Popular Music: Important Composers, Theorists, and Performers
Billie Holiday (1915-1959)
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Billie Holiday was an untrained singer who was capable of invoking the soul of her music and grab at the hearts of her audience. She struggled throughout her career simply because of her race. She has been deemed one of the greatest vocal jazz musicians of all time. She died at 44 years of age from a heroin addiction.
Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
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Irving Berlin lived in New York and participated in gangs as a youth. When his father passed away, he began singing in the streets for money. This is where he was discovered and began his career writing music for singers. His lyrics were very catchy and caught the eyes of Vaudeville. He often wrote parodies of the currently popular music and found himself accidentally writing new melodies. He utilized an arranger to assist him with his music writing skills since he was able to create the music in his head, but couldn’t play it very well himself. Irving went to war in World War I and wrote music to help uplift the troops. After the war, he began his own publishing company and his own theater. This theater, The Music Box, is still in business today. He has written some of the most commonly heard songs of our time. One of these is "God Bless America."
Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948)
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Andrew Lloyd Webber was raised in a musical family. He dropped out of school where he was studying history in order to write popular music with Tim Rice. Three years later they had their first success with “Jesus Christ Superstar.” His style has changed over the years, but has remained a combination of classical, rock, pop, and jazz, with inclusion of electro-acoustic music and chorus numbers in his musicals. Many of his famous female roles were originally written for his ex-wife, Sarah Brightman. They are both active composers and performers today. He is arguably one of the most successful musical theater composers of our time.
