Kenny Rogers

The First Edition was a country music/rock band. Its stalwart members were Kenny Rogers , Mickey Jones and Terry Williams . The band formed in... 1967, with folk musician Mike Settle and the operatically trained Thelma Camacho completing the lineup. The First Edition signed with Reprise Records in the summer of 1967 and had its first hit big in early 1968 with the pop-psychedelic single "Just Dropped In " . After several hits and misses the group once again hit the top ten in the summer of 1969 with the topical "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" . For the next six years, First Edition bounced between country, pop and mild psychedelia, enjoying worldwide success. The First Edition were made up of former New Christy Minstrels who felt creatively stifled.
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Capitol Records is a major United States–based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but as of 2011 operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine. It is a... wholly owned subsidiary of EMI. The Capitol Records Company was founded by songwriter Johnny Mercer in 1942, with the financial help of fellow songwriter and film producer Buddy DeSylva and the business acumen of Glenn Wallichs , owner of Music City, at the time the biggest record store in Los Angeles. Johnny Mercer first suggested the idea of starting a record company while he was golfing with Harold Arlen and Bobby Sherwood. He told them, "I’ve got this idea of starting a record company. I get so tired of listening to the way everyone treats music. I keep feeling they’re selling out. And I don’t like the way artists are treated either. Bing Crosby isn’t the only one who can make records. I don’t know, I think it would be fun." By 1941, Mercer was not only an experienced songwriter, but a singer with a number of records to his name.
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RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986. RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label in Canada, as it was only one of two... Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression. RCA is the name of three different co-owned record labels. RCA Records is the Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, R&B and Country music label. RCA Victor is the label for blues music, world music, jazz, musicals and other musical genres which do not fit the pop music mold. RCA Red Seal is the renowned classical music label with a reissue sub-label called RCA Gold Seal. Defunct labels include budget labels RCA Camden, RCA Victrola, RCA International, and RCA Italiana. Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor also operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for the independent labels.
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Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the The Island Def Jam Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal Music... Australia. In the United States, Universal Music Group Nashville administers the Mercury Records Nashville label. Mercury Record Corporation was founded in the American city of Chicago in 1945 by Irving Green, Berle Adams and Arthur Talmadge. They were a major force in jazz and blues, classical music, rock and roll, and country music recordings. Early in the label's history, Mercury opened two pressing plants, one in Chicago and the other in St. Louis, Missouri. With the use of automatic presses and providing 24-hour turnaround, they went into direct competition with major recording labels such as Columbia, Decca, and RCA Victor. By hiring two promoters, Tiny Hill and Jimmy Hilliard, they penetrated the pop market with names such as Frankie Laine, Vic Damone, Tony Fontane and Patti Page. Rather than rely on radio airplay, Mercury initially relied to jukeboxes to promote their music.
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Pop music is a genre of popular music which originated in its modern form in the 1950s, deriving from rock and roll. The terms popular music and pop... music are often used interchangeably, even though the former is a description of music which is popular , whilst the latter is a specific genre containing qualities of mass appeal. As a genre, pop music is very eclectic, often borrowing elements from other styles including urban, dance, rock, Latin and country; nonetheless, there are core elements which define pop. Such include generally short-to-medium length songs, written in a basic format , as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and catchy hooks. So-called "pure pop" music, such as power pop, features all these elements, utilising electric guitars, drums and bass for instrumentation; in the case of such music, the main goal is usually that of being pleasurable to listen to, rather than having much artistic depth.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music with a 4/4 beat utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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