Lionel Richie The Commodores | en

Lionel Brockman Richie, Jr. (born June 20, 1949 in Tuskegee, Alabama) is an American R&B singer, songwriter, composer, and occasional actor. He got his start as the front man for the Commodores, a nationally popular Motown band during the 70's. They had several hits such as Easy, Three Times A Lady, and probably the Commodores' most famous hit, Brick House. Richie quit the band in 1981 for a solo career. He released his self-titled debut in 1982. The album hit No. 3 on the charts and sold over 4 million copies. His follow up album, Can't Slow Down, sold over...

Bart was born Lionel Begleiter the youngest of seven surviving children in East London to Galician Jews, and grew up in Stepney. His father worked as a tailor in a garden shed in London E1. The family had escaped the pogroms in Galicia which was then part of the Austrian Empire. Lionel later changed his name to Bart derived from the name of the silk screen printing firm he and John Gorman[1] created ("G & B Arts", for Gorman and Begleiter) after he had completed his National Service with the Royal Air Force. As a young man he was quite...

Lionel Belasco (born 1881; died in New York City, c. June 24, 1967) was a prominent pianist, composer and bandleader, best known for his calypso recordings. According to various sources, he was born either in Barbados or in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; he grew up in Trinidad, the son of a Afro-Caribbean mother and a Sephardic Jewish father. He traveled widely in the Caribbean and South America in his youth, absorbing a wide variety of musical influences. He was leading his own band by 1902. He made his first phonograph recordings in Trinidad in 1914, and soon after...