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Judy Collins

Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk music, country, show tunes, pop music, rock and roll and standards), for her social activism, and for the clarity of her voice. Her discography consists of 36 studio albums, nine live albums, numerous compilation albums, four holiday albums, and 21 singles.

Collins' debut studio album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, was released in 1961 and consisted of traditional folk songs. She had her first charting single with "Hard Lovin' Loser" (No. 97) from her fifth studio album In My Life (1966), but it was the lead single from her sixth studio album Wildflowers (1967), "Both Sides, Now" – written by Joni Mitchell – that gave her international prominence. The single reached No. 8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and won Collins her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance. She enjoyed further success with her recordings of "Someday Soon", "Chelsea Morning" (also written by Mitchell), "Amazing Grace", "Turn! Turn! Turn!", and "Cook with Honey".

Collins experienced the biggest success of her career with her recording of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns" from her tenth studio album Judith (1975). The single peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in 1975 and then again in 1977 at No. 19, spending 27 non-consecutive weeks on the chart and earning her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, as well as a Grammy Award for Sondheim for Song of the Year. Judith also became her best-selling studio album; it was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1975 for sales of over 500,000 copies and Platinum in 1996 for sales of over 1,000,000 copies.

In 2017, Collins's rendition of the song "Amazing Grace" was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". That same year, she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Folk Album for Silver Skies Blue with Ari Hest. In 2019 at the age of 80, she scored her first No. 1 album on an American Billboard Chart with Winter Stories, a duet album with Norwegian singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jonas Fjeld featuring Chatham County Line. In 2022, she released her first studio album of all original material, titled Spellbound, and it earned her another Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album.

Early life
Collins was born the eldest of five siblings in Seattle where she lived for the first ten years of her life. Her father, Chuck Collins (a blind singer, pianist, and radio show host) took a job in Denver in 1949 and the family moved there. Her grandfather on her father's side was Irish.

Judy Collins contracted polio at the age of 11 and spent two months in isolation in a hospital. She grew up listening to the traditional Irish music her father sang. She did not know what folk music was when she was young. She said, "I just thought it was probably Rodgers and Hart. Those were the songs he (her father) sang on the radio. I didn't understand until I discovered The Gypsy Rover and Barbara Allen when I was 15. I didn't realize I had been singing Danny Boy all of that time... Danny Boy was a folk song.

Beginnings
Collins studied classical piano with Antonia Brico, making her public debut at age 13 performing Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos. She also played Chopin, Debussy, and Rachmaninoff as a child. Brico took a dim view of her developing interest in folk music, which led her to the difficult decision to discontinue her piano lessons. Years later, after she became known internationally, she invited Brico to one of her concerts in Denver. When they met after the performance, Brico took both of Collins' hands into hers, looked wistfully at her fingers and said, "Little Judy—you really could have gone places." Still later, she discovered that Brico herself had made a living when she was younger playing jazz and ragtime piano (Singing Lessons, pp. 71–72). In her early life, she met many professional musicians through her father.

It was the music of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and the traditional songs of the folk revival of the early 1960s, however, that kindled Collins' interest and awoke in her a love for lyrics. Three years after her debut as a piano prodigy, she was playing guitar. Her first public appearances as a folk artist after her graduation from Denver's East High School were at Michael's Pub in Boulder, Colorado and the folk club Exodus in Denver. Her music became popular at the University of Connecticut, where her husband taught. She performed at parties and for the campus radio station along with David Grisman and Tom Azarian.

1960s
Collins eventually made her way to Greenwich Village, New York City where she played in clubs like Gerde's Folk City until she signed with Elektra Records, a label she was associated with for 35 years. In 1961, she released her debut studio album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at age 22.

At first, Collins sang traditional folk songs or songs written by others–in particular the protest songwriters of the time, such as Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan. She recorded her own versions of important songs from the period, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!". She was also instrumental in bringing little-known musicians to a wider public. For example, she recorded songs by Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who became a close friend over the years. She also recorded songs by singer-songwriters such as Eric Andersen, Fred Neil, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Robin Williamson, and Richard Fariña long before they gained national acclaim.

Collins' first few studio albums consisted of straightforward guitar-based folk songs, but with her fifth studio album In My Life (1966), she began branching out to include works from such diverse sources as the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, and Kurt Weill. Mark Abramson produced and Joshua Rifkin arranged the album, adding lush orchestration to many of the numbers. The album was a major departure for a folk artist and set the course for Collins' subsequent work over the next decade.

With her sixth studio album Wildflowers (1967), also produced by Abramson and arranged by Rifkin, Collins began to record her own compositions, beginning with "Since You Asked". The album also provided her with a major hit and a Grammy Award in Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now", which in December 1968 reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, later (February 1970) reaching No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart.

Collins' seventh studio album Who Knows Where the Time Goes (1968) was produced by David Anderle, and featured back-up guitar by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash), with whom she was romantically involved at the time. (She was the inspiration for Stills's CSN classic "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes".) Time Goes had a mellow country sound and included Ian Tyson's "Someday Soon" and the title track, written by the UK singer-songwriter Sandy Denny. The album also featured Collins' composition "My Father" and one of the first covers of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire".

Two of Collins' songs ("Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" composed by Sandy Denny and "Albatross") were featured in the 1968 film The Subject Was Roses.

1970s
By the 1970s, Collins had a solid reputation as an art song singer and folksinger and had begun to stand out for her own compositions. She was also known for her broad range of material: her songs from this period include the traditional Christian hymn "Amazing Grace", the Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns" (both of which were top 20 hits as singles in both the U.S. and the U.K. ), a recording of Joan Baez's "A Song for David", and her own compositions, such as "Born to the Breed".

In 1971, Collins issued her second live album, Living, and the compilation album Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins followed a year later. Collins' ninth studio album True Stories and Other Dreams (1973) found her in a contemplative mood, featuring an original song about a friend who took his own life ("Song for Martin") and another about the life of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara ("Che"). For her tenth studio album Judith (1975), she collaborated with producer Arif Mardin, who gave the album a sophisticated sound. Judith produced her biggest hit single with her mournful version of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns", and it would become her best-selling record, eventually going platinum.

As Collins stepped up to a higher level of stardom, the longtime activist put political themes at the forefront of her eleventh studio album Bread and Roses (1976). Political statements like the title song, originally a poem by James Oppenheim commonly associated with a 1912 garment workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, were balanced with such pop compositions as Elton John's "Come Down in Time", but the album failed to achieve the commercial success of Judith. Following the release of the album, Collins underwent treatment for damaged vocal cords, and after years of struggling with alcoholism, she sought medical help to give up drinking. Her compilation album So Early in the Spring... The First 15 Years (1977) sold modestly.

Collins guest starred on The Muppet Show in an episode broadcast in January 1978, singing "Leather-Winged Bat", "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", "Do-Re-Mi", and "Send in the Clowns". She also appeared several times on Sesame Street, where she performed "Fishermen's Song" with a chorus of Anything Muppet fishermen, sang a trio with Biff and Sully using the word "yes", and even starred in a modern musical fairy tale skit called "The Sad Princess". In 1979, she returned to music with her twelfth studio album Hard Times for Lovers, a pop-oriented album in the same vein as Judith; she gained some extra publicity with the cover sleeve photograph of her in the nude.

1980s
Running for My Life (1980) and Times of Our Lives (1982) were well-crafted exercises in adult pop and soft rock, but as tastes changed, Collins' sales were on the decline. Home Again (1984) found her exploring some new musical avenues, including a synth-based cover of Yaz's "Only You" and a duet with country star T. G. Sheppard on the title cut. While the "Home Again" single was a minor hit, the album was not, and after 23 years, Collins and Elektra parted ways. She performed the music for the 1983 animated television special The Magic of Herself the Elf, as well as the theme song of the Rankin/Bass Productions television film The Wind in the Willows.

Collins traveled to England in 1985 and struck a one-off deal with Telstar Records to record the studio album Amazing Grace, in which she re-recorded several of her better-known songs with an inspirational bent. In 1987, she signed with the independent Gold Castle label, and her first studio album for them, Trust Your Heart, which collected seven tracks from Amazing Grace and added three new selections. That same year, she released her first memoir, Trust Your Heart.

In 1989, Collins released two albums: a live disc titled Sanity and Grace, and a collaboration with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, Innervoices.

1990s
In 1990, Collins released her eighteenth studio album Fires of Eden on Columbia Records. The album spawned one single – "Fires of Eden", written by Kit Hain and Mark Goldenberg. The single peaked at No. 31 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. At the time of its release, Collins performed it live on several occasions, including on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Joan Rivers Show. A music video promoting it and featuring her was also released. Later, Cher recorded "Fires of Eden" for her 1991 studio album Love Hurts. Other songs from Fires of Eden include "The Blizzard", "Home Before Dark", and a cover of the Hollies song – "The Air That I Breathe". That same year saw the release of a pair of children's albums, Baby's Morningtime and Baby's Bedtime. Collins performed at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993, singing "Amazing Grace" and "Chelsea Morning". (The Clintons have stated that they named their daughter, Chelsea, after her recording of the song.)

For her next studio album, Collins turned to a project that was both personal and familiar, a set of Bob Dylan covers titled Judy Sings Dylan... Just Like a Woman. Released in 1993, the album was a commercial success and reminded fans she was still active and in fine voice. In 1994, she issued her first Christmas album, ''Come Rejoice! A Judy Collins Christmas''. It would prove to be the first in a series, with other holiday releases soon following, the first being the live album Christmas at the Biltmore Estate in 1997, followed by All on a Wintry Night in 2000. Collins combined her interests in music and literature for her next project. In 1995, she published a novel, Shameless, that took place against the backdrop of the music business; she also released an album of the same name that served as the soundtrack.

