On the 11th of March, 1950, Bobby McFerrin was born. His parents were classical singers and he began to study music theory early on in his life. His family then moved to Los Angeles. During high school and then in College, UCSC, he focused on the piano. Once he finished college, Bobby McFerrin toured with numerous bands including the Ice Follies.
However, it was only in 1977 that Bobby McFerrin decide to become a singer. At one point he met Bill Cosby who arranged for him take part in the 1980 Playboy Jazz Festival. It was only two years later where he released his firm album called “Bobby McFerrin” in 1982. It was in 1983, that Bobby McFerrin started converting without a band. This eventually led him to make a solo tour in Germany. It was in Germany that he recorded his album “The Voice”. From that point on, he continued to make solo tours in the most prestigious locations. It is also important to realize that Bobby McFerrin worked with several important people like Garrison Keillor, Jack Nicholson, and Joe Zawinul. On “Another Night in Tunisia”, Bobby McFerrin won two Grammies.
McFerrin was also featured in TV commercials for Levi’s and Ocean Spray and also ended up singing the theme song for the Cosby Show and the movie Round Midnight by Bertrand Tavernier which got hum another Grammy. By now, Bobby McFerrin had achieved a great deal of success as a vocal and had released his platinum album Simple Pleasures which included the hit “Don’t Worry be Happy”.
As an Orchestrator, Bobby McFerrin demonstrated his skills in 1990 when he released Medicine Music. He appeared on Arsenio Hall, Today and Evening at Pops. Beyond that, he recorded Hush with Yo-Yo Ma in 1992. The Hush album stayed on the Billboard Classical Crossover Chart for two years until he went gold in 1996. In 1992, Bobby McFerrin also released a new Jazz album called Play which earned him his 10th Grammy award. He is without a doubt one of the greatest Jazz Artists of all time.
McFerrin also worked with classical music. In fact, his first classical album named Paper Music was recorded with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. His symphonic conducting included the convert-length version of Porgy and Bess. This very album remains on the Billboard chart of classical bestsellers. Read More…
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As a poet, prophet and purveyor of Jamaican culture, he shattered musical boundaries around the world.
Bob Marley was born in a small village called Nine Miles in Jamaica. The son of British Naval Officer and Jamaican woman called Cedella, Marley rarely saw his father due to his mother’s family and their disapproval of his parents relationship.
By the time he had turned 16, Marley had recorded his first single ‘Judge Not’, and in 1963, he formed The Wailers with Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingstone, Junior Braithwaite, and Beverly Kelso. The band then scored their first number one in Jamaica with ‘Simmer Down’ on the Coxsone label.
When Braithwaite and Kelso left the group around 1965, the Wailers continued as a trio, Marley, Tosh, and Livingstone trading leads. In spite of the popularity of singles like ‘Rude Boy’, the artists received few or no royalties, and in 1966 they disbanded.
After marrying his girlfriend Rita Anderson, Marley spent most of the following year working in a factory in Newark in the United States, where his mother had moved in 1963. Upon his return to Jamaica, the Wailers reunited and recorded for Coxsone with little success. During this period, the Wailers devoted themselves to the religious sect of Rastafari.
In 1969, they began a three-year association with Lee “Scratch” Perry, who directed them to play their own instruments and expanded their line-up to include Aston and Carlton Barrett, formerly the rhythm section of Perry’s studio band, the Upsetters. Some of the records they made with Perry – like ‘Trenchtown Rock’ – were locally very popular, but so precarious was the Jamaican record industry that the group seemed no closer than before to establishing steady careers. It formed an independent record company, Tuff Gong, in 1971, but the venture foundered when Livingstone was jailed and Marley got caught in a contract commitment to American pop singer Johnny Nash, who took him to Sweden to write a film score.
Their breakthrough came in 1972 when Chris Blackwell – who had released ‘Judge Not’ in England in 1963 – signed the Wailers to Island Records and advanced them the money to record themselves in Jamaica. The first result of this new contract was 1973’s ‘Catch A Fire’, the breakthrough album that saw the band reach an international audience for the first time. It was followed a year later by Burnin’, which included the songs “Get Up, Stand Up” and “I Shot The Sheriff”.
