Before he was singing the praises of Georgia,singer and pianist Ray Charles was honing his craft in Tampa and other Florida towns.
And Southern Rock was born in the Sunshine State, thanks tothe Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and other bands that formed in Jacksonville.
More greats from Florida:Rock stars who live in Naples, Fort Myers, Cape Coral
Don't forget South Florida's influence either, fromthe fresh sound ofa Boca Raton songstress to the Miami sound in the 1980s including hip hop legend Luther Campbell, whose stand for free speechhelped all musicians forever thereafter.
Here's some of them who made their names in Florida andforever influenced the musical universe.
Ray Charles
Ray Charles is the most talented musician the Sunshine State has ever produced, and probably ever will produce.
Of course, lots of folks associate Charles with Georgia because he was born there, in Albany, and recorded the definitive version of the Hoagy Carmichael standard “Georgia on My Mind.” But Charles’ mother came from Greenville in Florida’s Madison County, and that's where she raised her son after giving birth to him on Sept. 30, 1930.
Blind by the age of 7, Charles attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine in the late ’30s and ’40s and then lived in Tampa while working as the piano player in a country and western band called the Florida Playboys. In fact, it was during his time playing in Tampa in 1948 that Charles made his historic first recordings including the self-penned beauty “St. Pete Blues,” which can be heard on streaming services such as Spotify.
A gifted singer, pianist, composer and arranger, Charles rose to prominence in the 1950s with his pioneering blend of blues, jazz, gospel and R&B. In the early '60s, he reached an even larger audience by revisiting the style of music he played with the Florida Playboys.
Released in 1962, “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” went gold with sales of more than 500,000 in its first three months and Charles became a superstar. “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2” came out six months after the first volume and sold just as well.
Charles would go on to have one of the most brilliantly diverse recording careers of the 20th century, reaching “the top of Billboard’s pop, country, R&B and jazz charts,” the publication reported. “And he also had an unlikely No. 1 on the Hot Dance Club Songs tally with 1990s' ‘I’ll Be Good to You,’ a collaboration with Quincy Jones and Chaka Khan.”
Yeah, it’s sure hard to top a career like that.
—Wade Tatangelo, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
More Ray Charles:Five things every Floridian should eat, drink, read, watch and listen to at least once
Birthplace of Southern rock
Sure, the Allman Brothers Band is often associated with Macon, Georgia,(where they lived during their early years) and Daytona Beach (where the titular brothers were raised), but there’s a house on Riverside Avenue in Jacksonville that has a historicplaque out front proving that it’s where the band actually came together.
Legend has it that guitarist Duane Allman formed the band in the living room of the Gray House, then told everyone involved that they’d have to fighthim if they wanted out. The band played its first shows in a nearby park and eventually moved to Macon, home of its record label, but it was hardly the last Southern rock outfit to come out of Jacksonville.
Just around the corner from the Allmans house is Lee High School, wherehardnosed teacher Leonard Skinner hassled some of his students about their long hair so much that they named their band after him. Lynyrd Skynyrd also went on to a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career, and the band (with just one member who played on the first couple of albums) continues to tour the country.
Others Jacksonville acts followed the model of a high-flying band with aggressive guitars up front. The bands .38 Special, Molly Hatchet and Blackfoot all followed the formula and found success.
— Tom Szaroleta, Florida Times-Union
Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande’s “Positions” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 songs chart late last year. But more than just a No. 1 hit, Grande earned her fifth Hot 100 hit, extending “her record for the most No. 1 debuts on the Hot 100, as all five of her No. 1s have blasted in at the summit,” the publication reported.
It appears the 27-year-old co-wrote and recorded “Positions” at her home in Los Angeles, but she grew up in Boca Raton, attending the private North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek. “She sang along with the Florida Sunshine Pops and performed with the Fort Lauderdale Children’s Theater before work in a Broadway play took her away from Boca Raton at age 13,” reads a 2012 article by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Soon after, she was in Hollywood.”
“Positions” finds Grande all grown up, in love, singing to the boy whose mama she’s willing to meet. “Switchin’ the positions for you, cookin’ in the kitchen and I’m in the bedroom,” goes the chorus.
—Wade Tatangelo, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
More on Ariana Grande:Ticket Editor: Ariana Grande joins impressive list of Floridians with historic hits
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers formed in Gainesville in the mid-’70s out of the ashes of an earlier group,Mudcrutch.The band went on to record13 studio albums (plus several more solo records from Tom Petty), made some of the most iconic videos of the MTV era and became one of America’s most beloved rock bands.