In 1998, Collins published her third book, Singing Lessons: A Memoir of Love, Loss, Hope and Healing, which focused on her struggles with alcoholism, depression, and the emotional trauma of her son's death. In 1999, she released Classic Broadway, a collection of vintage show tunes. That same year, she and her manager Katherine DePaul founded Wildflower Records.

2000s–2020s
Collins maintained a busy release schedule via Wildflower, issuing numerous live albums and reissues as well as new material such as 2005's Portrait of an American Girl, 2010's Paradise, and 2011's Bohemian, all of which focused on her continued strength as an interpretive vocalist. In 2006, she sang "This Little Light of Mine" in a commercial for Eliot Spitzer. In 2007, she released her own covers collection of Beatles songs, entitled Judy Collins Sings Lennon and McCartney. Various artists, including Shawn Colvin, Rufus Wainwright, and Chrissie Hynde, covered Collins's compositions for the tribute album Born to the Breed in 2008. In the same year, she received an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute. The tribute albums Tom Thumb's Blues: A Tribute to Judy Collins and Born to the Breed: A Tribute to Judy Collins appeared in 2000 and 2008, respectively.

In 2010, Collins sang "The Weight of the World" at the Newport Folk Festival, a song by Amy Speace. Another memoir from Collins, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music, appeared the following year and put its focus on her career as an artist. In July 2012, she appeared as a guest artist on the Australian SBS television programme RocKwiz. She paid homage to some of her favorite songwriters as well as her favorite vocalists with the 2015 album Strangers Again, which featured duets with Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne, Jeff Bridges, and Glen Hansard. The album also included a track with singer-songwriter Ari Hest. Collins and Hest joined forces again in 2016 for a full studio album titled Silver Skies Blue, which later earned them a Grammy Award nomination for Best Folk Album. In 2017, Collins returned to the work of the songwriter who gave her "Send in the Clowns" with A Love Letter to Stephen Sondheim, and the same year, she and her longtime friend, Stephen Stills, collaborated on an album, Everybody Knows. In addition to the two albums, she bared her soul in another book, Cravings: How I Conquered Food, where she opened up about her difficult relationship with food and her years of dealing with eating disorders. In 2019, she released the album Winter Stories, a collaboration with Norwegian singer Jonas Fjeld and the North Carolina country-folk quartet Chatham County Line. In 2022, she released her first studio album of all original material, entitled Spellbound.

Collins joined the judging panel for the 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th Annual Independent Music Awards.

Activism
Like many other folk singers of her generation, Collins was drawn to social activism. Her political idealism led her to compose a ballad, Che, in honor of the 1960s Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. Collins sympathized with the Yippie movement and was friendly with its leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. On March 17, 1968, she went to Hoffman's press conference at the Americana Hotel in New York to announce the party's formation. In 1969, she testified in Chicago in support of the Chicago Seven; during her testimony, she began singing Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and was admonished by prosecutor Tom Foran and judge Julius Hoffman.

In 1971, Collins signed her name to a Ms. campaign, "We Have Had Abortions", which called for an end to "archaic laws" regarding abortion rights; the campaign encouraged women to share their stories and take action. In 1982, she wrote the song "Mama Mama" about a mother of five and her ambivalence over her decision to abort an unintended pregnancy. In the late 1990s, she was a representative for UNICEF and campaigns on behalf of the abolition of landmines. Later songs include "River of Gold" about the environment and "My Name is Maria" about DREAMers, who are mostly undocumented students and youth.

Personal life
Collins has been married twice. She was married to Peter Taylor in 1958 and they had her only child, Clark C. Taylor, who was born the same year. The marriage ended in divorce in 1965. In April 1996, she married industrial designer Louis Nelson, whom she had been seeing since April 1978. They live in New York City. In 1962, shortly after her debut at Carnegie Hall, Collins was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was in a sanatorium for six months recuperating. She is the subject of the Stephen Stills composition "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", which appeared on the 1969 eponymous debut studio album of Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Collins suffered from bulimia nervosa after she quit smoking in the 1970s. "I went straight from the cigarettes into an eating disorder", she told People magazine in 1992. "I started throwing up. I didn't know anything about bulimia, certainly not that it is an addiction or that it would get worse. My feelings about myself, even though I had been able to give up smoking and lose 20 pounds, were of increasing despair."

She wrote at length of her years of addiction to alcohol, the damage it did to her personal and musical life and how it contributed to her feelings of depression. She admits that although she tried other drugs in the 1960s, alcohol had always been her drug of first choice just as it had been for her father. She entered a rehabilitation program in Pennsylvania in 1978 and has maintained her sobriety ever since, even through such traumatic events as the death of her only child, Clark, by suicide in 1992 at age 33 after a long bout with clinical depression and substance abuse. Since then, she has also become an activist for suicide prevention.

Academy Awards

 * In 2003, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Grammy Awards

 * Stephen Sondheim won the 1976 Grammy Award for Song of the Year based on the popularity of Collins' performance of "Send in the Clowns" on her album Judith.

Other awards

 * For her activism and musical abilities, the Americana Music Association presented Collins with the "Spirit of Americana"/Free Speech Lifetime Achievement Award at their 2005 Honors & Awards ceremony.
 * She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2006
 * She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from Pratt Institute in May 2009
 * In 2009, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
 * Her rendition of "Amazing Grace" was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 2017.
 * She received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 2019.
 * Collins received the International Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 UK Americana Awards.

Filmography

 * The Doctors (TV series) (1982) Judith Howard
 * Guiding Light (1982) as herself
 * Baby's Bedtime (1992)
 * Baby's Morningtime (1992)
 * Junior (1994), the operator of a spa for pregnant women
 * Christy (TV series) (1994–1995), recurring role as "Aunt Hattie McHone"
 * Christmas at the Biltmore Estate (1998)
 * A Town Has Turned to Dust (1998), telefilm based on a 1958 Rod Serling story
 * The Best of Judy Collins (1999)
 * Intimate Portrait: Judy Collins (2000)
 * Judy Collins Live at Wolf Trap (2003)
 * Wildflower Festival (2003) (DVD with guest artists Eric Andersen, Arlo Guthrie, and Tom Rush)
 * Girls (TV series) (2013), series 2, episode 8: "It's Back"
 * Danny Says (2016)

Certifications
The years given are the years the albums and singles were released, and not necessarily the years in which they achieved their peak.

U.S. Billboard Top 40 Albums
 * 1967 – Wildflowers (No. 5)
 * 1968 – Who Knows Where the Time Goes (No. 28)
 * 1969 – Recollections (No. 29)
 * 1970 – Whales & Nightingales (No. 15)
 * 1972 – Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins (No. 37)
 * 1972 – True Stories and Other Dreams (No. 27)
 * 1975 – Judith (No. 17)
 * 1976 – Bread and Roses (No. 25)

U.S. Billboard Top 40 'Pop' Singles
 * 1968 – "Both Sides, Now" (No. 8)
 * 1971 – "Amazing Grace" (No. 15)
 * 1970 – "Cook with Honey" (No. 32)
 * 1975 – "Send In the Clowns" (No. 19)

U.S. Billboard Top 40 'Adult Contemporary' Singles
 * 1968 – "Both Sides, Now" (No. 3)
 * 1969 – "Someday Soon" (No. 37)
 * 1969 – "Chelsea Morning" (No. 25)
 * 1969 – "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)" (No. 28)
 * 1971 – "Amazing Grace" (No. 5)
 * 1971 – "Open the Door (Song for Judith)" (No. 23)
 * 1973 – "Cook with Honey" (No. 10)
 * 1975 – "Send In the Clowns" (No. 8)
 * 1979 – "Hard Times for Lovers" (No. 16)
 * 1990 – "Fires of Eden" (No. 31)

Albums and singles certifications

title: Judy Collins


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The Meters

The Meters (later The Funky Meters) are an American funk band formed in 1965 in New Orleans by Zigaboo Modeliste (drums), George Porter Jr. (bass), Leo Nocentelli (guitar) and Art Neville (keyboards). The band performed and recorded their own music from the late 1960s until 1977 and played an influential role as backing musicians for other artists, including Lee Dorsey, Robert Palmer, Dr. John, and Allen Toussaint. Their original songs "Cissy Strut" and "Look-Ka Py Py" are considered funk classics.

While they rarely enjoyed significant mainstream success, they are considered originators of funk along with artists like James Brown, and their work is influential on many other bands, both their contemporaries and modern musicians. Their sound is defined by a combination of tight melodic grooves and syncopated New Orleans "second line" rhythms under highly charged guitar and keyboard riffing. The band has been nominated four times for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, most recently in 2017. In 2018 the band was presented with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

1960s–1970s
Art Neville, the group's frontman, launched a solo career around the New Orleans area in the mid-1950s while still in high school. The Meters formed in 1965 with a line-up of keyboardist and vocalist Art Neville, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste. They were joined later by percussionist-vocalist Cyril Neville. The Meters became the house band for Allen Toussaint and his record label, Sansu Enterprises.

In 1969 the Meters released "Sophisticated Cissy" and "Cissy Strut", both major R&B chart hits. "Look-Ka Py Py" and "Chicken Strut" were their hits the following year. After a label shift in 1972, the Meters had difficulty returning to the charts, but they worked with Dr. John, Paul McCartney, King Biscuit Boy, Labelle, Robert Palmer, and others.

In 1975 Paul McCartney invited the Meters to play at the release party for his Venus and Mars album aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones was in attendance at the event and was greatly taken with the Meters and their sound. The Rolling Stones invited the band to open for them on their Tour of the Americas '75 and Tour of Europe '76. In the same year the Meters recorded one of their most successful albums, Fire on the Bayou. From 1976 to 77 they played in The Wild Tchoupitoulas with George and Amos Landry and The Neville Brothers.

