Mitch Miller
Mitchell William Miller was born on July 4, 1911, in Rochester, New York, in a modest home on Sheridan Street near the Bausch & Lomb factory. The son of a Russian immigrant wrought iron worker and a former seamstress, Miller would rise from Rochester’s working-class neighborhoods to become one of the most powerful figures in […]
Brian McKnight
Brian McKnight was born on June 5, 1969, in Buffalo, New York, into a family where music was inescapable. His grandfather’s church choir provided his first vocal training, and by his teenage years McKnight had taught himself to play multiple instruments, compose arrangements, and lead a band through local performances. By 18, he had secured […]
Post Malone
Austin Richard Post was born on July 4, 1995, in Syracuse, New York — a detail that tends to surprise fans who associate him with Texas or Los Angeles. Post Malone, as the world knows him, spent his first nine years in Central New York before his family relocated to Grapevine, Texas, where his father […]
Lana Del Rey
Before she was the defining voice of cinematic pop melancholy, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was a kid growing up in the Adirondacks. Born June 21, 1985, Lana Del Rey — as the world would come to know her — spent her formative years in Lake Placid, the tiny Olympic village nestled in the mountains of northern […]
Orleans
Orleans is the band that gave America “Still the One” and “Dance with Me” — two of the most enduring soft-rock anthems of the 1970s — and their story begins in the creative community of Woodstock, New York. Formed in February 1972 by guitarist-songwriter John Hall, keyboardist-vocalist Larry Hoppen, and drummer Wells Kelly, with bassist […]
Jimmy Van Heusen
Jimmy Van Heusen wrote 76 songs for Frank Sinatra, won four Academy Awards, and shaped the sound of American popular music for three decades — all starting from a radio station in Syracuse, New York. Born Edward Chester Babcock on January 26, 1913, in Syracuse, Van Heusen began writing songs in high school and had […]
Chuck Mangione
Chuck Mangione made the flugelhorn famous, and he did it from Rochester, New York. Born on November 29, 1940, to Italian-American parents who owned Mangione Grocery, he grew up in a household where jazz was the family language. His father’s enthusiasm for the music meant that the Mangione home was a gathering place for musicians, […]
Mick Guzauski
If you have heard a number-one hit single in the past four decades, there is a reasonable chance Mick Guzauski mixed it. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, Guzauski has mixed over 27 number-one singles, won nine Grammy Awards, and worked with a client list that spans the entire spectrum of popular music — […]
Goo Goo Dolls
The Goo Goo Dolls formed in 1986 in Buffalo, New York, when guitarist-vocalist Johnny Rzeznik, bassist-vocalist Robby Takac, and drummer George Tutuska started playing together as a cover band originally called the Sex Maggots. The name change to Goo Goo Dolls — pulled from an ad in True Detective magazine — was the first of […]
Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren is one of the most creatively restless figures in the history of popular music — a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and technological pioneer whose work from the Woodstock and Bearsville studios of Upstate New York shaped the sound of the 1970s and beyond. Born June 22, 1948, in Philadelphia, Rundgren arrived in Woodstock […]