Petty(who took guitar lessons in Gainesville as a teen from future Eagles guitarist Don Felder)and keyboardistBenmontTench are Gainesville natives and the rest of the band was kicking around North Florida when the band was formed.
Although they remained a huge concert draw up until Petty’s death in 2017, they arguably hit their peak with a2006hometown showat the O’Connell Center in Gainesville. The band was given the key to the city and the mayor declared it Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Day before the band took the stage for a showthat was recorded for a video, “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Live inGatorville.”
Their legacy can still be seen in Gainesville on Saturdays in the fall when90,000 University of Florida fans sing along to“I Won’tBack Down”at the end of the third quarter at Gator football games.
— Tom Szaroleta, Florida Times-Union
Allman Brothers Band
A bunch of longhaired Florida boys and a Black man from Mississippi, The Allman Brothers Band formed in Jacksonville on March 26, 1969, on their way to launching the Southern rock movement and playing an integral role in the development of the jam band scene.
Duane and sibling Gregg Allman grew up in Daytona while Dickey Betts’ family has ties to Sarasota-Bradenton dating back to about the time of the Civil War. After years of playing in various bands in many of the same Florida clubs, the Allman Brothers united in Jacksonville with guitarists Duane Allman and Dickey Betts jamming alongside bassist Berry Oakley and drummers Jai Johanny Johanson (later known as Jaimoe) and Butch Trucks(the uncle of another Florida music legend, guitar great Derek Trucks, who formed the Jacksonville-based Tedeschi Trucks Band with his wife, Susan Tedeschi).
The Allman Brothers’ amalgam of rock, blues, jazz and country is best heard on the band's landmark 1971 live album ”At Fillmore East," which includes Betts’ instrumental masterpiece “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and Gregg Allman’s legendary epic “Whipping Post.”
After the tragic deaths of Duane Allman and then bassist Berry Oakley, Betts became the de facto leader of the band, writing and singing the chart-topping single "Ramblin' Man" from their platinum-selling 1973 album "Brothers and Sisters." Meanwhile, Gregg Allman found stardom as a solo act later that same year with a new, hit rendition of his song “Midnight Rider” from the outstanding album “Laid Back.” Betts would follow with his equally impressive solo album “Highway Call” in ‘74.
The Allman Brothers Band reformed in ’78 and then broke up again in ’82. After spending the better part of the 1980s living in the Sarasota area while relegated to playing clubs and bars with their respective solo groups, Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts finally resurrected the Allman Brothers Band.
The bestselling 1989 “Dreams” box set and subsequent albums of new material starting with “Seven Turns” brought the Allman Brothers back into the national spotlight. By the early 1990s, they were headlining 10,000- and 20,000-capacity venues across the country. Older songs played regularly on classic rock radio while new singles including the “Seven Turns” title track and then “No One to Run With” were heard on mainstream rock stations, with their music videos appearing on MTV. In ’95, the Allman Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Allman Brothers Band split with Dickey Betts in 2000 but continued performing his songs in concert right up until their final show on Oct. 28, 2014. Meanwhile, Betts continued performing with his solo bands until retiring a few years ago. Butch Trucks died in January of 2017 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and then Gregg Allman died in May of the same year after a long battle with liver cancer the singer kept private. Jaimoe and Betts are the sole surviving members of the original Allman Brothers Band lineup.
“We had some real tragedies losing Duane and losing Berry Oakley and we had to keep the band together, had to keep it effective, and viable through all that period,” Betts told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2019from his home in Sarasota County.
“We took off the (1980s) and Gregg and I put our little bands together and played clubs. After we got back together a lot of writers from Rolling Stone and stuff were calling us dinosaurs and making fun of bands like us and wondering if we could still play and we were determined. It gave us more drive and we showed we weren’t done yet. We made some of our best records and I think that helped put us in the Hall of Fame.”
—Wade Tatangelo, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Dickey Betts on "Almost Famous":Dickey Betts on the real Allman Brothers Band stories behind the film ‘Almost Famous’
Betts on his best Allman Brothers songs:Dickey Betts on ‘Ramblin Man’ and more of his greatest Allman Brothers Band songs
Gloria Estefan
The South Florida music scene was unique and vibrantfor years, from the soul and rhythm and blues of Sam & Dave ("Soul Man") in the 1960s to the 1970sdisco and funkof KCand the Sunshine Band ("Get Down Tonight")
But it went even more mainstream in a huge way in the 1980s.