Art and Cyril Neville left the band in early 1977, but The Meters still appeared on Saturday Night Live on March 19, 1977, during the show's second season. After the Nevilles' departure, David Batiste Sr. joined on keyboards and Willie West became the band's lead singer. Porter left the group later that year and by 1980 The Meters had officially broken up.

After the break-up, Neville continued his career as part of The Neville Brothers. Modeliste toured with Keith Richards and Ron Wood, while Nocentelli and Porter "became in-demand session players and formed new bands."

1980s–1990s
In 1989 Art Neville, George Porter Jr., and Leo Nocentelli reunited as The Meters, adding drummer Russell Batiste Jr. to replace Zigaboo Modeliste. Nocentelli left the group in 1994 and was replaced with guitarist Brian Stoltz, formerly of The Neville Brothers. The band was renamed The Funky Meters. They were referred to as "the Funky Meters" as early as 1989. They were billed as such when playing in a tiny venue called Benny's Bar at Valence and Camp streets in New Orleans.

2000s–2010s
The Funky Meters continued to play into the 2000s with Stoltz being replaced by Art Neville's son, Ian Neville, from 2007 to 2011 while Stoltz pursued a solo career. Stoltz returned to the band permanently in 2011.

In 2000 a large offer enticed all four original Meters to reunite for a one-night stand at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco; by this time Modeliste wanted to make the reunion a permanent one, but the other members and their management teams objected. It wasn't until Quint Davis, producer and director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, got them to "put aside their differences and hammer out the details" and perform at the Festival in 2005.

In June 2011 The Original Meters along with Allen Toussaint and Dr. John played the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. The six men performed songs from Dr. John's album Desitively Bonnaroo which was originally recorded with the Meters, to a sold-out crowd. The Original Meters also played a set at the 2011 Voodoo Experience in New Orleans. On May 5, 2012 The Meters returned to New Orleans for a performance to a sold-out crowd at the Howlin' Wolf.

In late 2012, Zigaboo Modeliste, Leo Nocentelli, and George Porter Jr. played concerts with Phish keyboardist Page McConnell under the name The Meter Men. During his time off from Phish, McConnell has continued to play with Porter Jr., Nocentelli, and Modeliste under the moniker of The Meter Men since those shows in 2012. The Meter Men had performed 16 shows together as of spring 2015, with their third annual appearance as a late night act during New Orleans' Jazz and Heritage Festival. In 2014, during The Meter Men's second appearance as a late night act during Jazzfest, the band performed at The Republic on April 26, 2014, after McConnell had headlined the NOLA Jazzfest at the New Orleans Fairgrounds with Phish earlier that day. The Meter Men had also played the previous night at The Republic. As of spring 2015 The Meter Men appeared in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Colorado, and Vermont. They also had a performance in Washington, D.C.

As of 2017, The Funky Meters tour consistently performing songs by The Meters, while The Meters performs sporadically. The lineup of Neville, Porter, Nocentelli, and Modeliste typically bill themselves as The Original Meters to avoid confusion with The Funky Meters. When not performing with The Original Meters, guitarist Leo Nocentelli leads his own group, The Meters Experience, which also performs the music of The Meters.

As of 2018, the most recent performance of the original Meters (with all four of the founding members) was at the Arroyo Seco Festival in Pasadena, California on June 25, 2017. The song "They All Ask'd for You" from the 1975 album Fire on the Bayou remains popular in the New Orleans region and is the unofficial theme song of the Audubon Zoo.

Art Neville announced his retirement from music on December 18, 2018. Neville died on July 22, 2019.

Influence
According to Brian Knight of The Vermont Review, "In a sense, the Meters defined the basic characteristics of the groove. While Funkadelic, Cameo, James Brown and Sly Stone are synonymous with funk, these artists look to the Meters for the basic-down to earthy and raw sound." Music critic Robert Christgau called the band "totally original" and placed the compilation album Funkify Your Life: The Meters Anthology on his list of top six New Orleans classics.

The Meters' music has been sampled by musicians around the world, including rap artists Heavy D, LL Cool J and Queen Latifah, Musiq, Big Daddy Kane, Run-DMC, N.W.A, Ice Cube, Scarface, Cypress Hill, EPMD, Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, Naughty by Nature, and Tweet.

Red Hot Chili Peppers covered the Meters' song "Africa", renamed "Hollywood (Africa)", on their 1985 album Freaky Styley. The eclectic jazz-fusion guitarist Oz Noy has recorded his version of "Cissy Strut" twice. Primus covered the Meters' song "Tippi Toes" on their 1992 EP Miscellaneous Debris.

Bands such as the Grateful Dead, KVHW, Steve Kimock Band, Widespread Panic, Rebirth Brass Band, Galactic, Jaco Pastorius, and The String Cheese Incident have performed songs by The Meters in their concert rotations.

Awards and honors

 * In 1970, The Meters were named Best Rhythm and Blues Instrumental Group by both Billboard and Record World magazines.
 * The Meters have been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame four times since becoming eligible in 1994: 1996, 2012, 2013 and 2017.
 * George Porter Jr. and The Meters were recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the second annual Jammy Awards in 2001.
 * In 2011, the iconic Meters' song "Cissy Strut" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
 * In 2013, The Meters received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Big Easy Music Awards.
 * The band was featured on the 2017 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival's commemorative poster.
 * In January 2018, The Meters were honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Members
Current
 * George Porter Jr. – bass, background vocals (1965–1977, 1989–2018, 2020-present)
 * Zigaboo Modeliste – drums, vocals (1965–1977, 2000–2018, 2020-present)
 * Leo Nocentelli – guitar, background vocals (1966 –1977, 1989–1994, 2000–2018, 2020-present)

Former
 * Art Neville – keyboards, vocals (1965–1977, 1989–2018; died 2019)
 * Gary Brown − saxophone (1965-1967)
 * "Glen" − drums (1965)
 * Cyril Neville – percussion, vocals (1970–1977)
 * David Batiste, Sr. – keyboards (1977–1980)
 * Willie West – vocals (1977–1980)
 * Russell Batiste Jr. – drums (1989–2000; died 2023)
 * Brian Stoltz – guitar (1994–2000)
 * Page McConnell − keyboards, background vocals (2012-2014)

The Funky Meters

 * Art Neville – keyboards, vocals (2000-2016)
 * George Porter Jr. – bass, background vocals (2000-2016)
 * Brian Stoltz – guitar (2000–2007, 2011–2016)
 * Ian Neville – guitar (2007–2011)
 * Russell Batiste Jr. – drums (2000–2015)
 * Terrence Houston – drums (2015-2016)

Discography
Original studio albums

Compilation albums
 * Cissy Strut (1974), Island ILPS-9250 [LP]
 * The Best of the Meters (1975), Virgo SV-12002 [LP]
 * Second Line Strut (1980), Charly R&B CRB-1009 [LP]
 * Here Come the Metermen (1986), Charly R&B CRB-1112 [LP]
 * Struttin'  (1987), Charly R&B CD-63
 * Good Old Funky Music (1990), Rounder CD-2104
 * Funky Miracle (1991), Charly CDNEV-2 [2-CD set]
 * Meters Jam (1992), Rounder CD-2105
 * Fundamentally Funky (1994), Charly CPCD-8044
 * Funkify Your Life: The Meters Anthology (1995), Rhino R2-71869 [2-CD set]
 * The Best of The Meters (1996), Mardi Gras MG-1029
 * The Very Best of The Meters (1997), Rhino R2-72642
 * Kickback (2001), Sundazed LP-5081/SC-11081
 * Zony Mash (2003), Sundazed LP-5087/SC-6211
 * Here Comes the Meter Man (The Complete Josie Recordings 1968–1970) (2011), Charly SNAX627CD [2-CD set]
 * Original Album Series (2014), Rhino 081227961565 [5-CD set], reissues: Cabbage Alley, Rejuvenation, Fire on the Bayou, Trick Bag, New Directions
 * A Message from The Meters: The Complete Josie, Reprise & Warner Bros. Singles 1968–1977 (2016), Real Gone Music RGM-0491 [2-CD set]

Live albums
 * Uptown Rulers: The Meters live on the Queen Mary (1975 [rel. 1992]), Rhino R2-70376
 * Live at the Moonwalker (1993), Lakeside Music LAKE-2022 – as the 'Legendary Meters'
 * Second Helping (Live at the Moonwalker) (1994), Lakeside Music LAKE-2026 – as the 'Legendary Meters'
 * Fiyo at the Fillmore, Volume 1 (2001 [rel. 2003]), Too Funky/Fuel 2000/Varese 030206127522 – as the 'Funky Meters'

Singles

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Meters


text:
John C. Baez

John Carlos Baez (born June 12, 1961) is an American mathematical physicist and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in Riverside, California. He has worked on spin foams in loop quantum gravity, applications of higher categories to physics, and applied category theory. Additionally, Baez is known on the World Wide Web as the author of the crackpot index.

Education
John C. Baez attended Princeton University where he graduated with an A.B. in mathematics in 1982; his senior thesis was titled "Recursivity in quantum mechanics", under the supervision of John P. Burgess. He earned his doctorate in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Irving Segal.

Career
Baez was a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University. Since 1989, he has been a faculty member at UC Riverside. From 2010 to 2012, he took a leave of absence to work at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore and has since worked there in the summers.

Research
His research includes work on spin foams in loop quantum gravity. He also worked on applications of higher categories to physics, such as the cobordism hypothesis. He has also dedicated many efforts towards applied category theory, including network theory.

Recognition
Baez won the 2013 Levi L. Conant Prize for his expository paper with John Huerta, "The algebra of grand unified theories". He was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, in the 2022 class of fellows, "for contributions to higher category theory and mathematical physics, and for popularization of these subjects".

