It can be safely said that Bing Crosby taught America how to sing. Before his arrival in the 1930s, the airwaves were filled with off-pitch, rakish crooners and semi-operatic belters. It was Crosby who brought nuance to popular singing, popularizing …

b. John Royce Mathis, 30 September 1935, San Francisco, California, USA. In 1956, the 19-year-old Mathis was signed to Columbia Records where he began his career with a jazz-tinged album. A US Top 20 hit with "Wonderful! Wonderful!" saw him move adro…

b. Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives, 14 June 1909, Hunt Township, Jasper County, Illinois, USA, d. 14 April 1995, Anacortes, Washington, USA. One of the world's most celebrated singers of folk ballads, with a gentle, intimate style, Ives was also an actor on t…

One of the seminal performers in 20th-century American music, Nat "King" Cole was a major figure in the development of jazz piano, the stylistic link between early jazz and pop of the sophisticated urban variety that emerged in the '30s, and finally …

With over 100,000,000 records sold, Brenda Lee resides in the pantheon of most successful recording artists of all time, right up there with Elvis Presley, who was an early supporter. Her precocious talent, grown-up voice, and passionate stage perfor…

An icon of American music, Frank Sinatra defined sophisticated pop singing of the post-war era and spent more than 50 years in the limelight. After formative stints with Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and others, Sinatra shot to worldwide fame through hi…

Dean Martin was a towering pop-culture icon of the 20th century. He first became known as part of a wildly successful music-and-comedy team with Jerry Lewis in the 1940s and '50s, subsequently becoming a solo singing star. His mellow, Bing Crosby-ins…

b. 10 September 1945, Lares, Puerto Rico. After early fame as a flamenco-style interpreter of pop and rock material, Feliciano turned more to mainstream Latin music, becoming one of the most popular artists in the Spanish-speaking world. He was born …

b. Pierino Como, 18 May 1912, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 12 May 2001, Jupiter Inlet Beach Colony, Florida, USA. Como was an accomplished popular singer with a warm baritone voice, whose repertoire included ballads, novelty numbers and singalon…

Along with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry defined a screen archetype of the 1930s and '40s: the singing cowboy. A gifted singer and songwriter, Autry began his career as a Jimmie Rodgers imitator before developing his own distinctive style. Among his many, m…

"Before Elvis, there was nothing," John Lennon once said. An overstatement, of course, but Elvis Presley's ascendance to superstardom in the mid-1950s kicked off a musical and social revolution whose impact has yet to abate. After the charming young …

Through unparalleled ability and judicious choice of repertoire, Ella Fitzgerald became the foremost female interpreter of the 20th-century Great American Popular Song Book. With producer Norman Granz she worked on the "songbook" series, placing on r…

b. 17 January 1927, Columbia, South Carolina, USA. The daughter of a white dirt farmer and a black Cherokee mother, Kitt was born in the cotton fields of South Carolina. After being given away by her mother she was raised in Harlem, where after a per…

With her multi-octave voice and more than 80 million records sold worldwide, it's no surprise that pop diva Mariah Carey is viewed as the successor to Whitney Houston. She emerged as the premier R&B/pop songstress of the 1990s, and by the end of the …

A fictional group, the Chipmunks were three cartoon characters, Alvin, Theodore and Simon, who were created by Ross Bagdasarian (b. 27 January 1919, Fresno, California, USA, d. 16 January 1972, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA), a multifac…

It was Judy Garland, not Bing Crosby, who inherited Al Jolson's mantle as America's premier 20th-century entertainer. Possessing both the voice and pure show-biz sensibility for the requisite broad gesture, she also suffered from a lifelong insecurit…

The brother and sister duo of Karen and Richard Carpenter were purveyors of a exquisitely crafted pop sound that garnered them a enormous string of Top 10 hits in the 1970s. Employing first-call sidemen, compositions from top writers like Bacharach-D…

One of the finest voices of 20th century American pop, Tony Bennett began his career in the '50s, under the watchful eye of producer Mitch Miller, recording huge hits such as "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," and "Because of You." In 1958, his album BASI…

b. 15 August 1933, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, d. 19 June 1997, Martinsville, Indiana, USA. Helms was something of a child prodigy, who was playing guitar and singing a mixture of pop and country on local radio at the age of 12, and from 1946-54, he r…