Singers with Stage Names

Sadly, Nick Mitchell has been voted off American Idol. In addition to sweatbands and shiny shirts, Mitchell embraced a fundamental attribute of any brilliant entertainer: a stage name. Never mind the imbecilic judges, who never said it correctly. “Normund Gentle” could have been an Idol contestant for the record books. This week’s Good Music Corner bids Normund ado with a list of his fellow fabulous pseudonyms.

Unless your name is T.C. Love or Andrea Marvel, chances are the name that adorns your birth certificate won’t sell many albums. The music industry is inundated with stage names. Musicians take up aliases for many reasons: to stand out from the crowd, transition between genres or cultivate an image.

Read the bios below, and (without cheating!) see if you can guess each artist’s more well-known moniker.

Eleanora Fagan Gough

The details of Gough’s tumultuous life are a mystery, pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. She was born to a teenage mother in a poor Baltimore community, where she was traumatized by repeated incidents of rape. By her late teens, she was working as a prostitute in New York City and was arrested for solicitation.

Gough started singing for tips at Harlem jazz clubs to pay the bills and stem off eviction. After being discovered at one such club by a talent scout, she embarked on a recording career that would last three decades. However, drug abuse and financial trouble marred the latter years of her life; she died with only $0.70 in her bank account and the authorities beating down the door of her hospital room.

Gough possessed a gift for improvisation and emotional sustenance. Her distinctive voice, both fragile and profound, is instantly recognizable, and she is considered one of the modern era’s greatest female singers.

James Newell Österberg, Jr.

Born in a Michigan trailer park, James Newell Österberg, Jr. dropped out of college to move to Chicago, where he was a drummer in several local blues bands.  His big break came when he signed to Elektra Records as the lead vocalist of his now famous rock band, but the group disbanded multiple times due to Österberg’s addiction to heroin.

In an effort to sober up, Österberg checked into a mental institution. There he was visited by his friend and collaborator, David Robert Jones (it is rumored Jones smuggled cocaine into the facility). After Österberg’s release, the pair toured and recorded together.

Österberg’s on-stage antics are the stuff of legend: he has rolled in broken glass, exposed himself on stage and is credited with inventing the stage dive. His influence is wide-reaching, having inspired graphic novel characters, films, songs, poems, books, legions of copy cats and entire genres of music. Despite this, Österberg has never recorded a top ten album or best selling single.

Charlyn Marie Marshall 

Charlyn Marie Marshall’s parents divorced when she was a child, and she has said the resulting travel—constantly moving to homes throughout the South—prepared her for a life on the road.

She performed in Atlanta before moving to New York City, where she was inducted into the free-jazz, experimental music scene. She is famous for recording albums that lack conventional song structure, with minimalist vocals and sparse guitar or piano accompaniment.

Marshall’s professional career has been marred by alcoholism, bouts of eccentricity and estrangement. She disappeared from the music industry, first to take a job as a babysitter in Oregon, then to live on a farm in South Carolina. Her live shows have been called erratic, but she is praised for her confessional lyricism, her widely well-regarded cover songs and her distinctive artistic style.

Christopher George Latore Wallace

Christopher George Latore Wallace was born in Brooklyn to Jamaican immigrants and became a crack dealer by age 12. He dropped out of high school and embarked on a life of crime; he was arrested several times and spent many months in jail.

Wallace made a demo tape after his release from prison. From there he vaulted into popularity and mainstream success. However, his celebrity status was truncated by arrests, extra marital affairs and violent acts against autograph seekers.

Wallace is considered one of the greatest rap artists of all time, with a voice that has been described as a “thick, jaunty grumble.”  He was one of the ringleaders of the infamous rap wars between East Coast and West Coast artists, resulting in his murder at the age of 24.

 The Good Music Corner began after VFTW’s infallible Dave noticed an inundation of pretentious music geeks visiting his site. This blog, in addition to countering the poor quality music marketed on American Idol, serves as a soapbox for self-proclaimed musicologists.

If you have a submission for the Suggestion Box, would like to talk music, or feel a need to complain about the likeness of the caricatured Idols adorning the banner of this site, you may email Laura at CaricaturesByLaura at Yahoo.com.

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