Forums
Baez is the author of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics, an irregular column on the internet featuring mathematical exposition and criticism. He started This Week's Finds in 1993 for the Usenet community, and it now has a following in its new form, the blog Azimuth. This Week's Finds anticipated the concept of a personal weblog. Azimuth also covers other topics that include combating climate change and various other environmental issues.

He is also co-founder of the n-Category Café (or n-Café), a group blog concerning higher category theory and its applications, as well as its philosophical repercussions. The founders of the blog are Baez, David Corfield and Urs Schreiber, and the list of blog authors has extended since. The n-Café community is associated with the nLab wiki and nForum forum, which now run independently of n-Café. It is hosted on The University of Texas at Austin's official website.

Family
Baez's uncle Albert Baez was a physicist and a co-inventor of the X-ray microscope; Albert interested him in physics as a child. Through Albert, he is cousins with singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña.

John Baez is married to Lisa Raphals who is a professor of Chinese and comparative literature at UCR.

Essays

 * "Should I be thinking about quantum gravity?", essay by Baez at The World Question Center

title: John C. Baez


text:
F-number

An f-number is a measure of the light-gathering ability of an optical system such as a camera lens. It is calculated by dividing the system's focal length by the diameter of the entrance pupil ("clear aperture"). The f-number is also known as the focal ratio, f-ratio, or f-stop, and it is key in determining the depth of field, diffraction, and exposure of a photograph. The f-number is dimensionless and is usually expressed using a lower-case Ƒ|hooked f with the format N, where N is the f-number.

The f-number is also known as the inverse relative aperture, because it is the inverse of the relative aperture, defined as the aperture diameter divided by focal length. The relative aperture indicates how much light can pass through the lens at a given focal length. A lower f-number means a larger relative aperture and more light entering the system, while a higher f-number means a smaller relative aperture and less light entering the system. The f-number is related to the numerical aperture (NA) of the system, which measures the range of angles over which light can enter or exit the system. The numerical aperture takes into account the refractive index of the medium in which the system is working, while the f-number does not.

Notation
The f-number $N$ is given by:

$$N = \frac{f}{D} \ $$

where $$f$$ is the focal length, and $$D$$ is the diameter of the entrance pupil (effective aperture). It is customary to write f-numbers preceded by "", which forms a mathematical expression of the entrance pupil's diameter in terms of $$f$$ and $N$. For example, if a lens's focal length were 10 mm and its entrance pupil's diameter were 5 mm, the f-number would be 2. This would be expressed as "2" in a lens system. The aperture diameter would be equal to $$f/2$$.

Most lenses have an adjustable diaphragm, which changes the size of the aperture stop and thus the entrance pupil size. This allows the user to vary the f-number as needed. The entrance pupil diameter is not necessarily equal to the aperture stop diameter, because of the magnifying effect of lens elements in front of the aperture.

Ignoring differences in light transmission efficiency, a lens with a greater f-number projects darker images. The brightness of the projected image (illuminance) relative to the brightness of the scene in the lens's field of view (luminance) decreases with the square of the f-number. A 100 mm focal length 4 lens has an entrance pupil diameter of 25 mm. A 100 mm focal length 2 lens has an entrance pupil diameter of 50 mm. Since the area is proportional to the square of the pupil diameter, the amount of light admitted by the 2 lens is four times that of the 4 lens. To obtain the same photographic exposure, the exposure time must be reduced by a factor of four.

A 200 mm focal length 4 lens has an entrance pupil diameter of 50 mm. The 200 mm lens's entrance pupil has four times the area of the 100 mm 4 lens's entrance pupil, and thus collects four times as much light from each object in the lens's field of view. But compared to the 100 mm lens, the 200 mm lens projects an image of each object twice as high and twice as wide, covering four times the area, and so both lenses produce the same illuminance at the focal plane when imaging a scene of a given luminance.

A T-stop is an f-number adjusted to account for light transmission efficiency.

Stops, f-stop conventions, and exposure

The word stop is sometimes confusing due to its multiple meanings. A stop can be a physical object: an opaque part of an optical system that blocks certain rays. The aperture stop is the aperture setting that limits the brightness of the image by restricting the input pupil size, while a field stop is a stop intended to cut out light that would be outside the desired field of view and might cause flare or other problems if not stopped.

In photography, stops are also a unit used to quantify ratios of light or exposure, with each added stop meaning a factor of two, and each subtracted stop meaning a factor of one-half. The one-stop unit is also known as the EV (exposure value) unit. On a camera, the aperture setting is traditionally adjusted in discrete steps, known as f-stops. Each "stop" is marked with its corresponding f-number, and represents a halving of the light intensity from the previous stop. This corresponds to a decrease of the pupil and aperture diameters by a factor of 1/√2 or about 0.7071, and hence a halving of the area of the pupil.

Most modern lenses use a standard f-stop scale, which is an approximately geometric sequence of numbers that corresponds to the sequence of the powers of the square root of 2: 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45, 64, 90, 128, etc. Each element in the sequence is one stop lower than the element to its left, and one stop higher than the element to its right. The values of the ratios are rounded off to these particular conventional numbers, to make them easier to remember and write down. The sequence above is obtained by approximating the following exact geometric sequence:

$$f/1 = \frac{f}{(\sqrt{2})^0},\ f/1.4 = \frac{f}{(\sqrt{2})^1},\ f/2 = \frac{f}{(\sqrt{2})^2},\ f/2.8 = \frac{f}{(\sqrt{2})^3},\ \ldots$$ In the same way as one f-stop corresponds to a factor of two in light intensity, shutter speeds are arranged so that each setting differs in duration by a factor of approximately two from its neighbour. Opening up a lens by one stop allows twice as much light to fall on the film in a given period of time. Therefore, to have the same exposure at this larger aperture as at the previous aperture, the shutter would be opened for half as long (i.e., twice the speed). The film will respond equally to these equal amounts of light, since it has the property of reciprocity. This is less true for extremely long or short exposures, where there is reciprocity failure. Aperture, shutter speed, and film sensitivity are linked: for constant scene brightness, doubling the aperture area (one stop), halving the shutter speed (doubling the time open), or using a film twice as sensitive, has the same effect on the exposed image. For all practical purposes extreme accuracy is not required (mechanical shutter speeds were notoriously inaccurate as wear and lubrication varied, with no effect on exposure). It is not significant that aperture areas and shutter speeds do not vary by a factor of precisely two.

Photographers sometimes express other exposure ratios in terms of 'stops'. Ignoring the f-number markings, the f-stops make a logarithmic scale of exposure intensity. Given this interpretation, one can then think of taking a half-step along this scale, to make an exposure difference of "half a stop".

Fractional stops
Most twentieth-century cameras had a continuously variable aperture, using an iris diaphragm, with each full stop marked. Click-stopped aperture came into common use in the 1960s; the aperture scale usually had a click stop at every whole and half stop.

On modern cameras, especially when aperture is set on the camera body, f-number is often divided more finely than steps of one stop. Steps of one-third stop (1⁄3 EV) are the most common, since this matches the ISO system of film speeds. Half-stop steps are used on some cameras. Usually the full stops are marked, and the intermediate positions click but are not marked. As an example, the aperture that is one-third stop smaller than 2.8 is 3.2, two-thirds smaller is 3.5, and one whole stop smaller is 4. The next few f-stops in this sequence are:

$$f/4.5,\ f/5,\ f/5.6,\ f/6.3,\ f/7.1,\ f/8,\ \ldots$$

To calculate the steps in a full stop (1 EV) one could use

$$(\sqrt{2})^{0},\ (\sqrt{2})^{1},\ (\sqrt{2})^{2},\ (\sqrt{2})^{3},\ (\sqrt{2})^{4},\ \ldots$$

The steps in a half stop (1⁄2 EV) series would be

$$(\sqrt{2})^{\frac{0}{2}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{1}{2}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{2}{2}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{3}{2}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{4}{2}},\ \ldots$$

The steps in a third stop (1⁄3 EV) series would be

$$(\sqrt{2})^{\frac{0}{3}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{1}{3}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{2}{3}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{3}{3}},\ (\sqrt{2})^{\frac{4}{3}},\ \ldots$$

As in the earlier DIN and ASA film-speed standards, the ISO speed is defined only in one-third stop increments, and shutter speeds of digital cameras are commonly on the same scale in reciprocal seconds. A portion of the ISO range is the sequence

$$\ldots 16/13^\circ,\ 20/14^\circ,\ 25/15^\circ,\ 32/16^\circ,\ 40/17^\circ,\ 50/18^\circ,\ 64/19^\circ,\ 80/20^\circ,\ 100/21^\circ,\ 125/22^\circ,\ \ldots$$

while shutter speeds in reciprocal seconds have a few conventional differences in their numbers ($1/undefined$, $1/undefined$, and $1/undefined$ second instead of $1/undefined$, $1/undefined$, and $1/undefined$).

In practice the maximum aperture of a lens is often not an integral power of √2 (i.e., √2 to the power of a whole number), in which case it is usually a half or third stop above or below an integral power of √2.

Modern electronically controlled interchangeable lenses, such as those used for SLR cameras, have f-stops specified internally in $1/undefined$-stop increments, so the cameras' 1⁄3-stop settings are approximated by the nearest $1/undefined$-stop setting in the lens.

Standard full-stop f-number scale
Including aperture value AV: $$N = \sqrt{2^{\text{AV}}}$$

Conventional and calculated f-numbers, full-stop series:

Typical one-third-stop f-number scale
Sometimes the same number is included on several scales; for example, an aperture of 1.2 may be used in either a half-stop or a one-third-stop system; sometimes 1.3 and 3.2 and other differences are used for the one-third stop scale.

