Stevie Wonder

From: Saginaw, Michigan 

Soul/Funk Pianist, Composer, Singer

Notable Works: Superstition, Higher Ground, Isn’t She Lovely, I Wish, Sir Duke

Fascinating Facts

He was not born blind. 

He was the youngest solo artist to have a number 1 song on Billboard Top 100, at the age of 13.

In 1981 Stevie Wonder, and other supporters, were rallying to make Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday a national holiday. His version of Happy Birthday helped to make it so.

For 60 years, he recorded with only one label, a Motown imprints label called Tamla. In 2020 he started his own record label. 

He is the only artist to win a Grammy for 3 albums in a row. 1973 Innervisions, 1974 Fulfillingness’ First Finale and 1976 Songs in the Key of Life.

He is a vegan, and travels with his own personal chef while on tour.

Dolly Parton

From: Pittman Center, Tennessee

Singer, Actress, Advocate

Notable Works: 9 to 5, Jolene, Islands in the Stream

It has been said that her family paid the doctor who delivered her with grain, because that was what they could afford at the time.

Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, was reportedly named after her.

In 2012 she said that she had modeled her look after the town tramp. “I had never seen anybody, you know, with the yellow hair all piled up and the red lipstick and the rouge and the high heeled shoes, and I thought, ‘This is what I want to look like.’”

She founded the charity Imagination Library. Which is a charity that provides free books to young children. She did this to honor her father, who never learned to read.

She said in an interview with NPR that she wrote the song Jolene about a bank teller who had a crush on her husband.

Miley Cyrus is her goddaughter.

Janet Jackson

From: Gary, Indiana

Singer, Dancer, Actress

Notable Works: Rhythm Nation, All for You, Scream

Fascinating Facts

She is the youngest member of the Jackson family of musicians. 

The video she and her brother Michael recorded, Scream, was not only the most expensive music video made at $7 million dollars. It required the creation of 7 different sound stages and had a space theme, you can view it on YouTube.

Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson - Scream (Official Video) - YouTube

After Madonna, Janet Jackson is the number 2 most successful artist on the chart for Billboard Dance/Club Play.

Ludwig van Beethoven

From: Germany

Classical Era Composer (Started Romantic Era)

Notable Works: 32 piano Sonatas, 9 symphonies, Moonlight Sonata and 5th Symphony 

Fun Facts:

He went completely deaf by the end of his career, but historians still do not know what caused him to lose his hearing. There have been many theories over the years from syphilis to lupus, but none have been definitive yet.

His changes to classical music led to the Romantic era.

He was well known for having a taste for women he could never marry. He often fell in love with women he had no hopes of marrying and thus he never wed.

His favorite food might surprise you! It was mac and cheese or Käsespätzle. You can find the recipe at the link below courtesy of austria.info I would love to hear if you try it and like it!

Recipe for Käsespätzle: Macaroni & Cheese

Michael Jackson

From: Gary, Indiana 

King of Pop, Dancer and Singer 

Notable Works: Thriller, Billie Jean, Bad, Beat It

Fascinating Facts

In 1995 Michael Jackson and his sister Janet Jackson produced the most expensive music video of all time, Scream, at a whopping $7 million dollars! It won, and still holds, the Guinness World Record for the most expensive music video ever made.

His music video for Thriller spawned a trend of music videos that told a story. It became an event even while it was being filmed. The Thriller video was over 13 minutes long and helped to seal MTV’s status as a cultural force.

His hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial. He suffered burns on his scalp. He was set to make $10 million from the Pepsi deal, prior to the burns. Pepsi settled out of court with Jackson, and he went on to donate the $1.5 million dollar payment to the Brotman Medical Center where he was transferred and had his burns were treated. His hair never properly grew back, and many people said that his addiction stemmed from the pain medicine he was given after suffering the burns.

Elvis Presley

From: Tupelo, Mississippi

Singer, Actor, King of Rock and Roll

Notable Works: Jailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Blue Suede Shoes

Fascinating Facts:

He never performed outside North America. He gave a handful of concerts in Canada, but outside of that, he never performed outside of the United States of America.

Elvis bought Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential yacht in 1964. He went on to donate the yacht to St. Jude Children’s hospital, which used it to raise funds for the hospital. This was not his only act of charity. In 1961 he gave a benefit concert that brought in over $50,000 that was donated toward the completion of the USS Arizona memorial in Hawaii, at Pearl Harbor.

His hair was brown, and he dyed it his signature black color.

Elvis’s only daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, went on to marry Nicholas Cage and a noteworthy king of music in his own right, Michael Jackson.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

From: Austria 

Classical Era Composer

Notable Works: The Marriage of Figaro Opera, The Magic Flute, Symphony Number 40

Fascinating Facts

He was the original party animal and rock star of classical music.

His musical style best represents the classical era as a whole.

He was only 5’4” tall.

A 1990s study was conducted that suggested listening to Mozart’s music would boost spatial reasoning. This study was then taken out of context and began the “Mozart for Babies” phenomenon. It became a CD and was marketed under the pretense that babies would become more intelligent later in life if they listening to CD as infants. This was inherently false, but the myth of The Mozart Effect persists today.

Billie Holiday

From: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Singer and Activist 

Notable Works: Strange Fruit, I’ve got My Love to Keep me Warm, God Bless the Child, Lady Sings the Blues

Fascinating Facts:

She was born Eleanora Fagan, but she later went by Billie Holiday, which was a name she created combining her father's last name, Halliday, and her favorite actresses first name, Billie Dove. This also led to Billie Holiday being nicknamed “Lady Day.”

Her song '“Strange Fruit” was named TIME Magazines song of the century in 1999. This was a song Billie sang over the course of her career that was written as a protest song about lynching’s. It was originally a poem by Abel Meeropol.

She said, “I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice.” She was known for putting power and emotion into her songs and many noted that you could REALLY see that in her performances.

She NEVER learned how to read music.

Frédéric Chopin

From: Poland
Romantic Era Composer
Notable Works: His Mazurkas and Polonaises, Piano Etudes, Preludes and Waltzs, The Minute Waltz, Revolutionary Etude
Fun Facts
Composed almost exclusively for solo piano.
Proud of his Polish heritage and wrote many Polish dances.
He was very shy and only played in the dark and his concerts were all very short. It is said that he was terrified of being buried alive and asked that his heart be removed from his body and transported back to Poland.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

From: Russia

Romantic Period Composer

Noteable Works: The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, 1812 Overature

Fun Facts

He went to law school as his original career path.

He was fluent in Russian, French and Italian.

Tchaikovsky appeared at Carnegie Hall's inaugural concert.

Many of his pieces did not gain popularity until after his death.