Rock History

1950 – Ann Wilson of Heart is born in San Diego this day in rock history!

Biography

When she was a child, Wilson’s family moved around because her father was a Marine Corps colonel. The family eventually settled in Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle, Washington. Shy due to a stutter, Wilson turned to music, and in the early 1970s she joined a local band, Whiteheart, which, in 1974, changed its name to Heart.

Ann adopted her daughter Marie in 1991 and her son Dustin in 1998. She underwent a weight-loss surgery called Adjustable gastric band in January 2002 after what she calls “a lifelong battle” with her weight.

Recording career

In 1974, Ann’s younger sister Nancy joined Heart. The band moved to Canada, and cut their first album Dreamboat Annie in Vancouver in 1975; it was released in the United States in 1976. In 1977, Little Queen was released. Ann also sang the duet “Almost Paradise” with Mike Reno in the movie Footloose. She also had a hit with “Surrender To Me” in 1989, a duet with Cheap Trick singer Robin Zander, which reached #6 in the U.S.

Ann and Nancy started a recording studio, Bad Animals, in Seattle in the mid-1990s. They formed a side band, The Lovemongers, which performed Battle of Evermore on the soundtrack to brother-in-law Cameron Crowe’s 1992 movie Singles, and later released a four-song EP. The Lovemongers’ debut album Whirlygig was released in 1997.

Solo career

In 2006, Ann began recording her first solo album, Hope & Glory, produced by Ben Mink, and released by the Rounder (Zoe) Music Group on September 11, 2007. Hope & Glory features guest appearances from Elton John, k.d. lang, Alison Krauss, Gretchen Wilson, Shawn Colvin, Rufus Wainwright, Wynonna Judd and Deana Carter. Ann’s sister, Nancy, also contributed.

The Hope & Glory version of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” is available on Ann’s Official My Space page, and charted as “the #9 most podcasted song of 2007″ on the PMC Top10′s annual countdown.

In June 2007 she sang with the group Sed Nove and Ian Gillan in the Festival of Music in Paris.

2008 – Alton Kelley, one of the founding members of the ’60s San Francisco rock scene, died Sunday June 1st, 2008 at his home in Petaluma after a long illness. He was 67.

Mr. Kelley will be remembered as the creator (with his artistic partner, Stanley Mouse) of hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters, such as the famed “skull and roses” poster for a Grateful Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom. Mr. Kelley and Mouse created 26 posters for just the first year of the Avalon’s operation.

But Mr. Kelley was also one of four people who called themselves the Family Dog and decided to throw the world’s first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman’s Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene. The quartet had just returned to the Bay Area after spending an LSD-drenched summer restoring a silver rush dancehall in Virginia City, Nev., called the Red Dog Saloon.

Mr. Kelley, a motorcycle enthusiast since his New England youth who painted pinstripes on bike gas tanks, designed the flyers advertising the original Family Dog shows, but lacked drafting ability. When he met Stanley Mouse, who had recently relocated from Detroit where he made a name for himself doing hot rod art, Mr. Kelley found the draftsman he needed. The two formed Mouse Studios and cranked out art together, Mr. Kelley’s drawing skills eventually improving to the point where left-handed Mr. Kelley would be working on one side of the easel, right-handed Mouse on the other.

“He had the most impeccable taste of anybody I knew,” said Mouse, “He would do the layouts, and I would do the drawing.”

They worked together steadily for 15 years and on and off thereafter. Their Mouse Studios was located in a converted Lower Haight firehouse where Janis Joplin first rehearsed with Big Brother and the Holding Company. They also opened a store called Pacific Ocean Trading Company (POT Co.), one of the first head shops in Haight-Ashbury. Recently, the two collaborated on the cover to the program for this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner.

Mouse said they could work for hours in silence. “We knew what to do,” he said. “We didn’t have to talk.”