H-stop
An H-stop (for hole, by convention written with capital letter H) is an f-number equivalent for effective exposure based on the area covered by the holes in the diffusion discs or sieve aperture found in Rodenstock Imagon lenses.

T-stop
A T-stop (for transmission stops, by convention written with capital letter T) is an f-number adjusted to account for light transmission efficiency (transmittance). A lens with a T-stop of $1/undefined$ projects an image of the same brightness as an ideal lens with 100% transmittance and an f-number of $1/undefined$. A particular lens's T-stop, $1 1/2$, is given by dividing the f-number by the square root of the transmittance of that lens: $$T = \frac{N}{\sqrt{\text{transmittance}}}.$$ For example, an 2.0 lens with transmittance of 75% has a T-stop of 2.3: $$T = \frac{2.0}{\sqrt{0.75}} = 2.309...$$ Since real lenses have transmittances of less than 100%, a lens's T-stop number is always greater than its f-number.

With 8% loss per air-glass surface on lenses without coating, multicoating of lenses is the key in lens design to decrease transmittance losses of lenses. Some reviews of lenses do measure the T-stop or transmission rate in their benchmarks. T-stops are sometimes used instead of f-numbers to more accurately determine exposure, particularly when using external light meters. Lens transmittances of 60%–95% are typical. T-stops are often used in cinematography, where many images are seen in rapid succession and even small changes in exposure will be noticeable. Cinema camera lenses are typically calibrated in T-stops instead of f-numbers. In still photography, without the need for rigorous consistency of all lenses and cameras used, slight differences in exposure are less important; however, T-stops are still used in some kinds of special-purpose lenses such as Smooth Trans Focus lenses by Minolta and Sony.

ASA/ISO numbers
Photographic film's and electronic camera sensor's sensitivity to light is often specified using ASA/ISO numbers. Both systems have a linear number where a doubling of sensitivity is represented by a doubling of the number, and a logarithmic number. In the ISO system, a 3° increase in the logarithmic number corresponds to a doubling of sensitivity. Doubling or halving the sensitivity is equal to a difference of one T-stop in terms of light transmittance.

Gain
Most electronic cameras allow to amplify the signal coming from the pickup element. This amplification is usually called gain and is measured in decibels. Every 6 dB of gain is equivalent to one T-stop in terms of light transmittance. Many camcorders have a unified control over the lens f-number and gain. In this case, starting from zero gain and fully open iris, one can either increase f-number by reducing the iris size while gain remains zero, or one can increase gain while iris remains fully open.

Sunny 16 rule
An example of the use of f-numbers in photography is the sunny 16 rule: an approximately correct exposure will be obtained on a sunny day by using an aperture of 16 and the shutter speed closest to the reciprocal of the ISO speed of the film; for example, using ISO 200 film, an aperture of 16 and a shutter speed of $2 1/2$ second. The f-number may then be adjusted downwards for situations with lower light. Selecting a lower f-number is "opening up" the lens. Selecting a higher f-number is "closing" or "stopping down" the lens.

Effects on image sharpness

Depth of field increases with f-number, as illustrated in the image here. This means that photographs taken with a low f-number (large aperture) will tend to have subjects at one distance in focus, with the rest of the image (nearer and farther elements) out of focus. This is frequently used for nature photography and portraiture because background blur (the aesthetic quality known as 'bokeh') can be aesthetically pleasing and puts the viewer's focus on the main subject in the foreground. The depth of field of an image produced at a given f-number is dependent on other parameters as well, including the focal length, the subject distance, and the format of the film or sensor used to capture the image. Depth of field can be described as depending on just angle of view, subject distance, and entrance pupil diameter (as in von Rohr's method). As a result, smaller formats will have a deeper field than larger formats at the same f-number for the same distance of focus and same angle of view since a smaller format requires a shorter focal length (wider angle lens) to produce the same angle of view, and depth of field increases with shorter focal lengths. Therefore, reduced–depth-of-field effects will require smaller f-numbers (and thus potentially more difficult or complex optics) when using small-format cameras than when using larger-format cameras.

Beyond focus, image sharpness is related to f-number through two different optical effects: aberration, due to imperfect lens design, and diffraction which is due to the wave nature of light. The blur-optimal f-stop varies with the lens design. For modern standard lenses having 6 or 7 elements, the sharpest image is often obtained around 5.6–8, while for older standard lenses having only 4 elements (Tessar formula) stopping to 11 will give the sharpest image. The larger number of elements in modern lenses allow the designer to compensate for aberrations, allowing the lens to give better pictures at lower f-numbers. At small apertures, depth of field and aberrations are improved, but diffraction creates more spreading of the light, causing blur.

Light falloff is also sensitive to f-stop. Many wide-angle lenses will show a significant light falloff (vignetting) at the edges for large apertures.

Photojournalists have a saying, "8 and be there", meaning that being on the scene is more important than worrying about technical details. Practically, 8 (in 35 mm and larger formats) allows adequate depth of field and sufficient lens speed for a decent base exposure in most daylight situations.

Human eye
Computing the f-number of the human eye involves computing the physical aperture and focal length of the eye. The pupil can be as large as 6–7 mm wide open, which translates into the maximal physical aperture.

The f-number of the human eye varies from about 8.3 in a very brightly lit place to about 2.1 in the dark. Computing the focal length requires that the light-refracting properties of the liquids in the eye be taken into account. Treating the eye as an ordinary air-filled camera and lens results in an incorrect focal length and f-number.

Focal ratio in telescopes

In astronomy, the f-number is commonly referred to as the focal ratio (or f-ratio) notated as $$N$$. It is still defined as the focal length $$f$$ of an objective divided by its diameter $$D$$ or by the diameter of an aperture stop in the system:

$$N = \frac fD \quad \xrightarrow {\times D} \quad f = ND$$

Even though the principles of focal ratio are always the same, the application to which the principle is put can differ. In photography the focal ratio varies the focal-plane illuminance (or optical power per unit area in the image) and is used to control variables such as depth of field. When using an optical telescope in astronomy, there is no depth of field issue, and the brightness of stellar point sources in terms of total optical power (not divided by area) is a function of absolute aperture area only, independent of focal length. The focal length controls the field of view of the instrument and the scale of the image that is presented at the focal plane to an eyepiece, film plate, or CCD.

For example, the SOAR 4-meter telescope has a small field of view (about ) which is useful for stellar studies. The LSST 8.4 m telescope, which will cover the entire sky every three days, has a very large field of view. Its short 10.3 m focal length is made possible by an error correction system which includes secondary and tertiary mirrors, a three element refractive system and active mounting and optics.

Camera equation (G#)
The camera equation, or G#, is the ratio of the radiance reaching the camera sensor to the irradiance on the focal plane of the camera lens:

$$G\# = \frac {1 + 4 N^2} {\tau \pi} \,,$$

where $3 1/2$ is the transmission coefficient of the lens, and the units are in inverse steradians (sr−1).

Working f-number
The f-number accurately describes the light-gathering ability of a lens only for objects an infinite distance away. This limitation is typically ignored in photography, where f-number is often used regardless of the distance to the object. In optical design, an alternative is often needed for systems where the object is not far from the lens. In these cases the working f-number is used. The working f-number $4 1/2$ is given by:

$$N_w \approx {1 \over 2 \mathrm{NA}_i} \approx \left(1+\frac{|m|}{P}\right)N\,,$$

where $5 1/2$ is the uncorrected f-number, $NA_{i}$ is the image-space numerical aperture of the lens, $$|m|$$ is the absolute value of the lens's magnification for an object a particular distance away, and $6 1/2$ is the pupil magnification. Since the pupil magnification is seldom known it is often assumed to be 1, which is the correct value for all symmetric lenses.

In photography this means that as one focuses closer, the lens's effective aperture becomes smaller, making the exposure darker. The working f-number is often described in photography as the f-number corrected for lens extensions by a bellows factor. This is of particular importance in macro photography.

History
The system of f-numbers for specifying relative apertures evolved in the late nineteenth century, in competition with several other systems of aperture notation.

Origins of relative aperture
In 1867, Sutton and Dawson defined "apertal ratio" as essentially the reciprocal of the modern f-number. In the following quote, an "apertal ratio" of "$7 1/2$" is calculated as the ratio of 6 in to 1/4 in, corresponding to an f-stop:

"In every lens there is, corresponding to a given apertal ratio (that is, the ratio of the diameter of the stop to the focal length), a certain distance of a near object from it, between which and infinity all objects are in equally good focus. For instance, in a single view lens of 6-inch focus, with a 1⁄4 in. stop (apertal ratio one-twenty-fourth), all objects situated at distances lying between 20 feet from the lens and an infinite distance from it (a fixed star, for instance) are in equally good focus. Twenty feet is therefore called the 'focal range' of the lens when this stop is used. The focal range is consequently the distance of the nearest object, which will be in good focus when the ground glass is adjusted for an extremely distant object. In the same lens, the focal range will depend upon the size of the diaphragm used, while in different lenses having the same apertal ratio the focal ranges will be greater as the focal length of the lens is increased. The terms 'apertal ratio' and 'focal range' have not come into general use, but it is very desirable that they should, in order to prevent ambiguity and circumlocution when treating of the properties of photographic lenses."

In 1874, John Henry Dallmeyer called the ratio $$1/N$$ the "intensity ratio" of a lens:

"The rapidity of a lens depends upon the relation or ratio of the aperture to the equivalent focus. To ascertain this, divide the equivalent focus by the diameter of the actual working aperture of the lens in question; and note down the quotient as the denominator with 1, or unity, for the numerator. Thus to find the ratio of a lens of 2 inches diameter and 6 inches focus, divide the focus by the aperture, or 6 divided by 2 equals 3; i.e., 1⁄3 is the intensity ratio."

