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Manfred Mann (born Manfred Sepse Lubowitz,[1] 21 October 1940, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa) is a professional keyboard player, best known as the founding member of Manfred Mann and Manfred Mann's Earth Band.
[edit] Career
Lubowitz studied classical music at the University of the Witwatersrand, and worked as a jazz pianist at a number of clubs in Johannesburg. Between 1959 and 1961 he recorded, together with his childhood friend Harry Miller, two albums as The Vikings – South Africa's first rock 'n' roll band.
In 1961, strongly opposed to the apartheid system in his native South Africa,[2] Lubowitz re-located to the United Kingdom. Around this time, he began to write for Jazz News under the pseudonym Manfred Manne (after jazz drummer Shelly Manne), which was soon shortened into Manfred Mann.[3] The following year he met drummer and keyboard player Mike Hugg, at Clacton Butlins Holiday Camp, and together they formed a large blues jazz band called the Mann Hugg Blues Brothers. This eventually evolved into a five-piece group and they signed a record deal with EMI in 1963, under the HMV label. They changed their name to Manfred Mann at the suggestion of the label's record producer, and from 1964 to 1969 had a succession of hit records, ("Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Sha La La", "Pretty Flamingo", "Mighty Quinn").
Manfred Mann the group split in 1969, but Mann immediately formed another outfit with Mike Hugg called Manfred Mann Chapter Three, an experimental jazz rock band. The band was short-lived, and after two albums disbanded. Undeterred, Mann formed a new outfit in 1971, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, which still record and perform to this day.
[edit] References
- ^ Robert M Corich and Andy Taylor, Sleeve Notes, The Best Of Manfred Mann's Earth Band Re-Mastered, 1998
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ Roger Dopson, sleeve notes, Manfred Mann: The E.P. Collection, 1989
[edit] External links
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