During the heyday of the Avalon Ballroom, the pair would frequent the public library looking for images they could employ in their poster-making; Edward Curtis photographs of American Indians, illustrations from 19th century novels (the skull and roses was adapted from “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”), often laughing so loud at what they found the librarians would ask them to leave.

“They thought it was the funniest stuff in town,” said Paul Grushkin, author of “The Art Of Rock.

“The twinkle in Kelley’s eye – he knew it was all a giggle.”

“Stanley and I had no idea what we were doing,” Mr. Kelley told The Chronicle last year. “But we went ahead and looked at American Indian stuff, Chinese stuff, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern, Bauhaus, whatever. We were stunned by what we found and what we were able to do. We had free rein to just go graphically crazy. Where before that, all advertising was pretty much just typeset with a photograph of something.”

The work of Mr. Kelley and Mouse has come to be recognized as a 20th century American counterpart to the French poster art of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec during the Belle Epoque, although the two psychedelic artists never imagined at the time they were creating anything of enduring value, anything more than another crazy poster for this week’s Avalon show.

“We were just having fun making posters,” said Mouse. “There was no time to think about what we were doing. It was a furious time, but I think most great art is created in a furious moment.”

Mr. Kelley continued to make posters all his life, although his artwork in the recent past concentrated on his air-brushed paintings of hot rods and custom cars that was both sold as fine art and reproduced on T-shirts.

He is survived by his wife, Marguerite Trousdale Kelley, and their children: Patty of San Diego, Yosarian of Seattle and China of Sacramento; two grandchildren; and his mother and sister.

Memorial plans are pending.

Contributions can be made to the Washington Mutual Western Street branch in Petaluma for a memorial bench in Sonoma County Park.

2006 – Co-founder of Mercury Records Irving Green dies in Palm Springs, Calif. at the age of 90.

2005 – Jazz vocalist and pianist Shirley Horn dies of diabetes complications in Washington, D.C., aged 71. In a career lasting five decades, she worked with Miles Davis, Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis.

Shirley Horn collaborated with many jazz greats including Miles Davis (they influenced each other), Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton Marsalis and others. She was most noted for her ability to accompany herself with nearly incomparable independence and ability on the piano while singing, something described by arranger Johnny Mandel as “like having two heads”, and for her rich, lush voice, a smoky contralto (that occasionally rose to a glorious, ringing belt), which was described by noted producer and arranger Quincy Jones as “like clothing, as she seduces you with her voice”. Although she could swing as strongly as any straight-ahead jazz artist, Horn’s reputation rode on her exquisite ballad work. She tended to take love songs at a glacial tempo, expertly weaving her soft singing (typically in whispery, short phrases like wisps of cigarette smoke) with her gorgeous Impressionist piano chordings and unique dynamic control (a clear example of her artistry can be found in her cover of Jule Styne’s The Music that Makes Me Dance, found on her albumYou Won’t Forget Me).

Horn has also been cited by noted Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall as a major inspiration and influence. Horn is thought by some to be one of a quartet of America’s “great jazz divas”, along with Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

Biography and career

Shirley Horn began playing piano at an early age, and had thoughts as a teenager of becoming a classical artist. She was offered a scholarship to Juilliard, but turned it down for financial reasons. She then became enamored with the famous U Street jazz area of Washington (largely destroyed in the 1968 riots), sneaking into jazz clubs before she was of legal age.

Horn first achieved fame in 1960, when Miles Davis “discovered” her. Davis’ praise had particular resonance in two respects, one because he was so highly respected as a musician, and two because he rarely had anything positive to publicly offer about any musician at that time. Shirley had, though, recorded several songs with violinist Stuff Smith in 1959 both as a pianist and a singer. After her discovery by Davis, she recorded albums on different small labels in the early 1960s, eventually landing contracts with larger labels Mercury Records and Impulse Records. She was popular with jazz critics, but did not achieve significant popular success.