Although he did not yet have access to Ernst Abbe's theory of stops and pupils, which was made widely available by Siegfried Czapski in 1893, Dallmeyer knew that his working aperture was not the same as the physical diameter of the aperture stop:

"It must be observed, however, that in order to find the real intensity ratio, the diameter of the actual working aperture must be ascertained. This is easily accomplished in the case of single lenses, or for double combination lenses used with the full opening, these merely requiring the application of a pair of compasses or rule; but when double or triple-combination lenses are used, with stops inserted between the combinations, it is somewhat more troublesome; for it is obvious that in this case the diameter of the stop employed is not the measure of the actual pencil of light transmitted by the front combination. To ascertain this, focus for a distant object, remove the focusing screen and replace it by the collodion slide, having previously inserted a piece of cardboard in place of the prepared plate. Make a small round hole in the centre of the cardboard with a piercer, and now remove to a darkened room; apply a candle close to the hole, and observe the illuminated patch visible upon the front combination; the diameter of this circle, carefully measured, is the actual working aperture of the lens in question for the particular stop employed."

This point is further emphasized by Czapski in 1893. According to an English review of his book, in 1894, "The necessity of clearly distinguishing between effective aperture and diameter of physical stop is strongly insisted upon."

J. H. Dallmeyer's son, Thomas Rudolphus Dallmeyer, inventor of the telephoto lens, followed the intensity ratio terminology in 1899.

Aperture numbering systems

At the same time, there were a number of aperture numbering systems designed with the goal of making exposure times vary in direct or inverse proportion with the aperture, rather than with the square of the f-number or inverse square of the apertal ratio or intensity ratio. But these systems all involved some arbitrary constant, as opposed to the simple ratio of focal length and diameter.

For example, the Uniform System (U.S.) of apertures was adopted as a standard by the Photographic Society of Great Britain in the 1880s. Bothamley in 1891 said "The stops of all the best makers are now arranged according to this system." U.S. 16 is the same aperture as 16, but apertures that are larger or smaller by a full stop use doubling or halving of the U.S. number, for example 11 is U.S. 8 and 8 is U.S. 4. The exposure time required is directly proportional to the U.S. number. Eastman Kodak used U.S. stops on many of their cameras at least in the 1920s.

By 1895, Hodges contradicts Bothamley, saying that the f-number system has taken over: "This is called the x system, and the diaphragms of all modern lenses of good construction are so marked."

Here is the situation as seen in 1899:

Piper in 1901 discusses five different systems of aperture marking: the old and new Zeiss systems based on actual intensity (proportional to reciprocal square of the f-number); and the U.S., C.I., and Dallmeyer systems based on exposure (proportional to square of the f-number). He calls the f-number the "ratio number", "aperture ratio number", and "ratio aperture". He calls expressions like 8 the "fractional diameter" of the aperture, even though it is literally equal to the "absolute diameter" which he distinguishes as a different term. He also sometimes uses expressions like "an aperture of f 8" without the division indicated by the slash.

Beck and Andrews in 1902 talk about the Royal Photographic Society standard of 4, 5.6, 8, 11.3, etc. The R.P.S. had changed their name and moved off of the U.S. system some time between 1895 and 1902.

Typographical standardization

By 1920, the term f-number appeared in books both as F number and f/number. In modern publications, the forms f-number and f number are more common, though the earlier forms, as well as F-number are still found in a few books; not uncommonly, the initial lower-case f in f-number or f/number is set in a hooked italic form: ƒ.

Notations for f-numbers were also quite variable in the early part of the twentieth century. They were sometimes written with a capital F, sometimes with a dot (period) instead of a slash, and sometimes set as a vertical fraction.

The 1961 ASA standard PH2.12-1961 American Standard General-Purpose Photographic Exposure Meters (Photoelectric Type) specifies that "The symbol for relative apertures shall be ƒ/ or ƒ: followed by the effective ƒ-number." They show the hooked italic 'ƒ' not only in the symbol, but also in the term f-number, which today is more commonly set in an ordinary non-italic face.

title: F-number


text:
Moby Grape

Moby Grape is an American rock band founded in 1966. Part of San Francisco's psychedelic music scene, the band merged elements of rock and roll, folk music, pop, blues, and country. They were one of the few groups of which all members were lead vocalists and songwriters. The group's first incarnation ended in 1969, in part due to members Bob Mosley and Skip Spence suffering from mental illness. The group has reformed many times afterwards and continues to perform occasionally.

Moby Grape's success was accompanied by decades-long legal disputes with their former manager, Matthew Katz. Legal difficulties originated shortly after the group's formation, when Katz insisted on ownership of the group name. The dispute with Katz became more acute after the group members' rights to their songs were signed away in 1973, in a settlement made without their knowledge.

As described by Jeff Tamarkin, "The Grape's saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco. Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less."

1966–1967
The group was formed in September 1966 in San Francisco at the instigation of Skip Spence and Matthew Katz. Both had previously been associated with Jefferson Airplane, Spence as the band's first drummer, playing on their first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and Katz as the band's manager, but the group had dismissed both of them. Katz encouraged Spence to form a band similar to Jefferson Airplane, with varied songwriting and vocal work by several group members, and with Katz as the manager. According to band member Peter Lewis, "Matthew (Katz) brought the spirit of conflict into the band. He didn't want it to be an equal partnership. He wanted it all." At the time, various group members were indebted to Katz, who had been paying for apartments and various living costs prior to the release of the group's first album. Despite objecting, group members signed without seeking outside legal advice, believing in part that there would be no further financial support from Katz unless they did so. Neil Young, then of Buffalo Springfield, was in the room at the time, and kept his head down, playing his guitar, and saying nothing. According to Peter Lewis, "I think Neil knew, even then, that this was the end. We had bought into this process that we should have known better than to buy into."

The band name, chosen by Bob Mosley and Spence, came from the punch line of the joke "What's big and purple and lives in the ocean?" Lead guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson (both formerly of the Frantics, originally based in Seattle) joined guitarist (and son of actress Loretta Young) Peter Lewis (of the Cornells), bassist Bob Mosley (of the Misfits, based in San Diego), and Spence, now on guitar instead of drums. Miller and Stevenson had moved the Frantics from Seattle to San Francisco after a 1965 meeting with Jerry Garcia, then playing with the Warlocks at a bar in Belmont, California. Garcia encouraged them to move to San Francisco. Once the Frantics were settled in San Francisco, Mosley joined the band.

While Miller was the principal lead guitarist, all three guitarists played lead at various points, often playing off against each other, in a guitar form associated with Moby Grape as "crosstalk". The other major three-guitar band at the time was Buffalo Springfield. Moby Grape's music has been described by Geoffrey Parr as follows: "No rock and roll group has been able to use a guitar trio as effectively as Moby Grape did on Moby Grape. Spence played a distinctive rhythm guitar that really sticks out throughout the album. Lewis, meanwhile, was a very good guitar player overall and was excellent at finger picking, as is evident in several songs. And then there is Miller. The way they crafted their parts and played together on Moby Grape is like nothing else I've ever heard in my life. The guitars are like a collage of sound that makes perfect sense."

All band members wrote songs and sang lead and backup vocals for their debut album, Moby Grape (1967). Mosley, Lewis, and Spence generally wrote alone, while Miller and Stevenson generally wrote together. In 2003, Moby Grape was ranked at number 121 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Noted rock critic Robert Christgau listed it as one of the 40 "Essential Albums of 1967". In 2008, Spence's song "Omaha", from the first Moby Grape album, was listed as number 95 in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time". The song was described as follows: "On their best single, Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis and Skip Spence compete in a three-way guitar battle for two and a quarter red-hot minutes, each of them charging at Spence's song from different angles, no one yielding to anyone else.'"

In a marketing stunt, Columbia Records immediately released five singles at once, and the band was perceived as being over-hyped. This was during a period in which mainstream record labels heavily promoted what were then considered counter-cultural music genres. The record was critically acclaimed and fairly successful commercially, with The Move covering the album's "Hey Grandma" (a Miller-Stevenson composition) on their self-titled first album. More recently, "Hey Grandma" was included in the soundtrack to the 2005 Sean Penn-Nicole Kidman film, The Interpreter, as well as being covered in 2009 by the Black Crowes, on Warpaint Live. Spence's "Omaha" was the only one of the five singles to chart, reaching number 88 in 1967. Miller-Stevenson's "8:05" became a country rock standard (covered by Robert Plant, Guy Burlage, and others).

One of Moby Grape's earliest major onstage performances was the Mantra-Rock Dance — a musical event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. At the event Moby Grape performed along with the Bhaktivedanta Swami, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and fellow rock bands Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company donating proceeds to the temple. The group appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17, 1967. Due to legal and managerial disputes, the group was not included in the D.A. Pennebaker-produced film of the event, Monterey Pop. Moby Grape's Monterey recordings and film remain unreleased, allegedly because Katz demanded one million dollars for the rights. According to Lewis, "[Katz] told Lou Adler they had to pay us a million bucks to film us at the Monterey Pop Festival. So instead of putting us on Saturday night right before Otis Redding, they wound up putting us on at sunset on Friday when there was nobody in the place."

The Moby Grape footage was shown in 2007 as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the film. Miller recalled that Laura Nyro was given Moby Grape's original position opening for Redding, "because everybody was arguing. Nobody wanted to play first and I said that would be fine for me." In addition to the marketing backlash, band members found themselves in legal trouble for charges (later dropped) of consorting with underage girls, and the band's relationship with their manager rapidly deteriorated.

