The People Who Paved the Way

Trailblazers

Pioneers, barrier-breakers, and history-makers who changed what's possible.

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Prince

Prince

Music

Prince Rogers Nelson was a once-in-a-generation force who played 27 instruments, wrote thousands of songs, and defied every category the music industry tried to place him in. From Purple Rain to Sign o’ the Times to the vault of unreleased recordings that may never be fully catalogued, Prince produced a body of work so vast […]
Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones

Music

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. did everything. Trumpeter, arranger, composer, producer, record executive, film scorer, television pioneer, magazine founder, humanitarian — he touched nearly every corner of American popular culture across seven decades and left each one better than he found it. He produced the three best-selling albums of all time: Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, […]
Ray Charles

Ray Charles

Music

Ray Charles Robinson — Ray Charles — invented soul music by fusing the sacred sounds of the Black church with the secular rhythms of blues and jazz, a combination so audacious that some called it blasphemous and others recognized it as genius. His 1954 hit “I Got a Woman” took a gospel melody and put […]
Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Music

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the godmother of rock and roll — a gospel singer and guitarist whose performances in the 1930s and 40s laid the groundwork for Chuck Berry, Elvis, and Little Richard. She was shredding on an electric guitar before the instrument was common in popular music. Her 1944 hit Strange Things Happening Every […]
Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder

Music

Stevie Wonder signed with Motown at 11 and created some of the most innovative, joyful, and socially conscious music of the twentieth century. Blind from shortly after birth, he mastered piano, harmonica, and drums before adolescence. The albums between 1972-1976 — Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life — […]
Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk

Music

Thelonious Sphere Monk played the piano like no one before or since — angular, dissonant, percussive, and profoundly beautiful. Along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he was one of the architects of bebop, but his compositions went further, creating a harmonic language so distinctive that his songs — “‘Round Midnight,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Blue […]
Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston

Music

Whitney Elizabeth Houston possessed the most extraordinary voice of her generation — a soprano instrument of such power, clarity, and emotional range that it redefined what popular music could sound like. Her rendition of “I Will Always Love You” remains one of the best-selling singles in history, and her self-titled debut album made her the […]
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