30 Amazing Vintage Album Covers That Feature Women With Their Very Big Hair

The bigger the hair, the closer to God.

Since the late 1950s, the styles worn by the rock and roll singers and popular bands of the era were embraced by lovers of the music. From this, teenagers developed their own street fashion.

This influence continued right through the 1960s, from the über-fashionable mods through to the psychedelic sounds of the later 1960s. There was a wide range of musical styles throughout the decade and this had a big impact on fashion and women’s 1960s hairstyles.

The 1960s saw the onset of a counterculture revolution, with accepted social norms in every realm from music to film. Slowly, the bouffants, pompadours and poodle cuts that reigned over the previous decade were replaced by more exaggerated, edgier hairstyles.

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Amazing Photos of 1970s Philadelphia Folk Festival

The Philadelphia Folk Festival is a folk music festival held annually at Old Pool Farm in Upper Salford, Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Philadelphia. The four-day festival, which is produced and run almost entirely by volunteers and sponsored by the non-profit Philadelphia Folksong Society, is claimed to be the oldest continually-run outdoor music festival in North America.

The event hosts contemporary and traditional artists in genres under the umbrella of Folk, including World/Fusion, Celtic, Singer/Songwriter, Folk Rock, Country, Klezmer, and Dance.

Gene Shay and folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein founded the festival, along with George Britton, Bob Seigel, David Baskin, Esther Halpern, and others. Shay has acted as Master of Ceremonies since its inception and Goldstein served as Program Director for the first 15 years.

Originally held on Wilson Farm in Paoli, Pennsylvania, each year the event hosts over 35,000 visitors and nearly 7,000 campers at the Old Pool Farm. The event presents over 75 hours of music with local, regional, and national talent on 8 stages.

These amazing photos from Nancy White that show people at the Philadelphia Folk Festival around 1973-74.

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19th Century Rock Stars: Early Photos of the Hutchinson Family Singers From the 1840s

The Hutchinson Family Singers took 19th-century America by storm. Their fame rivaled and even outshone the stars of today. Through their performances in front of interracial audiences, they also changed hearts and minds about some of the big political issues of the day, like slavery and womens’ rights. They are considered by many to be the first uniquely American popular music performers.

The group formed in the wake of a string of successful tours by Austrian singing groups such as the Tyrolese Minstrels and when American newspapers were demanding the cultivation of native talent. John Hutchinson orchestrated the group’s formation with his brothers Asa, Jesse, and Judson Hutchinson in 1840; the eleven sons and two daughters gave their first performance on November 6 of that same year. The popularization of group singing in America arguably began with them. Jesse Hutchinson quit the main group to write songs and manage their affairs; he was replaced by sister Abby Hutchinson.

The Hutchinsons were a hit with both audiences and critics, and they toured the United States. They popularized four-part close harmony. The group’s material included controversial material promoting abolitionism, workers’ rights, temperance, and women's rights, all stances popularized by the Second Great Awakening.

After the Hutchinson Family Singers’ first New York City concert on May 13, 1843, the New York Tribune wrote: “The Hutchinson family gave a concert on Saturday evening and acquitted themselves quite well. They . . . know how to make music, decidedly, though some of their songs are not well chosen either to gratify the audience or exhibit their peculiar powers. We wish they would take care to favor the unscientific public with the words of their songs distinctly. Russell does so, and it is to thousands one of the best points of his singing.”

20 Black and White Portraits of a Young Charlie Watts in the 1960s and 1970s

Charles Robert Watts, the Rolling Stones’ drummer and the band’s irreplaceable heartbeat, has died on August 24, 2021. He was 80. No cause of death was given.

“It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts,” a statement from his London publicist, Bernard Doherty, said. “He passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family. Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also, as a member of the Rolling Stones, one of the greatest drummers of his generation.”

Watts had announced he would not tour with the Stones in 2021 because of an undefined health issue.

Originally trained as a graphic artist, he started playing drums in London’s rhythm and blues clubs, where he met Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards. In January 1963, he joined their fledgling group, the Rolling Stones, as drummer, while doubling as designer of their record sleeves and tour stages. Watts, along with Jagger and Richards, were the only band members to have been featured on all of their studio albums. He cited jazz as a major influence on his drumming style. He toured with his own group, the Charlie Watts Quintet, and appeared in London at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club with the Charlie Watts Tentet.

In 2006, Watts was elected into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame; in the same year, Vanity Fair elected him into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was ranked 12th on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time” list.

