Steven Lee "Luke" Lukather (born October 21, 1957) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and record producer, best known as the sole continuous founding member of the rock band Toto. His reputation as a skilled guitarist led to a steady flow of session work beginning in the 1970s that has since established him as a prolific session musician, recording guitar tracks for more than 1,500 albums spanning a broad array of artists and genres. He has also contributed to albums and hit singles as a songwriter, arranger, and producer.
Elvin Bishop (born October 21, 1942)[1] is an American blues and rock music singer, guitarist, bandleader, and songwriter. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 2015, and into the Blues Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2016
Göran BrorBennyAndersson; born 16 December 1946) is a Swedish musician, composer, and producer best known as a member of the pop group ABBA. Björn Kristian Ulvaeus; born 25 April 1945), is a Swedish musician, singer, songwriter, and producer best known as a member of the musical group ABBA. Benny and Björn scored their first hits as songwriters in the spring of 1969. Benny and Björn had already been a songwriting duo for six years when they teamed up with their girlfriends Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog — who were both Swedish pop stars already — to form Abba. The two were hardcore about songwriting: they bought a cottage on the island of Viggsö where they could focus on making their music and lyrics as catchy as humanly possible. "Each song had to be different," Andersson said in 2002, "because, in the Sixties, that's what the Beatles had done. The challenge was not to do another 'Mia' or 'Waterloo.'" Ulvaeus's lyrics grew progressively darker over the course of Abba's career, even as the band became so unbelievably popular that they were able to release an 18-song greatest hits album simply called Number Ones. After the band split up, Ulvaeus and Andersson went on to collaborate on several musicals — including the Abba jukebox musical, Mamma Mia!, one of the most successful in Broadway history.
Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American country singer, guitarist and songwriter Willie's Guitar Trigger was signed by many famous writers and singers. Patsy Cline put this song over the top, written by Willie. Nelson was a struggling Music Row pro when Faron Young cut his ode to an empty room, "Hello Walls," in 1961. A string of undeniable classics followed — "Night Life," "Funny How Time Slips Away," and "Crazy," immortalized by Patsy Cline — and Nelson began his own recording career, to fair results. But in the early Seventies, he moved to Austin, Texas, and reinvented himself as a link between Nashville's tradition and rock's imperative of personal freedom, making concepts like Phases and Stages and Red Headed Stranger, helping pioneer the stripped-down Outlaw Country movement and rising as the greatest interpreter of American song outside Frank Sinatra. No one except Dylan has embraced the endless highway with more artistic success — as explained by Nelson in "On the Road Again," a Top 20 Grammy-winning hit in 1980 — and his studio career is just as endless, ranging from Texas swing to reggae to standards with strings. "Willie sort of creeps up on you," Keith Richards once said. "Those beautiful mixtures he has between blues and country and mariachi, that Tex-Mex bit, that tradition of a beautiful cross-section of music. . .He's unique."
Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Throughout his career, Petty sold more than 80 million albums. "The words just came tumbling out of me," Petty said of "American Girl," his greatest song and first hit single. He began as the Seventies and Eighties most commercially potent inheritor of the Sixties songwriting tradition, knocking out hit after hit of compact, hard-jangling rock & roll – from "I Need to Know" to "Refugee" to "The Waiting." As he's aged, Petty has movingly explored relationships (1999's divorce chronicle Echo) and the dark side of the American dream (2014's Hypnotic Eye), always rooting his music in a sense of our common experience (Johnny Cash told Petty that the title track from 1985's Southern Accents should replace "Dixie" as the region's unofficial anthem). "When young musicians ask me what the most important thing is, I always say it's the song," Petty told Rolling Stone in 2009.
Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 130 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Diamond was inducted into the Song Writers Hall Of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2011. There's a reason Diamond's songs have been covered by everyone from the Monkees and Smash Mouth to Sinatra. First are the meaty, hooky melodies, dating back to early Diamond sing-alongs like "Cherry, Cherry" and "Sweet Caroline" and extending into later, more brooding angst-a-thons like "I Am. . .I Said" and "Song Sung Blue." The all-ages appeal of his music also has to do with the way Diamond has sketched out his life — and the lives of many of his fans. From his early, Brill Building pop ("I'm a Believer") to the later-life love songs about his latest wife, few singers brood and contemplate life in song the way Diamond has. And let's not forget the ebullient "Cracklin' Rosie," the vaguely salacious "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon," just two of the more than 50 songs he's placed in the Billboard Top 100 during his half-century-plus career. "I'm motivated to find myself," he told Rolling Stone in 1976. "I do it in a very silly way. I write these little songs and go and sing them. . .It seems like an odd way to gain an inner sense of acceptance of the self. But it's what I do."
Otis Ray Redding Jr. (September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967) was an American singer and songwriter. He is regarded as one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the history of American popular music and a seminal artist in soul music and rhythm and blues. Nicknamed the "King Of Soul", Redding's style of singing gained inspiration from the gospel music that preceded the genre. His singing style influenced many other soul artists of the 1960s. Otis Redding Died December 10, 1967 (aged 26) Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. Cause of death Plane crash Redding wrote and recorded his iconic Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, with Steve Cropper. The Song became the first posthumous number-one record on the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts. Around the mid-1960s he began writing his songs—always taking along his cheap red acoustic guitar—and sometimes asked for Stax members' opinion of his lyrics. He often worked on lyrics with other musicians like Simms, Rodgers, Huckaby, Phil Walden, and Cropper. During his recovery from his throat operation, Redding wrote about 30 songs in two weeks. Redding was the sole copyright holder on all of his songs. "Respect" was written and originally recorded by American soul singer Otis Redding. It was released in 1965 as a single from his third album Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul and became a crossover hit for Redding.
Steven Haworth Miller (born October 5, 1943) is an American musician. He is the founder and only remaining original member of the Steve Miller Band, which he founded in 1966, and is the principal songwriter, lead singer, harmonicist, keyboardist, and one of the guitarists. Miller was inducted into the Rock And Hall Of Fame in 2016. The Steve Miller Band's ongoing popularity has been notable. In 1978, Greatist Hits 1974-78, was released, featuring the big hits from his two most popular albums, Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams along with the title track from The Joker. This popularity also fueled successful concert tours throughout the 1980s and 1990s, often with large numbers of younger people being present at the concerts, many of whom were fans of the big hits and inevitably purchased the greatest hits album. Miller would often headline shows with other classic rock acts, and played a variety of his music, including a selection of his blues work dating from the late 1960s