| 20 year anniversary for Johnny Cash’s American RecordingsAmerican Recordings did something very important — it gave Cash a chance to show how much he could do with a set of great songs and no creative interference, and it afforded him the respect he’d been denied for so long, and the result is a powerful and intimate album that brought the Man in Black back to the spotlight, where he belonged. ~Mark Deming (allmusic.com) |
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| William “Count” Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie’s theme songs were “One O’Clock Jump” and “April In Paris”. |
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| Johnny Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist. According to the music journalist Tony Russell, “Shines was that rare being, a blues artist who overcame age and rustiness to make music that stood up beside the work of his youth. When Shines came back to the blues in 1965 he was 50, yet his voice had the leonine power of a dozen years before, when he made records his reputation was based on”. |
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| Devils & Dust is the 13th studio album by American recording artist Bruce Springsteen, and his third folk album (after Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad). It was released on April 25, 2005 in Europe and on April 26 in the US. It debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200 album chart. |  |
| Ma Rainey (April 26, 1886? – December 22, 1939) was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues. |
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| Duane Eddy (born April 26, 1938) is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he had a string of hit records, produced by Lee Hazlewood, which were noted for their characteristically “twangy” sound, including “Rebel Rouser”, “Peter Gunn”, and “Because They’re Young”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. |
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– Hallgeir