The band toured heavily during this period, and Marley expanded the instrumental section of the group and bringing in a female vocal trio, the I-Threes, which included his wife, Rita. Now called Bob Marley and the Wailers, they toured Europe, Africa, and the Americas, building especially strong followings in the U.K., Scandinavia, and Africa. They had U.K. Top 40 hits with ‘No Woman No Cry’ (1975), ‘Exodus’ (1977), ‘Waiting in Vain’ (1977), and ‘Satisfy My Soul’ (1978).
In 1976, Marley was shot by gunmen during the Jamaican election campaign, but survived and continued to soar in popularity until his 1981 death due to brain, lung and stomach cancer. In 1987, both Peter Tosh and longtime Marley drummer Carlton Barrett were murdered in Jamaica during separate incidents. Rita Marley continues to tour, record, and run the Tuff Gong studios and record company.
Havana Brown always planned on being a singer – it’s just becoming a world-famous DJ kind of got in the way.
The Melbourne glamour has just released her sizzling debut single ‘We Run The Night’, but she first started singing at the modest age of six. Admittedly though, her ‘performances’ back then were a little different…
“I’d put together shows at family dinners and drag along my poor cousins, who didn’t know how to dance or sing. I don’t know how entertained everyone was,” Brown recalls with a laugh. “I was really into R&B, like Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation and Bobby Brown.”
After countless years of singing lessons, performing in dance troupes and cheerleading for her hometown Aussie Rules and basketball teams, Brown got serious about making her own music right after leaving high school.
She started working with Panos Liassi, a Melbourne-based London DJ/producer and one half of R&B/reggae partystarters, Supafly Inc. Such was their musical connection, she ended up following him to the UK to form a Fugees-style group called Fishbowl with two other members. They got signed to the Polydor UK label almost instantly, but sadly, in-fighting saw the act split before they even got to release a single.
“When I look back, it was a pretty dark time,” says Brown. “Getting signed is a big deal for a new artist. You think, woah, this is it! But it wasn’t…”
Like anyone suffering a break up, Brown threw herself into the party scene and one night, she had a dancefloor epiphany of her own: the DJ had the best job in the room and she wanted in.
After learning the basics from Panos, she scraped together enough money from her four-quid-an-hour job to buy her first pair of decks and started hitting up bars with her demo.
Her persistence finally paid off when she scored her first residency at London’s exclusive Kabaret nightclub. “I told the promoters I’d play my first gig for free and they could throw me off after the first song. I don’t think they even thought I’d turn up the next night. When I did, they were like ‘oh, you were serious?’ I ended up playing for an hour and they loved it.”
Arriving back in Australia at the end of 2006, Brown – in her own words – “worked her little tush off” to keep her DJ dream alive. After working the club circuit, she became the first female DJ in Australia to sign a major label record deal with Universal Music in 2008, released her first mix CD, Crave, and topped the year off opening for the Pussycat Dolls on their promo tour.
The Dolls’ management were so impressed with her DJ-with-dancers show, they asked her back for their full tour in 2009. And as word spread, Brown found herself supporting the cream of the pop crop, including Rihanna, Chris Brown, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears, with the latter inviting her on her European tour a year later.
Since then, Brown’s star has only gotten brighter. These days, she boasts weekly radio mixup shows in Australia and abroad (on the popular Radio FG France dance network), has sold over 150,000 copies of her Crave series (now up to Volume 5) and played events as dazzling and diverse as the official Grammy’s After Party and the Singapore F1 Grand Prix alongside Beyonce and the Black Eyed Peas. Along the way, she’s also clocked up more than 100,000 loyal Facebook fans.
Now, twenty years since that first giddy singing lesson, she’s ready to retake the mic and launch that long-overdue singing career. And she’s not afraid to say she’s a little bit nervous…
“It’s exciting, nerve-wracking and intimidating all at the same time,” she says. “I’ve been working on this for a while and I didn’t want to release anything until I was completely satisfied with it. I can’t wait for people to hear this song.”