During that decade, Miami was the place to be — at least where many people wanted to visit. "Miami Vice" was a hit cop show on NBC. The 1983 crime drama"Scarface" was set in Miami, NFL quarterback Dan Marino was slinging touchdowns for the Dolphins and the Miami Hurricanes hit the college football big time with swagger and championships.
At thesame time, a Cuban-born singer named Gloria Estefan and her bandthe Miami Sound Machine —formed in 1975 by husband Emilio Estefan Jr. — emerged on the American music scene.
The band's first big hit in 1985, "Conga," achieved international success with seemingly endless airplay on radio stations on VH-1 playing the video regularly.
The pulsating salsa sound of "Conga" caught on, with other hits to follow: "Bad Boy," "Words Get in the Way,""Rhythm Is Gonna Get You" and the 1988 ballad, "Anything For You," the first of the band's three No. 1 songs.
Despite a 1990 bus crash that left her injured, she continued touring in that decade to spread the "Miami sound" that inspired numerous artists.
Estefan in recent years received honors for her decades of contributions. President Obama in2015 awarded the Estefans thePresidential Medal of Freedom.A few years later, Gloria Estefan received theKennedy Center Honorsfor her lifetimecontribution to American culture.
— Dave Osborn, Naples Daily News
2 Live Crew
Hip hop music began in New York City and in short amount of timespread across the coast to Los Angeles.
But it wasn't until it reached South Florida that it truly became bigger than music.
Luther Campbell was a Miami-born rapper and leader of the hip hop group 2 Live Crew. Many parents and local governments already were concerned about sexually explicit lyrics in rap songs but that shifted into overdrive when 2 Live Crew dropped its album, "As Nasty as They Wanna Be," in 1989.
It was the group's most successful album but also its most controversial. The U.S. DistrictCourt for the Southern District of Florida in 1990 ruled that the album was legally obscene —the first time that ever happened.
Shortly thereafter, Campbell and two other 2 Live Crew members were arrested after they performed a few of the controversial songs at a Broward County club. A six-member Broward jury in October 1990 found the band's lyrics were not obscene and acquitted Campbell and others.
A federal Appeals Court in 1992 overturned the lower court's decision that their music was obscene. The group faced another legal battle when it was sued for its version of the 1964 Roy Orbison classic "Oh Pretty Woman." The U.S. Supreme Court in 1994 unanimously ruled in favor of the rap group, saying it did not infringe oncopyrightbecause the 2 Live Crew song was parody.
The legal battles wereawin for free speech and the First Amendment.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent scholar and Harvard professor of African-American history who taught at Duke three decades ago, testified on behalf of 2 Live Crew at its 1990 trial.
Gates said the rap group did not call for violence in its lyrics.
"What you hear is great humor, great joy and great boisterousness," told jurors at the trial. "It's a joke. It's a parody, and parody is one of the most venerated forms of art.''
Campbell, now 60, addressed that eraon the Netflix Original series "Hip-Hop Evolution."
"The fight eventually ended up becoming a fight for hip hop," he said on the streaming show.
"It became a free speech issue for me. You know, does the First Amendment apply to African-Americans? So I've got to fight this."
— Dave Osborn, Naples Daily News
Gram Parsons
Born in Winter Haven to a wealthy citrus family, Gram Parsons attended the private Bolles School in Jacksonville and then Harvard University before dropping out to pursue a career in music after hearing Merle Haggard. Parsons transformed himself from a folkie to a pioneer of the country-rock movement of the late 1960s and ‘70s, which would evolve into alt-country in the 1990s.
This pursuit began with his International Submarine Band, which released the album “Safe at Home” in 1968. It features a fascinating mix of Parsons originals such as “Luxury Liner” (famously covered by Emmylou Harris in 1976) and covers of songs by country stars such as Haggard and Johnny Cash. “Safe at Home,” though, failed to find much of an audience. It did, however, get Parsons heard by some very important people, namely Roger McGuinn.
The Byrds were among the most influential American bands of the mid-1960s with McGuinn piloting the group through several lineups and five albums that joined heavenly harmonies with jangling guitars. The Byrds spearheaded folk-rock (with Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” before Dylan himself went electric) and then psychedelic-rock (check out the McGuinn/Gene Clark/David Crosby original “Eight Miles High”), while also flirting with country-rock, most notably early on with a cover of “A Satisfied Mind,” which Porter Wagoner took to the top of the country charts back in 1955.
