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Roger Miller

  One of the most multifaceted talents country music has ever known, Roger Dean Miller left a musical legacy of astonishing depth and range. A struggling honky-tonk singer and songwriter when h...
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Merle Haggard

  Though for the last decade his new recordings have received almost no airplay—in the innocently cruel Nashville taxonomy, he is classified as a living legend—Merle Ronald Haggard ...
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Jeannie C Riley

Born Jeanne Carolyn Stephenson on October 19, 1945 in Stamford, Texas and raised in the small west-Texas town of Anson, Texas. The second daughter to Oscar and Nora Stephenson. Her fath...
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Jason D Williams

  Enthusiastic, Reckless, Stormy, Rock & Roll in its natural state ... This explains why the Kansas City Star Pronounced Jason D. Williams as "the past and future of rock & roll.&quo...
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Howlin' Wolf

  Howlin' Wolf quickly became a local celebrity, and soon began working with a band that included both Willie Johnson and guitarist Pat Hare. His first recordings came in 1951, when he...
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Bill Justis
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William E. "Bill" Justis Jr. (October 141926 – July 151982) was an American pioneer Rock and Rollmusiciancomposer, and musical arranger best known for his 1957 Grammy Hall of Fame song "Raunchy."

Bill Justis was born in Birmingham, Alabama but grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and studied music at Christian Brothers College (high school department) and Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. A trumpet and saxophone player, while in university he performed with local jazz and dance bands. He returned home to Memphis in 1954 and was eventually taken on by Sam Phillips atSun Records where he recorded music for himself as well as arranged the music for Sun artists such as Jerry Lee LewisRoy OrbisonJohnny Cash and Charlie Rich. Released in November 1957, his song "Raunchy" was the first Rock and Roll instrumental hit and its popularity was such that it reached No.2 on the American Billboard record charts and to No. 1 on the Australian charts. Justis had one other significant hit record, "College Man", that went to No. 42.

In 1961, Bill Justis moved to Nashville where he became a successful record producer and music arranger for both Pop and country musicperformers at Monument and Mercury Records and other labels. He played saxophone on the soundtrack for the 1964 Elvis Presley film, Kissin' Cousins and that same year took over as manager of the singing group, Ronny & the Daytonas.

Bill Justis had a number one hit in Australia in 1963 with "Tamoure". The song did not chart in the USA on the Billboard hot 100. In the early 1960s he produced a successful series of instrumental LP's on the Smash label. Justis is credited by Ray Stevens in the TNN special The Life and Times of Ray Stevens for giving him the phrase "gitarzan" for which became a million selling pop hit for Stevens in 1969.

Justis also wrote the music for several Hollywood motion pictures including the 1977 Burt Reynolds / Sally Field hit Smokey and the Bandit and the acting duos 1978 film, Hooper.

Bill Justis died of cancer in Nashville in 1982 at the age of only 55 and was interred in the Memorial Park Cemetery, Memphis.
 

This Day In Music...

  • On this Day July 04, 2005
    U2 won their court fight for the return of items of memorabilia, including a Stetson hat which they accused a former stylist of stealing. Judge Matthew Deery at Dublin's Circuit Court ordered Lola Cashman to return the items, which also include earrings, within seven days. Ms Cashman, had worked as U2's stylist during the 1980s and wrote an unauthorised book called Inside the Zoo. Judge Deery said he found Ms Cashman's version of how she had been given the items at the end of a US tour doubtful, particularly her description of Bono running around in his underpants backstage.