Written and produced by dance duo More Mega, first single ‘We Run The Night’ is the perfect introduction to the talents and tastes of Havana Brown. A certified dancefloor detonator, the song’s as epic as it is euphoric with an insanely infectious breakdown that’s guaranteed to throw the crowd into overdrive.
“It’s created for both the clubs and the radio,” she reveals. “That was really important for me and it was very difficult to pull off. As for the track, it’s about how music makes me feel.”
Brown says her vast experience as a DJ playing other people’s tunes has also had a huge impact on how she approaches her own.
“In the past, I wasn’t quite sure what type of artist I want to be. But now, after DJing and Fishbowl falling apart, which has been a blessing in disguise, now I’m very confident about what I want.”
At the same time, she realises that some people can be just as dismissive of female pop singers as they are of female DJs. But that, she says, only motivates her more.
“It actually drives me more when people say bad things,” she confesses. “It doesn’t make me angry, it’s more ‘I’m just going to annoy you even more by going out there even harder.’”
“I know I’m putting myself out there in a different way,” she adds. “Originally I was behind the console playing other people’s music but now I’m up front performing my own. I’m revealing myself – it’s like being naked.”
So far, Havana’s career as a jet-setting DJ has been nothing short of dazzling, but now she’s ready to shine in a whole new light. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Havana Brown the artist.
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Great Ideas To Help You Be A Success At Cool Email Signatures
The email is one of the greatest inventions of the internet age.
By using a simple message, anyone can communicate with anyone else in a matter of seconds. This near instant communication makes it a great marketing tool. Here is a bit of advice that will show you how to harness the power of emails for marketing purposes.
Don’t send emails to people who have not given their express consent. Spam emails will diminish your credibility within your customer base. You could lose customers and get reported for sending unwanted emails.
Strategically plan when your emails will go out. People do not like getting emails at inconvenient times, especially if it’s something that they have to act on quickly. Be considerate by making your offers convenient and easy for people to take advantage of, and you will have more sales than you otherwise would.
Proofread everything you send out through email. Every single email and newsletter must be perfect. Send yourself a test email before dispatching your messages to customers to ensure that the layout and formatting is correct. Also, if you place links in your email, test them to make sure they work.
Provide your customers with useful tips or information in each marketing newsletter. Think of the newsletter as an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise in your field. Your customers will trust you more when they see how much you know and will be more likely to buy products or services from you.
Email is a great marketing tool, but it is not an arena where the hard sell is appreciated. Never pressure your subscribers into buying. Put sales pitches at the tail end of your emails, especially if your readers signed up with expectations of informative content. Consider email as a tool to cultivate interest, not instant sales.
The odds that your email subscribers will be reading your messages on a mobile device, such as a smartphone, are going up every day. Since the resolution is lower on these devices, you won’t have as much space. Find out how your messages look on these devices, and make any changes necessary to make them easy to read on small phone screens.
Tailor your emails and landing pages for mobile users as well as those using desktops. Keep in mind that smartphones have tiny screens that may not be compatible with the way you have your emails formatted. Trim the width so that your emails can be read by users without them having to re-size them.
For your email signature Creator campaigns to be truly effective, every message needs a clear call to action. For example, if you are promoting a new product then you should encourage customers to go directly to that product’s page. On the other hand, if you are promoting a new sale then you should clearly explain how customers can take advantage of that sale.
You might want to consider following up to your clients with some type of surprise bonus that you are providing them. Include a link on your email that tells them to click on it. The concluding postscript could inform them that they can get all the details on this by clicking on the provided link.
If you are following up with clients through an email, try following up with a press release concerning your company. Include a statement on your message that tells your clients to register on the below link. The concluding P.S. could tell them to view all the examples on the link that was provided in the email.
Try using A/B testing for your email signature Creator campaign. This basically entails creating two very different versions of the same email (A and B) and sending “A” to half of a small test group and “B” to the other half. Whichever half receives the most positive response is the one that you should be using for your campaign.
