Fun fact: their first single came out under the name “Jethro Toe”. Someone at the record label either misread or misheard the name.
I’m glad I checked before posting since I wasn’t aware/forgotten that Madonna, the entertainer, was actually named that as a baby.
For years, I played in a local band named, “Frank Burns”. My brother-in-law played in a band called, “Haven Moses”.
I would have sworn that her name was Mary something. What shocked me was seeing her with a guitar on her wiki page. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her play. Of course, it could just be a prop ala George Strait et al.
Heh, I wrote out a post about whether The Madonna refers to the Biblical Mary/Maria exclusively or if it will be a title for any future Mother of Christ. Should we be so Blessed.
Like a Smokin’ Pope could mean any of a bunch of old guys.
Yeah, if solo artists count (or even if they don’t), you can find quite a few examples in the early music genre.
- Hildegard von Blingin’ (neomedieval parody named after the medieval composer/poet/artist Hildegard von Bingen)
- Ensemble Claude-Gervais (named after the French Renaissance composer Claude Gervais)
- Ensemble Clément Janequin (take a wild guess)
- Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble (I think you see how this works)
- Egidius Kwartet (I maintain that this counts because the namesake medieval minstrel Aegidius only had one name. I am conscientiously ignoring all the myriad “Bach This” and “Handel That” and “Tallis the Other” etc. etc. etc. early music groups that use only surnames of composers whose given names are known)
And mind you, these groups/artists aren’t performing exclusively the compositions of the composers they named themselves after. For some reason, early musicians have a bit of a tendency to adopt some beloved composer almost as a team mascot, even if they perform a much wider repertoire.
Nitpick: they were blues musicians.
On the more contemporary side, there’s the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.