1970s
Al
Green began his solo career singing with Memphis-based Hi Records.
Teaming with producer and noted instrumentalist Willie Mitchell in 1970,
Al spent the next eight years racking up an unprecedented eight million-selling
singles.
The Allman Brothers Band
recorded Live at the Fillmore, February, 1970.
Jimmy Hall's fruitful
career began with the birth of Wet
Willie. The band moved to Macon, Georgia in 1970 to record for
Capricorn Records.
Before signing a recording contract in 1970 with Barnaby Records, Jimmy
Buffett lived in Nashville and worked writing articles for Billboard.
Isaac Hayes's score for the
Motion Picture Shaft
became the first funk soundtrack to bag an Academy Award.
Gram Parsons developed a considerable
cult following due to his efforts to blur the line between Rock & Roll
and Country music during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gram's influence
was key in the development of such early 1970s bands as The Byrds, The
Eagles, and The Rolling Stones.
In 1972, Al Kooper moved to Atlanta,
attracted by the music he heard there. He discovered LynyrdSkynyrd
at a favorite hangout. Forming his own label (Sounds of the South) to put
out their records, he produced their first three albums, which included
the massive hits "Sweet Home Alabama," "Saturday Night Special," and "Freebird."
Formed in 1972 and signed to Capricorn Records, The
Marshall Tucker Band hit Album Rock radio stations with gold and platinum
LPs from 1973 to 1979.
In 1973, Tom Petty leaves Gainesville,
Florida and sets off for Los Angelos.
In 1973, Dr. John scored a commercial
triumph with "In The Right Place." Produced by Allen
Toussaint and featuring The Meters as a backing band, it yielded two
hits singles--"Right Place, Wrong Time" and "Such A Night."
In 1973, Marvin Hamlisch won an Oscar for the adaptation of Scott
Joplin's "The Entertainer" for the Motion Picture The
Sting.
Down in Texas, there was Willie
Nelson, Kris Kristofferson,
Waylon
Jennings,
Freddie Fender,
Johnny
Winter and
Edgar Winter,
Z.Z.
Top, and Austin City Limits.
Kent Finlay opened the doors of Cheatham
Street Warehouse in June of 1974 as a music hall, to develop, perpetuate
and promote Texas music in its most natural state - the honky-tonk.
With the opening of Opryland USA, an amusement park dedicated by President
Nixon on March 16, 1974, The
Opry moved into a new $15 million theatre, the largest broadcasting
studio in the world, with a seating compacity of 4,400.
In 1974, Charlie Daniels hosted
the first The Volunteer Jam.
The Staple Singers--Pops,
with daughters Mavis, Yvonne, and Cleo--scored top 40 hits in the 60s and
70s with such songs as "I'll Take You There," "Let's Do It Again," and
"Respect Yourself."
Whether as solo artists, or since 1977 as bandmates, The
Neville Brothers, as Newsweek has observed, "poured out a stream of
syncopated, funky riveting music that makes you dance and ache and cry
inside."
R.E.M.
and The B-52s were mixing things
up in Athens, Georgia.
The
Sex Pistols make their U.S. debut in Atlanta, Georgia, at The Great Southeast
Music Hall.