Before sending any promotional emails to customers or potential customers, be sure to get their permission for contact. Email is a powerful tool, and consumers hate when it is misused. Any email contact that isn’t initiated by the consumer feels to them like spam. Your customers must agree to receive additional emails from you, even if they have made purchases in the past.
The emails you send out as part of your marketing campaign should start out with a welcoming, personalized tone. Include the name of the recipient in the subject line and the opening of the message. This will make your customers feel more receptive to your message and be more likely to patronize your business.
When creating text for your email signature Creator campaign, make sure you use fonts that reflect the tone of what your email is trying to convey to the customer. This is important in providing the right emphasis, and it conveys the message clearly to the customer. This will work wonders in keeping the reader intrigued.
As you are utilizing engaging emails and targeting the right customers, make sure you are also soliciting feedback from them. Getting feedback from targeted customers is key to knowing what you can do to make your marketing strategies even better. This will help you be able to make your email signature Creator plan even more effective.
A big part of every good email signature Creator campaign is respect for your subscribers. One way you can demonstrate that respect is by making it as easy as possible for them to unsubscribe. You should, ideally, include an “unsubscribe” link with every message you send out. Losing a subscriber is a shame, but annoying one before they leave is downright dangerous!
You might want to consider following up to your clients by sending a follow-up email that includes a bad link correction. Attach a request on your email that says to read this. The ending postscript could inform them that they can get a sneak peak by clicking on the provided link.
Interacting with your customers and clients is the best way to get them to buy your products or services. A good email signature Creator plan can help you with that. Follow the tips in this article, and you will be able to convey information while building a relationship with your target market.
As a poet, prophet and purveyor of Jamaican culture, he shattered musical boundaries around the world.
Bob Marley was born in a small village called Nine Miles in Jamaica. The son of British Naval Officer and Jamaican woman called Cedella, Marley rarely saw his father due to his mother’s family and their disapproval of his parents relationship.
By the time he had turned 16, Marley had recorded his first single ‘Judge Not’, and in 1963, he formed The Wailers with Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingstone, Junior Braithwaite, and Beverly Kelso. The band then scored their first number one in Jamaica with ‘Simmer Down’ on the Coxsone label.
When Braithwaite and Kelso left the group around 1965, the Wailers continued as a trio, Marley, Tosh, and Livingstone trading leads. In spite of the popularity of singles like ‘Rude Boy’, the artists received few or no royalties, and in 1966 they disbanded.
After marrying his girlfriend Rita Anderson, Marley spent most of the following year working in a factory in Newark in the United States, where his mother had moved in 1963. Upon his return to Jamaica, the Wailers reunited and recorded for Coxsone with little success. During this period, the Wailers devoted themselves to the religious sect of Rastafari.
In 1969, they began a three-year association with Lee “Scratch” Perry, who directed them to play their own instruments and expanded their line-up to include Aston and Carlton Barrett, formerly the rhythm section of Perry’s studio band, the Upsetters. Some of the records they made with Perry – like ‘Trenchtown Rock’ – were locally very popular, but so precarious was the Jamaican record industry that the group seemed no closer than before to establishing steady careers. It formed an independent record company, Tuff Gong, in 1971, but the venture foundered when Livingstone was jailed and Marley got caught in a contract commitment to American pop singer Johnny Nash, who took him to Sweden to write a film score.
Their breakthrough came in 1972 when Chris Blackwell – who had released ‘Judge Not’ in England in 1963 – signed the Wailers to Island Records and advanced them the money to record themselves in Jamaica. The first result of this new contract was 1973’s ‘Catch A Fire’, the breakthrough album that saw the band reach an international audience for the first time. It was followed a year later by Burnin’, which included the songs “Get Up, Stand Up” and “I Shot The Sheriff”.
The band toured heavily during this period, and Marley expanded the instrumental section of the group and bringing in a female vocal trio, the I-Threes, which included his wife, Rita. Now called Bob Marley and the Wailers, they toured Europe, Africa, and the Americas, building especially strong followings in the U.K., Scandinavia, and Africa. They had U.K. Top 40 hits with ‘No Woman No Cry’ (1975), ‘Exodus’ (1977), ‘Waiting in Vain’ (1977), and ‘Satisfy My Soul’ (1978).
