approach. Kramer's cover of "Trains and Boats and Planes" saw off Anita Harris' cover version only to find itself in direct competition with its composer, Burt Bacharach's effort, which won the day. Kramer's effort still reached a respectable number 12, but was the group's swansong, as all future cuts missed the chart. 

The Dakotas ranks were then strengthened by the inclusion of Mick Green, the ex-guitarist with the London band the Pirates who backed Johnny Kidd. This line-up cut a few tracks which were at odds with the balladeer's usual fare. These included a take on "When You Walk in the Room" and "Sneakin' Around". The Dakotas final outing whilst with Kramer was the blues driven "Oyeh!" - but this also flopped. 

After releasing "We're Doing Fine", it too missed the charts leaving singer and group to part company. Kramer had a brief solo career which took him eventually to live in America, where he narrated children's books while continuing to record. In late 2012, Kramer went back into the studio for the first time in years to record a new CD, I Won the Fight, which was released in 2013. The CD features some new songs written by Kramer, as well as some covers. 

In 2015, Kramer was part of the British Invasion 50th Anniversary tour, performing in the US and the UK. The following year saw the publication of his autobiography Do You Want to Know A Secret, co-written with Alyn Shipton. In February 2024 Billy J released a single “Are you with me” which charted on The Heritage Chart. He now resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. (Edited from Wikipedia)

 

Tex Harper (aka Rudy Preston) born 17 August 1936

Tex Harper (aka Rudy Preston) (August 17, 1936 - October 9, 2023) was a very talented musician, singer and songwriter from Texas. 

Tex was born as Freddie Jean Harper, in Jacksonville, Cherokee County, Texas. His father was Charlie Childress Harper from Angelina, Texas and his mother was Nancy Lorene Repp, usually known as 'Flossie,' born in Oklahoma. She was 21 when Freddie arrived to join his four year old brother Oscar and his two year old sister Opal. Freddie attended Jacksonville High School where he was pictured in the school's Yearbook, 'The Indian,' during eighth grade, looking just that little bit different, more knowing, rebellious maybe, than the other kids. Freddie's early interest in music was fuelled when his sister Opal met and married an older local man, James Byron Paris. 

Jacksonville in the 50's

He was a songwriting associate of the pioneering honky tank singer Al Dexter, also from Jacksonville, who had recently had a big hit with Pistol Packin' Mama which Paris may or may not have written. Paris wrote many other honky tank and popular songs and Freddie later said, "back when 1 was a kid my musical influences had nothing to do with other singers, but with my brother-in-law, J. B. Paris, who was a big influence on me learning to play and write music. East Texas was always a hot bed of entertainment. 

All of the 'Louisiana Hayride' shows that would come through town would come to the Tomato Bowl, our football stadium. 1 would always get out there and sell cold drinks. One of my best customers was singer T. Texas Tyler. All the other kids knew I sang, and they would say, 'Hey Freddie, get up and sing one'. Finally, when I was sixteen or seventeen, Tyler asked me if I would come on his show. 1 did a take-off on him doing Remember Me. He nicknamed me 'Tex' that night." Freddie also listened to the Grand Ole Opry radio show and kept up with the exploits of musicians like Stringbean, remembering, "when the Tommy Scott Show came through they had Stringbean [with them]." 

                                   

Freddie went to see the Tommy Scott show one day in 1954. By now he was 18 and out of school, looking for something to do with his life. His parents had divorced, and his mother married Curtis Austin from Fort Worth, now in Jacksonville. Freddie didn't see a lot to keep him home, and said he asked Scott, "What does it take to get in this business? Tommy found out I was a singer and he got to talking with me. He told me that “It took a lot of work, and to listen to whoever is telling you what to do”. So, Tommy Scott talked to my mother and my stepdad and I wound up on the Scott travelling show. I jumped on the train the first part of the year and stayed for twelve years." 

So Freddie Harper who became 'Tex' Harper began singing the latest 'cat music' as a kind of sideshow for the younger crowd. He was then named as Rudy Preston, imitating Elvis Presley in name as well as style. Finally he performed as Harry Head. Musically Harper’s recordings were something exceptional and each and every performance had ‘hit’ written all over them!  But then he joined the United States Air Force where he did basic training at Lackland Air Force base and joined the Tops in Blue and performed in the “Star Parade” and traveled the United States and foreign countries performing for the troops in 1956. 

He continued with Tommy Scott’s shows into 1965, singing less and playing anything from guitar to drums as required. After he left Scott, he continued to record occasionally as Rudy Preston on various labels until 1970.  He went on to perform at the Grand Ole Opry with artists such as Roy Acuff, Dolly Parton, Bill Anderson, Buck Owens, and Porter Waggoner among many others. As Rudy Preston he has written and co-written music with Gene Watson, Charley Pride, Dolly Parton, and so many other great country performers. 

Rudy Preston and the Showman Band was known around the music industry for many years until his death in Jacksonville on October 9, 2023 age 87, and was buried in the Resthaven Memorial Park Cemetery. 

(Edited Bear Family liner notes & obituary @ Hope Prescott.com)