The Byrds’ “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” though, marks the first time a rock band had gone full country thanks, in large part, to the addition of the then largely unknown singer-songwriter Parsons. “Gram has added a whole hunk of country,” McGuinn told Rolling Stone magazine’s Jerry Hopkins. “Gram’s bag is country and we’re going to let him do his thing.”
Released Aug. 30, 1968, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” contains Parsons’ greatest song, “Hickory Wind,” which opens side two of the album. Parsons coauthored the song with his former International Submarine Band member Bob Buchanan and sings every line as if he were utterly homesick, perhaps for a home that no longer even exists. He’s trying to make sense of a life gone wrong — a life only complicated, not helped, by wealth and success — his sweet, plaintive vocal augmented by his own piano playing as well as McGuinn’s banjo, Lloyd Green’s pedal steel and John Hartford’s fiddle.
Parsons also wrote the next number, “One Hundred Years From Now,” but McGuinn and Hillman share the vocals. (The 1997 CD reissue of this album includes bonus tracks with Parsons on lead vocals for “The Christian Life,” “You’re Still On My Mind,” and “One Hundred Years From Now.”) Parsons also sings lead vocals on a moving cover of Haggard’s “Life in Prison,” a song in which an inmate who killed his darling in a fit of rage begs to die rather than live behind bars with her memory.
Along with The Band’s 1968 album “Music From Big Pink,” Parsons’ and Chris Hillman’s 1969 Flying Burrito Brothers album “The Gilded Palace of Sin” and Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline,” also released in ’69, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” laid the foundation for country-rock, a genre that would inundate the airwaves in the 1970s with hit recordings by such acts as Harris, The Eagles, and Linda Ronstadt. “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” though, perhaps more than any other album, would go on to influence the alt-country movement that became prominent in the early 1990s and now has become largely known as Americana.
Lucinda Williams, one of the genre’s greatest stars, performed “Hickory Wind” during a 2015 tribute concert for Harris, who recorded Parsons’ signature song on her 1979 album “Blue Kentucky Girl.” “This is always one of my favorite songs,” Williams said before delivering a poignant performance that Parsons, who died of an overdose at age 26 in 1973, would have surely appreciated.
— Wade Tatangelo, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Boy bands:N’Sync, Backstreet Boys and the Mickey Mouse Club gang
Orlando has spawned its share of rockers (Matchbox Twenty, Creed, Trivium) but its real claim to musical famemay be the smooth pop that dominated the 1990s.
For the most part, the members ofN’Syncand the Backstreet Boys weren’t from Orlando, but that’s wherepopimpresarioLou Pearlman put the groups together after national talent searches.Pearlman subsequently got into some legal problems and the bands cut ties with him, but bothwent on to massive success and created about a million copycat acts.
Orlando was also home to another pop hit-making machine in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.
“The All-New Mickey Mouse Club,”which filmed atDisney’s Hollywood Studios, launched the careers of Christina Aguilera, Britney Spearsand JCChasezand Justin Timberlake, who later joinedN’Sync.
— Tom Szaroleta, Florida Times-Union
Jake Owen
Country music singer Jake Owen was better known as “Josh” growing up in his hometown of Vero Beach, and he's perhapsthe best and most successful country singer fromFlorida.
He was born in Winter Haven with fraternal twin, Jarrod, and moved to the Treasure Coast town at an early age, graduated from Vero Beach High School and attended Florida State University.
He planned to go pro at golf, but a wakeboarding injury set him on a different path. He picked up a guitar and started playing at bars across Florida, including Riverside Café in Vero Beach and Potbelly’s in Tallahassee.
He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, changed his name when he signed with his first record label and released several hit songs, including “Barefoot Blue Jean Night,” “Alone with You,” “The One That Got Away,” “Anywhere with You,” “Beachin’” and “Homemade.”
Videosof hissongs have received millions of views on YouTube.
Owen's laid back soundwas influenced in part by Jimmy Buffett, born in Mississippi but associated with Florida because he's lived in the Sunshine State for years and his "Margaritaville" brand.
Hometown boy:Jake Owen looks forward to bringing country music friends to his Vero Beach home | Laurie's Stories
In 2010, Owencreated the nonprofit Jake Owen Foundation to offer financial support on a national level to children being treated for cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases through St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, as well as provide assistance to youth organizations and charities in Indian River County.
He raises money for the foundation through an annual benefit concert, a songwriters’ showcase and a celebrity golf tournament in Vero Beach. A Little League baseball field in Vero Beach, where he played as a kid, was named after him.
– Laurie K. Blandford, TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers
