morning to all! i want to thank you all for welcoming me to this wonderful informative site. i plan on getting as much information as possible. i am going to purchase the korg m-631 soon and am looking forward to familiarize myself with it. i like to lay tracks with different sounds. love funk, blues, pop. rock, classical, heck all sorts of music!

I love singing almost anything i can get my hands on. Not just elvis songs, but from blues, soul and even opera if i can do it .

as i've told you all, i play guitar and keyboard by ear and love to improvise in real time.

when i get more time, i want to start checking out all of the information on this site.

once again, tks for the welcoming.

manny

Nigel, Al's dad was the janitor at a Square D factory in Cedar Rapids Iowa. I used to travel there once a month to do photography for company publications. The dad told me about his son, who had performed at a club downtown before he moved. The dad said that Al would be at the club, which had also moved the next time I was up.

It was a Monday, during a terrible winter storm (late 70's) and besides the bartender (the owners wife), the owner (a drummer) and one "high mileage" stripper, I was the only guest. When Al arrived, we talked. He had just finished his first album. He had gone to svhool, earning a masters in social work, I think, in Cedar Rapids. After talking, he, the drummer and I played a set. There was a "high mileage" house-owned B-3 there.there were never more than 10- people in the room during the set.

Shortly thereafter, Al became the darling of the jazz world.

A real talent, and a gentleman who deserves the recognition and respect he gets.


Russ

What's a Korg M-631?

I think he meant a Korg Poly 61 m

[This message has been edited by Fran Carango (edited 09-19-2008).]

Elvis is not in my top 5. My top 2 are women!
Ella & Karen. Too many others to list now ... headed to the shore for my last 2 weeks of summer! ( I hate this drive, but LOVE the work! )

#12

Probably a Korg M-3 with 61 keys.

Hmmmm.... That's a weird choice for his style of music...

Tons of techno, but not exactly overloaded with oldies loops. Even a MotifXS might be more oldies orientated, but an S900 or E60 would be FAR more appropriate, I would have thought.

What made you decide on this, Manny?

And only Fran would come up with such an ancient keyboard as a likely candidate Looking for one to compliment your DX-7, Fran?

1st Welcome Me Manny!

UD ... Karen as in Carpenter .. I agree!! Fantastic!! I can't listen any more ... To depressing knowing she is gone forever!

The top of the list is Sinatra ... PERIOD!!!!! The man who defined what a pop vocalist is to this generation!!

Russ I agree with all your choices! Don't forget Jack Jones and Johnny Mathis!!

Manny,

Welcome to the Zone..
I have to go with Diki on this one..
I have an M-3 61 and I absolutely love it, but it would be way down on my list of tools for what appears to be your styles of music.

Lot's of great singers here listed for sure, but few that I have ever spent a lot of time listening to personally. Sinatra, Elvis, and some of the others mentioned of that era are recognized by many as all time greats, but they just don't do a lot for me personally.

My favorites are surely a nod toward the times I grew up in, as well as where . When I was growing up, the great debates of the day included.. Wakeman vs Emerson on keys, Clapton vs Page vs Beck vs the Jazz Fusion guys on guitar...( I was always kinda partial to Frank Zappa's playing and composing skills myself ). Always the never ending debates on who was the best.. but I learned long ago that there is no tangible way to EVER settle those arguments.. it depends on what the individual listener hears and feels, and everything is open to individual interpretation.


I was never big into the Folk scene personally, yet one of my all time favorites is Nick Drake, who got his start in the British folk scene with the likes of Fairport Convention, though I'll readily admit I did not know of him at all until long after his brief life had ended. His unique vocals and absolute mastery of the fingerpicking style on nylon guitar, along with the very raw, sparsely accompanied but brilliant recordings he made still keep me in awe to this day, some 30+ years after he is gone.

As I read back on what Russ wrote, as I go through the list of my favorites, I realize that many of my musical heroes had issues too, but they also conveyed a raw emotion in their music that immediately made me pay attention ( Drake, Roger "Syd" Barrett, Roger Waters, Jeff Buckley, Neil Young immediately come to mind ). I couldn't care less where some of them might rank in a list of all time favorites.


AJ

Sorry all, meant the Korg M-361 got my nos. backwards. manny