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22 Photos Show Styles of the Mary Jane Girls in the 1980s

The Mary Jane Girls were an American R&B, soul and funk group that gained popularity in the 1980s. They were protégées of singer Rick James. They are known for their songs “In My House”, “All Night Long”, “Candy Man”, and their cover version of “Walk Like a Man”.

Joanne “Jojo” McDuffie was the lead singer, the others filling out the group’s style and appearance. On the studio recordings, McDuffie was backed by session vocalists rather than the other Mary Jane Girls. The Mary Jane Girls released two albums in the 1980s and recorded a third which was shelved for decades but finally released in 2014 as part of a larger retrospective of Rick James’ work.

The Mary Jane Girls were inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2019. Take a look at these photos to see what styles of the Mary Jane Girls looked like in the 1980s.

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20 Amazing Photographs of Madonna on Stage in the 1980s

With songs like “Papa Don’t Preach”, “Like a Virgin” and “Into the Groove”, Madonna is an undeniable music icon. Rising up from New York’s 1980s underground scene, she made her name with her spirit of rebellion and bold costumes, constantly pushing the limits of pop through the continual reinvention of her musical persona. Here, 20 amazing photographs that show some of her best on-stage looks in the 1980s.

Her 1985 debut concert tour, The Virgin Tour, was held in North America only and went on to collect more than US $5 million. In 1987 she performed on the worldwide Who’s That Girl World Tour, which visited Europe, North America and Japan, and earned $25 million. One of the tour’s shows in Paris in front of 130,000 fans was the largest paying concert audience by a female artist at the time and remains the largest crowd of any concert in French history.

In 1990, she embarked on the Blond Ambition World Tour, which was dubbed as the “Greatest Concert of the 1990s” by Rolling Stone. BBC credited the tour with “invent[ing] the modern, multi-media pop spectacle.”

In 1993, Madonna visited Israel and Turkey for the first time, followed by Latin America and Australia, with The Girlie Show World Tour. A review in Time by Sam Buckley said: “Madonna, once the Harlow harlot and now a perky harlequin, is the greatest show-off on earth.”

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27 Strange and Creepy Album Covers of Ventriloquists Posing With Their Dummies

Why did they use to make so many albums of ventriloquists lovingly singing with their dummies? Below is an unsettling collection of 27 ventriloquist album covers that will terrify you!

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Some Polaroids From the Cover Shoot for Kate Bush’s 1985 Album ‘Hounds of Love’

Hounds of Love is the fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician Kate Bush, released by EMI Records on September 15, 1985. It was a commercial success and marked a return to the public eye for Bush after the relatively poor sales of her previous album, 1982’s The Dreaming.

The cover art for the album Hounds of Love by Kate Bush.

The album’s lead single, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)”, became one of Bush’s biggest hits. The album’s first side produced three further successful singles, “Cloudbusting”, “Hounds of Love”, and “The Big Sky”. The second side, subtitled The Ninth Wave, forms a conceptual suite about a woman drifting alone in the sea at night.

Hounds of Love received critical acclaim both on its release and in retrospective reviews. It is considered by many fans and music critics to be Bush’s best album, and has been regularly voted one of the greatest albums of all time. It was Bush’s second album to top the UK Albums Chart and her best-selling studio album, having been certified double platinum for 600,000 sales in the UK,and by 1998 it had sold 1.1 million copies worldwide.

In the US, it reached the top 40 on the Billboard 200. The album was nominated at the 1986 Brit Awards for Best British Album, at which Bush was also nominated for Best British Female and Best British Single (for “Running Up That Hill”).

Here’s another behind the scenes photographs of Kate Bush with her dogs Bonnie and Clyde in outtakes from the Hounds of Love cover shoot, 1985. (© John Carder Bush)

Fascinating Vintage Ads of Old-School Headphones

Headphones grew out of the need to free up a person's hands when operating a telephone. By the 1890s the first device that is unmistakably a headphone was made by a British company called Electrophone. It was not until 1910 that Nathaniel Baldwin of Utah invented a prototype telephone headset due to his inability to hear sermons during Sunday service. His innovations were the basis of “sound-powered” telephones or phones that required no electricity, which were used during World War II.

Previously, headphones were used only by the US navy, telephone and radio operators, and individuals in similar industries. Using them for entertainment purpose was not a possibility until 1958, when John C. Koss, an audiophile and jazz musician from Milwaukee, produced the first stereo headphones.

Take a look through these 24 fascinating vintage ads of old-school headphones from the 1950s to 1980s:

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