In 1976, Marley was shot by gunmen during the Jamaican election campaign, but survived and continued to soar in popularity until his 1981 death due to brain, lung and stomach cancer. In 1987, both Peter Tosh and longtime Marley drummer Carlton Barrett were murdered in Jamaica during separate incidents. Rita Marley continues to tour, record, and run the Tuff Gong studios and record company.
Hernandez was born in Le Blanc-Mesnil in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France, to a Spanish father and a half-Austrian and half-Italian mother. Growing up in the 1960s, he became interested in music. He toured dancehalls and ballrooms of southern France with a number of groups over the next decade. Hernandez met his music partner Herv? Tholance, an arranger, guitarist, and vocalist, during that period. The two formed a duo and started achieving local success backing French musicians such as Francis Cabrel, Laurent Voulzy, and the French group Gold.
In 1978, Hernandez met producer Jean Vanloo, and with disco music at its peak, decided it was time to try his hand at disco. Vanloo agreed and signed Patrick to a contract. He was then sent to Waterloo, Belgium to work on songs.
After working for about a year, the first of the resulting six songs would change Hernandez’s life and make him an international star for a short period. The songs were released on the Aariana sub-label Aquarius Records (in France) in November 1978. The first single that was released was the disco song “Born to Be Alive”. Its success was immediate, and in January 1979, Hernandez received his first gold record from Italy. The song spread throughout Europe, where it hit #1 in France in April and remained there until July. By then, the United States had caught on, and through some remixing, the record was signed to the A-Tom-Mik label headed by the award winning dance promoter Tom Hayden and music publisher Mike Stewart through their label/production deal with Columbia Records. The remixed version of “Born to Be Alive” was released on a commercial 12″ single, and it shot up the disco charts to #1 and crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100 peaking at #16. By year’s end, Hernandez had racked up 52 gold and platinum record awards from more than 50 different countries.
While Hernandez was touring the United States, he was accompanied by his producer Jean Vanloo and his friend Jean-Claude Pellerin. Vanloo and Pellerin held auditions in New York that spring for dancers to accompany Hernandez on his worldwide tour. The chosen dancers included a young Madonna.
Hernandez’s follow-ups to “Born to Be Alive” did not fare as well in America. “Disco Queen” backed with “Show Me The Way You Kiss” did not get any radio support and sold poorly, but the album Born to Be Alive still sold well and won him a Billboard Award in February 1980.
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Formed in 1969 in Nottingham, England, and made up of Michael Vaughn, Chris Morris, Carlo Santana, Cliff Fish, and Phillip Wright, Paper Lace was one of hundreds of pop bands in England looking for the big time while slogging their way through small club gigs and brief television appearances.
Their big break came in 1974 when their version of the tear-jerking bubblegum tune “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” won top honours on Opportunity Knocks, a nationwide talent-show on ITV. They rode that song all the way to the top of the U.K. charts but were aced out of any sales in the U.S. by Bo Donaldson & the Haywood’s’ transcendent version.
Their next single, “The Night Chicago Died,” did manage to hit the number one slot on the U.S. charts (number three in the U.K.) and then that was it. The group released two albums, Paper Lace and Other Bits of Material in 1974 and First Edition in 1975, and did a quick fade from the public eye. In 1978 they surfaced briefly with a sing-along version of “We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands” with their local football team, Nottingham Forest FC, and the disappeared forever.
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I Wanna Be Like You, also known as The Monkey Song, is King Louie‘s (Louie Prima, featuring Baloo/ Phil Harris) song which he dreams to become human in order to protect himself from Shere Khan. The song was written by The Sherman Brothers who wrote most songs for The Jungle Book. The song was covered by the group Smash Mouth for The Jungle Book 2. In 2007, The Jonas Brothers covered the song.
By using a simple message, anyone can communicate with anyone else in a matter of seconds. This near instant communication makes it a great marketing tool. Here is a bit of advice that will show you how to harness the power of emails for marketing purposes.
