Billboard is an American music magazine, headquartered in New York City, New York and owned by Prometheus Global Media. It was first published on November 1, 1894, and is distinguished as being among the oldest trade magazines in the world. The magazine originally focused on bill posting and outdoor amusements before specializing in the music industry in the 1960’s. Billboard maintains several internationally recognized record charts, which track the most popular songs and albums across several categories on a weekly basis. (More from Wikipedia)
This photograph of the Coronados with Jack Spector, a prominent New York City disc jockey on WMCA, was published in Billboard Magazine in 1965. (Spector is notable for having been the first DJ in New York to play the Beatles' initial Capitol Records single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in late December 1963). Their music is described in the Daily Herald article mentioned previously in this way: “The mode became eclectic – show tunes, popular numbers – with a professional gloss appropriate to the Borscht Belt and other resort circuits.”
Meanwhile, the four teenaged children of the bandmembers in the Coronados – who sometimes appeared with their parents on stage – were being attracted to rock music and began singing and performing together as the Real Americans.
(August 2013)
Dan McLain was probably the most active and most prominent musician among the former bandmembers in the Crawdaddys; his untimely death in November 1995 at the age of 40 was written up in Billboard magazine. After drumming for the Crawdaddys and the Penetrators, McLain took the name Country Dick Montana and first formed a band called Country Dick & the Snuggle Bunnies. The bandmembers included Richard Banke who is also known as Skid Roper, a long-time collaborator (mostly as an instrumentalist) with Mojo Nixon, who is a former member of the Crawdaddys.
(January 2015/2)
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Holland-Dozier-Holland is a songwriting powerhouse; besides writing some of Motown’s best-known hits, they wrote most of the songs on entire albums for some of the biggest stars on the label. For the Supremes’ second album Where Did Our Love Go (1964), not only did Holland-Dozier-Holland write the group’s three Number 1 hits that appear on the album (as well as 10 of their 12 Number 1 hits overall) – “Where Did Our Love Go”, “Baby Love”, and “Come See About Me” – they also wrote 5 of the 9 other songs on the album. About Where Did Our Love Go, Wikipedia says: “With the release of this album, the Supremes became the first act in Billboard magazine history to have three number-one hits from the same album. It was the album that introduced ‘The Motown Sound’ to the masses. It was also, at the time, the highest ranking album by an all female group.”
Diana Ross left the Supremes in 1970 to start a solo career, though Berry Gordy had been thinking about that as early as 1966. Guinness World Records lists Diana Ross as the most successful female recording artist in history; combining her recordings with the Supremes and individually, Diana Ross has had 70 charting hit singles and sales of more than 100 million albums. In 1976, Billboard magazine named Diana Ross the “female entertainer of the century”.
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What Fresh Hell is This quotes this item in the June 14. 1980 issue of Billboard Magazine about Black Russian: “Actually from the U.S.S.R., Black Russian is a pop trio which makes crystalline pop/r&b that comes across as a more r&b-oriented ABBA. Natasha Kapustin has an excellent soaring voice. ‘Leave Me Now’ really gives her room to show off her vocal strength. The production is exceptionally clean with Vladimir Shneider’s keyboard and the synthesizers of Serge [Kapustin] and Natasha Kapustin lending a cushy sheen. The album is evenly divided between uptempo dance cuts and moody ballads. Best cuts: ‘Mystified’, ‘Leave Me Now’, ‘Emptiness’, ‘New York City’, ‘Love’s Enough’.”
(April 2015/1)
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