Quincy Jones attempted to make Horn into a pure vocalist in several recording sessions, something he later hinted may have been a mistake. Horn was also disturbed by the changes in popular music in the 1960s following the arrival of The Beatles, and stated “I will not stoop to conquer” in largely rejecting efforts to remake her into a popular singer. From the late-1960s, she concentrated on raising her daughter Rainy with her husband, Shepherd Deering (whom she had married in 1955) and largely limited her performances to her native Washington, D.C., while she often worked full-time as an office worker.

Once her family was grown, she began touring more widely from 1978 onwards. She is best known for her recordings with Verve Records since 1987. Horn was nominated for nine Grammy Awards during her career, winning in 1999 for Jazz Vocal Album for I Remember Miles, a tribute to her friend and encourager.

Preferring to perform in small settings, as with her trio, she recorded with orchestra too, as on the 1992 album Here’s to life, which is highly rated by her fans, the title song being generally considered as her signature song. Arranger Johnny Mandel won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) for that album. A video documentary of Horn’s life and music was released at the same time as “Here’s To Life” and shared its title. At the time Mandel commented that Horn’s piano skill was comparable to that of the noted jazz great Bill Evans. A follow-up was made in 2001, named You’re My Thrill.

Shirley Horn kept for twenty five years the same rhythm section: Charles Ables (bass) and Steve Williams (drums). Don Heckman wrote in the Los Angeles Times (February 2, 1995) about “the importance of bassist Charles Ables and drummer Steve Williams to the Horn’s sound. Working with boundless subtlety, following her every spontaneous twist and turn, they were the ideal accompanists for a performer who clearly will tolerate nothing less than perfection”.

She was officially recognized by the 109th US Congress for “her many achievements and contributions to the world of jazz and American culture”, and performed at The White House for several U.S. presidents. Horn was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music in 2002.

She was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2005., (the highest honors that the United States bestows upon jazz musicians).

Due to health problems in the early 2000s, Horn had to cut back on her appearances. From 2002, a foot amputation (from complications of diabetes) forced her to leave the piano playing to pianist George Mesterhazy. In late 2004, Horn felt able to play piano again, and recorded a live album for Verve live at Manhattan’s Au Bar with trumpet player Roy Hargrove, which did not satisfy her. It remains unreleased except for three tracks on But Beautiful – the best of Shirley Horn.

She had been battling breast cancer and diabetes when she died from complications of a massive stroke, aged 71. She is interred at Ft. Lincoln Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

2003 – What do pop strumpet Britney Spears, rock behemoths Aerosmith, soul sista Mary J. Blige and punk brats Good Charlotte have in common? Football, apparently. All four appeared at a concert on Washington, D.C.’s Mall to kick off the NFL season.

2001 – Having fully recovered from the flu that forced her to restructure the North American tour in support of her third Jive album, “Britney,” Britney Spears’ tour kicks off in Washington, D.C.

2000 – Courtney Love is among those participating in the Million Mom March on Washington, D.C. Love is campaigning on behalf of gun control.

1998 – Janet Jackson’s Velvet Rope tour sets a gross revenue record for MCI Center in Washington, D.C., at more than $875,000. The previous revenue mark was $860,300, set by Yanni Jan. 31, 1998.

1998 – Nancy Sinatra makes the announcement at a press conference in the capital that the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., have worked out an agreement to be the repository of the late Frank Sinatra’s music and movie archives.

1998 – Members of Live donate part of the proceeds from their show in Asbury Park, N.J., to a casualty of June 13, 1998′s Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C. The rock band helps fund a skin graft operation for concertgoer Lysa Selfon, 25, who was critically injured by a lightning bolt. Like Live, law student Selfon hails from Lancaster County, Pa.

1995 – Pearl Jam performs with Neil Young for a Voters for Choice benefit in Washington, DC.

1994 – Singer Aretha Franklin, composer Morton Gould and folk singer Pete Seeger are among those honored at ceremonies held by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The center in Washington, D.C., has held the annual ceremonies since