1968
The second album, Wow/Grape Jam, released in 1968, was generally viewed as a critical and commercial disappointment, even though the album charted at No. 20 on the Billboard Pop Albums charts, partially due to the special low price double-album packaging. The album included the track "Just Like Gene Autry, a Foxtrot", a tribute to the big band era which was tracked to only be played back properly at the speed of 78 RPM. The Grape Jam LP was one of loose, improvised studio jams with outside musicians. Also in 1968, the band contributed to the soundtrack of the movie The Sweet Ride, and appeared, credited, in the film.

The band was also introduced to a wide group of UK listeners in 1968 through the inclusion of "Can't Be So Bad", from the Wow album, on the sampler album The Rock Machine Turns You On (CBS).

But, amidst this success, troubled times plagued the band when founding member Spence began abusing LSD, which led to increasingly erratic behavior. According to Miller: "Skippy changed radically when we were in New York. There were some people there (he met) who were into harder drugs and a harder lifestyle, and some very weird shit. And so he kind of flew off with those people. Skippy kind of disappeared for a little while. Next time we saw him, he had cut off his beard, and was wearing a black leather jacket, with his chest hanging out, with some chains and just sweating like a son of a gun. I don't know what the hell he got a hold of, man, but it just whacked him. And the next thing I know, he axed my door down in the Albert Hotel. They said at the reception area that this crazy guy had held an ax to the doorman's head." After spending time in the infamous Tombs jail in New York, Spence was committed to New York's Bellevue Hospital, where he spent six months under psychiatric care.

Recalling this troubled time for Spence, Lewis said, "We had to do (the album) in New York because the producer (David Rubinson) wanted to be with his family. So we had to leave our families and spend months at a time in hotel rooms in New York City. Finally I just quit and went back to California. I got a phone call after a couple of days. They'd played a Fillmore East gig without me, and Skippy took off with some black witch afterward who fed him full of acid. It was like that scene in The Doors movie. He thought he was the anti-Christ. He tried to chop down the hotel room door with a fire axe to kill Don [Stevenson] to save him from himself. He went up to the 52nd floor of the CBS building where they had to wrestle him to the ground. And Rubinson pressed charges against him. They took him to the Tombs (and then to Bellevue) and that's where he wrote Oar. When he got out of there, he cut that album in Nashville. And that was the end of his career. They shot him full of Thorazine for six months. They just take you out of the game."

1969–1970
After the forced departure of Spence, the remaining four members continued recording throughout 1968 and released Moby Grape '69 in January 1969. Spence's "Seeing" (also known as "Skip's Song") was finished by the foursome, and it is one of the highlights. Despite the collaborative effort to complete the song, the songwriting credit was left solely with Spence. After a tour of the UK and the Netherlands in February 1969 as a four piece, Bob Mosley left the group, shocking the remaining members by joining the Marines. The remaining three released their final album for Columbia, Truly Fine Citizen, in late 1969, with session bassist Bob Moore filling in for the departed Mosley during the sessions for the album. Truly Fine Citizen would be the final work conducted by the band prior to their initial dissolution.

Miller and Stevenson then formed The Rhythm Dukes, later joined by Bill Champlin. The band achieved a degree of success as a second-billed act during much of the latter part of 1969 to 1971, and recorded one album, not released until 2005.

1970s–1980s
In 1971, the original five members reunited and, along with violinist Gordon Stevens, recorded 20 Granite Creek for Reprise Records. The group performed a few concerts to support the album, most notably during the last days of the Fillmore East before Spence left and the group broke up. These concerts were described by contemporary accounts as disastrous, and circulating recordings do little to challenge that assessment. These shows are noteworthy, however, due to their inclusion of original material that did not appear on their albums proper. Mosley contributed "When You're Down The Road" and "Just A Woman", Lewis "There Is No Reason", and Spence brought along a song referred to as "We Don't Know Now" (a misinterpretation of Miller on an audience recording telling them that they were "going to do Omaha now" before launching into the song) and "Sailing", a song which would be all but forgotten until Spence performed it with Moby Grape at a 1996 gig near Spence's home in Santa Cruz, California, at the Palookaville nightclub. They also performed songs cut for 20 Granite Creek. A Fillmore East gig saw Mosley doing an a capella rendition of "Ode To The Man At The End of The Bar".

Following the departure of Spence, and the band's consequent dissolution, the band reformed several times over the following years; featuring different combinations of the members. In 1973, Lewis, Miller, and Mosley reformed the band for some live shows; with guitarist Jeff Blackburn and drummer Johnny Craviotto filling the roles vacated by Spence and Stevenson. Following the end of the shows in 1975, Miller, Mosley, and Craviotto were joined by Michael Been (later of The Call), under the name Fine Wine, and recorded an LP under the same name on Polydor Records in Germany in 1976. Following the end of Fine Wine, Mosley and Craviotto joined with Jeff Blackburn and Neil Young to form The Ducks, which played in and around the Santa Cruz area during 1977, and were popular during the band's brief life; whilst Miller and Been went on to form The Original Haze, also originating around the Santa Cruz area, before joining Lewis and Spence in another reformation of Moby Grape; this time joined by keyboardist/sax Cornelius Bumpus, drummers John Oxendine and Daniel Spencer, and bassist Chris Powell. The band released 1978's Live Grape album on Escape Records before again splitting in 1979.

The 1980s saw the band reform again on two occasions; firstly in 1983 with a line-up consisting of Lewis, Miller, Mosley, and Stevenson, which released the Moby Grape '84 album before dissolving in 1984. Then, in February 1987, the full original line-up of Moby Grape, along with It's a Beautiful Day, Fraternity of Man, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, got together for a couple of shows. They performed their debut tunes "Hey Grandma", "Naked, If I Want To", "Omaha", "Fall on You", and "8:05", among others, before fans at the Marin Civic and Cupertino's DeAnza College. Following these shows Spence departed the band (for the final time), and his role within the group was filled by Dan Abernathy for recording and touring purposes.

Due to continued legal battle between the band and Matthew Katz over ownership of the "Moby Grape" name, other names were used during this period for performance or recording purposes; including Mosley Grape, Legendary Grape, Maby Grope, the previously used Fine Wine, and The Melvilles. This led to the band's 1989 Legendary Grape album being considered by some to be a Melvilles recording, as, while it was originally issued as a Moby Grape cassette-only release, the tape eventually had to be withdrawn due to pressure from Katz's legal team; and it was subsequently repackaged and reissued as being by The Melvilles. Despite Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley and Peter Lewis continuing to release solo records in the 1990s and 2000s, Moby Grape has not released an album of new material since the release of Legendary Grape in 1989. Jerry Miller considers the 2003 remastered and supplemented CD version of Legendary Grape to be an essential Moby Grape album.

1990s–2000s
The debut album and Wow/Grape Jam were first released on CD during the late 1980s by the San Francisco Sound label, a company owned by their former manager, Matthew Katz. These releases suffer from mediocre sound and poor quality packaging. It is also contended that Moby Grape has never been properly compensated for recordings released by this label. The double CD 1993 Legacy Recordings compilation Vintage: The Very Best of Moby Grape includes their entire first album and most of Moby Grape '69, selected tracks from Wow and Truly Fine Citizen, as well as studio outtakes and alternate versions, in much better quality. This compilation attracted new attention to the band and helped introduce their music to a new audience. In 1994, the group members commenced an action against Matthew Katz, Columbia Records and parent company Sony Music, seeking to have the settlement overturned. This settlement from 1973 meant that the group members would receive no royalties whatsoever from Vintage.

The band had folded again in 1991 due to the deteriorating emotional state of Bob Mosley; who ultimately ended up being homeless in San Diego. This led Lewis, Miller, and Stevenson to regroup with Mosley and reform the band in 1996 as a means to help him resolve his problems; with health problems preventing Skip Spence from also joining the band. Spence lived in a residential care facility in northern California, and despite an extended period of homelessness and suffering from mental illness, there was a marked improvement in his domestic life in his later years before he died from lung cancer in 1999, two days before his 53rd birthday.

2000s–present
Amid the ongoing legal proceedings between Moby Grape and Katz, the surviving members of the band decided to dissolve the group once again in 2001. Finally, in 2006, and after three decades of court battles, the band finally won back its name; and subsequently reformed. As described in 1998 by David LaFlamme of It's A Beautiful Day, "Yes (Moby Grape) did, eventually they did win their case. In that case and in the (Jefferson) Airplane case, in both cases, the judge determined that (Matthew Katz) did business in a fraudulent and deceptive manner and that over the years he had continued to, what they call, 'muddy the water' by continually firing attorneys, making postponements and that these decisions could have been made years ago but he was making it impossible for that to happen. Now they have regained the rights to their songs and so on. Thank God. But most of the money that he has made doing to them what he has been doing to me is money he has already made. You can't get that. It's gone! It's gone!" To celebrate, in September 2007, a reunited Moby Grape performed for over 40,000 fans at the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In October 2007, Sundazed Records reissued Moby Grape's first five albums (with bonus tracks) on CD and vinyl. The following month, the label was forced to both withdraw and recall Moby Grape, Wow and Grape Jam from print on both vinyl and CD because of a new lawsuit by former manager Katz. Sundazed stated on their website that they were directed to withdraw the three titles by Sony, from whom Sundazed had licensed the recordings. Following the reunion performance, Stevenson departed the band and semi-retired from the music industry. Moby Grape continues to perform occasionally, performing with core members Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley and Peter Lewis, and in such incarnations as with Skip Spence's son Omar joining on vocals and Jerry Miller's son Joseph on drums. New recording commenced in 2009, following the release of The Place and the Time, a well-received collection of demos, outtakes, alternate versions and otherwise unreleased material from the band's 1960s recording period.

In 2018 a detailed biography - What's Big And Purple And Lives In The Ocean?: The Moby Grape Story by Cam Cobb was published in the U.S. and the U.K. by Jawbone.

