Civil Rights
Christy Coobatis is a college music professor whose amazing musical journey includes playing professionally before he was a teenager, beta testing guitars for Leo Fender, and helping to create a guitar synthesizer for Allan Holdsworth! Christy’s latest and longest tenure as a teacher has been at...
Boden Sandstrom is the founder of Woman Sound and a pioneering audio engineer who helped define the sound of the women’s music movement in America beginning in the 1970s. She was on hand for hundreds of marches, protests, concerts, and festivals and worked long and hard to provide the best possible...
Joyce Moore has been encouraged by many friends and family members for years to write a book. After her NAMM interview, we concluded the same thing. Joyce was there when Jackie Wilson recorded “Higher and Higher.” She had an onboard tour of the very plane that crashed two months later, killing Otis...
Joan Fox was just 15 years old when she met her future husband, Maurice. His parents started a music store in South Carolina, Fox Muisc House, in which Joan would work for many years. She married Maurice in 1953 and become passionate about their employees and customers, treating both as members of...
Hedges Capers rose to fame in the late 1960s as half of the folk rock duo Hedges & Donns. He and his singing partner, Donna Carson (who was later his wife for several years) began singing together in 1967 and only had a few weeks rehearsal before making a big splash at the Troubadour in West ...
Myno Jackson grew up surrounded by music. Her father was the jazz bassist Chubby Jackson who played with Woody Herman, had a hit children’s television program, and toured with Louie Armstrong. Her brother was the drummer Duffy Jackson who played with Sammy Davis Jr and Count Basie. She too had a...
Chuck Jacobs played bass in Kenny Rogers’ band for more than 40 years and enjoyed every minute of it. His roots in music go back to the Dixieland group his family formed while he was too young to play. He heard the music and was inspired to begin playing instruments as a child. At the age of 10 he...
David Sancious always had records playing in his home growing up and his dad would take him to jazz clubs when he was just a child to sit by the stage so he could see the piano player. As an early member of the E Street Band, David toured with Bruce Springsteen as synthesizers and MIDI were...
Keith LeBlanc was one of the first drummers who used his funk music background to create beats that helped popularize hip-hop music. Keith was there in the beginning and while working for Sugar Hill Records worked with many of the pioneers of hip-hop including The Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash...
Ketty Lester sang several ballads while in a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1963, under the assumption that the point of the session was an audition to explore her musical range and style. In fact, that session was recorded to tape and at the very end when the producer asked for one more song...