My prime (and only) time of wrestling fandom was during the 80s when I was in high school. Kamala the wrestler was much more famous to me than Kamala the senator when she first came to prominence. My brain still struggles to pronounce her name correctly.
I find it mildly amusing that folk are mentioning an actor and guitarist w/ the name John Williams. Sure, it makes for a cute post. But when one person is hugely and currently famous, I doubt many people would legitimately confuse whether I am talking about the guy of the same name who used to be your neighbor 20 years ago…
I’d think John Kay would be considerably less well known than the band. Then, how many people have heard of - let alone read - the novel?
This is what I was thinking about. Just enough that you’d say, “musician” or “singer songwriter, right?” Tho I gotta wonder, if you were so superficially aware of him, why would you be upset when he died?
One of the guys I mentioned in my OP sings opera. Likely the only entire genre of music - other than rap - that I’d flat out say I dislike. (Tho I enjoy some of the symphonic music accompanying opera.). This morning I was googling why the stereotype exists of large opera singers. Ran across a whole list of names. While I might not know what they look like or their most famous roles, if you had given me any of those names - either in or out of context - I woulda been able to say, “opera singer, right?”
Until I began regularly listening to music on YouTube, my knowledge of who sang a song was uneven. I grew up knowing only the singer or group because I had seen them on The Ed Sullivan Show or listened to them on CKLW, which I sometimes was able to listen by myself even though our family had only one radio in our house for our whole family. It was only when my father would randomly flip through the radio channels as he drove our family somewhere that I might listen to some singer or group and hear their name mentioned. There might be a mention of the name of them in Time or Newsweek if we had a subscription to it. We had a stereo, but we had very few albums or singles, because we couldn’t afford them. Even now I find that I vaguely remember a song but had no idea who sang it. In the past year I was consulting several websites to put together a list of interesting videos. I came across the video for the 2002 song “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. I vaguely remember hearing the song but didn’t know the singer. It’s a fascinating video, since it gets some interesting combinations of foreground and background without using a green screen. I’m sure I never saw it before then because I would have remembered it.
I wonder how many people who know Bad to the Bone have ever heard Mannish Boy.
I wouldn’t have expect anyone outside of my age group to know John Kay. There are dozens of bands that I know a song or multiple songs of but I can’t name one member. John Kay is a little different. I’m too young to remember the band’s heyday. By the 80s he was touring around under some form of “John Kay’s Steppenwolf” or “John Kay from Steppenwolf.” I heard his appearances advertised enough that the name stuck. I saw him once when he opened for Greg Allman’s solo band.
And even that can be iffy, seeing as it’s been standard practice for decades on rock/pop/etc. radio stations to not announce song titles or artists.
I think he’s called Leno … guy with a huge face. I’ve seen various references to him enough to know he is, I think, a chat show host? I’ve seen him briefly on shows like West Wing. Never seen his show but then I am in the UK and I don’t subscribe to any streaming services. His show (or anything he is in) isn’t on the free channels in the UK.
He hosted The Tonight Show from 1992 to 2009 and then again after eight months doing something else he hosted it from 2010 to 2014. This was the most watched talk show most of this time. You can read somewhere else how the host during those eight months got and then lost the job. Leno has done a few other things since that time.
Jay Leno was the host of the show that defined late night chat shows. He took over for Johnny Carson. He hasn’t been on that show for 10 years. He mostly does stand up and some limited episode shows about cars.
That’s an interesting one. I won’t go into my familiarity with Muddy Waters and that album, but I would suspect that a great many folk who were not familiar with certain types of music would not know who Muddy Waters was. Not to mention Howlin Wolf, John Lee Hooker, etc. And I imagine Robert Johnson would draw blank looks (even as popular as his re-release was not that long ago.)
FYI: Jay Leno has largely withdrawn from the public eye, because his wife has Alzheimer’s.
He still does regular episodes of “Jay Leno’s Garage” on his Youtube channel.
By proxy. Because of his connection to Steven Goodman. He was also a local boy, a legend in the folk scene, so even though I didn’t know his work well, I very much respected him.
Fair enough.
No one has heard of my favorite composer: Hardy Fox.
Yeah, I know well 6 of Steppenwolf’s hits, even had the piano music for one of their songs (Rock Me) in a compilation book, but have no idea who the band members are.
Started the book but didn’t get far.
Looking back over their oeuvre, make that 9. I haven’t heard Snowblind Friend or Hey Lawdy Mama in 50 years.
A coworker of mine who I considered to be well-educated (40 year-old college grad/IT System Admin) surprised me when he said he had no idea who Carl Sagan was.
When I was working fast food in high school (~2000) I had a coworker that had never heard of the Beatles.
Blasphemy!