Later releases
Subsequent to the withdrawal of Vintage, Sony released Cross Talk: The Best of Moby Grape (2004), followed by ''Listen My Friends! The Best of Moby Grape'' (2007). Legendary Grape was issued for the first time in CD by Dig Music in 2003. In 2009, Sundazed Music issued The Place and the Time, a two disc collection of alternate takes, live versions and other previously unreleased material. In February 2010 Sundazed released the First Official Live Moby Grape 'Live' Album on Vinyl and Compact Disc formats.

Tribute albums
Moby Grape has been the subject of five fan-initiated tribute albums, whereby Moby Grape songs are covered by fans of the band. The series commenced with Mo'Grape (2000) and Even Mo'Grape (2002) and has been followed by Still Mo' Grape, Forever Mo and Just Say Mo.

Work outside of Moby Grape
Lewis, Miller, Mosley and Stevenson continued to perform and record, contributing to various artist's projects.

Peter Lewis released a debut CD in 1995 and formed an acoustic duo with David West (released Live in Bremen, 2003). Lewis also spent three years (2000–2003) as a guitarist with the reformed Electric Prunes, contributing to the band's Artifact album (2002).

Jerry Miller appears as both a solo artist and as a member of the Jerry Miller Band, and plays regularly in the Seattle/Tacoma, Washington area.

Bob Mosley's relocation to the Santa Cruz area was noteworthy for weekly guest appearances with country music artist Larry Hosford, and in occasional duos with ex-Doobie Brothers keyboardist Dale Ockerman. Don Stevenson, who has rejoined Moby Grape for occasional performances, has developed business interests outside of the music industry, including time share sales of recreational property in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, where he maintains a residence.

In 2010, Don Stevenson, Jerry Miller and Omar Spence performed at the South by Southwest music festival (the performance at the Dirty Dog was recorded by Eric Sigsbey), while Peter Lewis appeared separately.

Members

 * Current members
 * Peter Lewis – rhythm guitars, vocals (1966–1971, 1973–1975, 1977–1979, 1983–1984, 1987–1991, 1996–2001, 2006–present)
 * Jerry Miller – lead guitars, vocals (1966–1971, 1973–1975, 1977–1979, 1983–1984, 1987–1991, 1996–2001, 2006–present)
 * Bob Mosley – bass, vocals (1966–1969, 1971, 1973–1975, 1983–1984, 1987–1991, 1996–2001, 2006–present)

 * Former members
 * Skip Spence – rhythm guitars, vocals (1966–1968, 1971, 1977–1979, 1987; died 1999)
 * Don Stevenson – drums, vocals (1966–1971, 1983–1984, 1987–1991, 1996–2001, 2006–2007; occasional guest appearances after 2007)

 * Supporting musicians
 * Joseph Miller – drums (2007–present)
 * Omar Spence – vocals (2007–present)

 * Former supporting musicians
 * Bob Moore – bass (1969; died 2021)
 * Gordon Stevens – viola, dobro, mandolin (1971)
 * Jeff Blackburn – rhythm guitars, vocals (1973–1975; died 2023)
 * Johnny Craviotto – drums, vocals (1973–1975; died 2016)
 * Cornelius Bumpus – keyboards, saxophone (1977–1979; died 2004)
 * John Oxendine – drums (1977–1979)
 * Chris Powell – bass (1977–1979)
 * Daniel Spencer – drums (1977–1979)
 * Dan Abernathy – rhythm guitars (1987–1991)

Discography
Contains Billboard (BB) and Cashbox (CB) chart peak positions.

Studio albums

 * 1967 – Moby Grape - No. 24 US
 * 1968 – Wow/Grape Jam - No. 20 US
 * 1969 – Moby Grape '69 No. 113 US
 * 1969 – Truly Fine Citizen No. 157 US
 * 1971 – 20 Granite Creek No. 177 US
 * 1978 – Live Grape
 * 1984 – Moby Grape '84 (also known as "Silver Wheels" or "The Heart Album")
 * 1989 – Legendary Grape

Live albums

 * 2010 – Moby Grape Live

Compilations

 * 1971 – Omaha (features '69 album without tracks "Ooh Mama Ooh" and 'Seeing'; plus "Omaha" from 1st album)
 * 1973 – Great Grape
 * 1986 – Murder in My Heart – compilation album of selections from Wow, Moby Grape '69 and Truly Fine Citizen.
 * 1993 – Vintage: The Very Best of Moby Grape
 * 2004 – Crosstalk: The Best of Moby Grape
 * 2007 – Listen My Friends! The Best of Moby Grape
 * 2009 – The Place and the Time

Singles

 * 1967 – "Changes" / "Fall On You" — Columbia 44170
 * 1967 – "Sitting By The Window" / "Indifference" (2:46 edit) – Columbia 44171
 * 1967 – "8:05" / "Mister Blues" — Columbia 44172
 * 1967 – "Omaha" (BB No. 88, CB No. 70, RPM No. 87 ) / "Someday" — Columbia 44173
 * 1967 – "Hey Grandma" (BB No. 127, CB No. 94) / "Come In The Morning" — Columbia 44174
 * 1968 – "Can't Be So Bad" / "Bitter Wind" — Columbia 44567
 * 1969 – "If You Can't Learn From My Mistakes" / "Trucking Man" — Columbia 44789
 * 1969 – "Ooh Mama Ooh" / "It's A Beautiful Day Today" — Columbia 44885
 * 1971 – "Gypsy Wedding" / "Apocalypse" — Reprise 1040
 * 1971 – "Goin' Down To Texas" / "About Time" — Reprise 1055
 * 1972 – "Gone Fishin'" / "Gypsy Wedding" — Reprise 1096

Fine Wine

 * 1976 – Fine Wine (by band of the same name; featuring Miller and Mosley with Michael Been and Johnny Craviotto)

title: Moby Grape


text:
Moving Sidewalks

Moving Sidewalks were an American rock band formed in 1966 from Houston, Texas. They released several singles and an album, before bassist Don Summers and keyboardist Tom Moore were drafted into the army, bringing the band to an end. Vocalist/guitarist Billy Gibbons and drummer Dan Mitchell then formed band ZZ Top.

History
Gibbons founded Moving Sidewalks in the mid-1960s and they quickly drew a large following, especially among the Houston "teen scene". They recorded several singles and one full-length album, Flash. Their single "99th Floor" was well received, and topped the charts at No. 1 in Houston for six weeks. The success of this record led them to sign with Wand Records, which then released "Need Me", also a Top 10 hit for the band. The group was asked to open for many rock tours, including Jimi Hendrix and the Doors.

After Tom Moore and Don Summers were drafted into the United States Army, Gibbons and Mitchell added Lanier Greig and formed the original ZZ Top.

While attending Warner Brothers' art school in Hollywood, California, Gibbons engaged with his first bands including the Saints, Billy G & the Blueflames, and the Coachmen. By 1967, Gibbons returned to Houston and formed an artfully designed band, conceptually inspired by friend and fellow musician Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. 'The Moving Sidewalks' name was chosen, and shortly thereafter they recorded "99th Floor". Around this time Gibbons developed a camaraderie with Jimi Hendrix. As a guest on The Dick Cavett Show, Hendrix deflected the implication that he was the greatest guitarist. He did not say who the greatest guitarist was, but a myth has circulated that Hendrix considered Gibbons the best, and stated so in an interview, but no such interview has ever been located.

The Moving Sidewalks continued to appear along with the 13th Floor Elevators at the short-lived yet Houston psychedelic venue, Love Street Light Circus, at Allen's Landing. One night, the Elevators set was cut short by Houston Police, who arrested the band's lead singer Erickson for marijuana possession.

In January 2013, Gibbons announced the Moving Sidewalks would reunite with all original members for one show on March 30, 2013, at B.B. King's Blues Club in New York City. Since that successful sold out show and despite their single show announcement, the band played as official headliners of Austin Psych Fest on May 1, 2013, and the Charity Gala for The Deacons of Deadwood Ball on September 28, 2013, in Houston.

Albums

 * Flash (1969) Tantara TS 6919. The original release. Produced by manager Steve Ames.
 * 99th Floor (1982) Eva 12002. Reissue of the Tantara album plus the five tracks that were issued on singles only.
 * Flash (2000) Akarma AK 117. Another reissue of the Tantara album with the five singles tracks.
 * The Pre-ZZ Houston Roots (2004) Lone Star LSR 19629. A compilation of material by the Moving Sidewalks, including six unreleased tracks; 21 songs total.
 * The Roots Of ZZ Top (2010) Fuel 61820. A compilation of seven Moving Sidewalks songs, four Warlocks songs, seven American Blues songs; all tracks previously released on various singles and albums.
 * The Complete Collection (2012) Rockbeat ROC 3018. A compilation of material by the Moving Sidewalks, including six unreleased tracks; also includes demo material by Billy Gibbons' first band, the Coachmen; 26 songs total.

EPs

 * The Moving Sidewalks - A Band From Texas (1968) Another Mangy Mutt 1030. This 7-inch EP was released on the indie label MUTT, a subsidiary of the Moxie Record Company. It is a mono recording and the playback speed is at 45rpm. This record is a combination/compilation of the band's A & B sides from their first two singles for Wand Records.
 * Side A: 99th Floor; What Are You Going To Do
 * Side B: Every Night A New Surprise; Need Me

Singles

 * "99th Floor" / "What Are You Going To Do" (1967) Tantara 3101; reissued as Wand 1156
 * "Need Me" / "Every Night A New Surprise" (1967) Wand 1167
 * "I Want To Hold Your Hand" / "Joe Blues" (1968) Tantara 3108
 * "Flashback" (4:15 - radio edit) / "No Good To Cry" (3:08 - radio edit) (1969) Tantara 3113

title: Moving Sidewalks