Manfred Mann continually reinvented the groups that bore his name, which scored hits across the decades, putting their own Brit-rock spin on everything from Bob Dylan to Burt Bacharach. As hepcats of t …

A soul-deep schooling in jazz and blues gave Manfred Mann the edge over their British Invasion buddies. When the band moved on Herbie Hancock's soul-jazz smash "Watermelon Man," the result wasn't just  …

Without the work of Les Paul, music as we know it today would sound very different. The dizzying list of his innovations - solid-body electric guitar, overdubbing, tape delay, multi-track recording - i …

Les Paul's music, recording techniques, and guitars laid the groundwork for modern music, and everybody's favorite fretboard-fryer has been honored by his disciples ever since. Country guitar giant Che …

Anchored by the rough-edged emotion and poetic outlook of frontman Paul Buchanan, the Blue Nile embodied the artistic side of '80s alterna-pop, with a free-flowing sonic palette and a talent for captur …

Jerry Goldsmith was a titan in a field that leans toward anonymity. Composers slave over splotches of ink across endless lines on paper that are incomprehensible to most who hear the final product, yet …

Composer Henry Mancini noted that Jerry Goldsmith's skill-set scared the hell out of his peers; John Williams, meanwhile, referred to Goldsmith's "chameleon adaptability," and the fact that he would ta …

While he'll always be remembered as one of the flagship artists within an invitation-only scene (the sample-crunching Intelligent Dance Music club, aka IDM) and leading electronic music label (Warp Rec …

We know what you're thinking: How influential could an electronic producer be, especially one who seems to barely leave his bedroom? Well, for starters, Aphex Twin is one of the only IDM-era icons to r …