Encyclopedia of Pop Music Aliases, 1950-2000

From the earliest days of the gramophone-recording industry at the end of the nineteenth century, it became a common practice for recording artists to adopt one or more pseudonyms. There were no doubt numerous reasons for changing one’s name, including the practice of tying recording artists to a particular record label through exclusive contracts, the attempt to relaunch a recording career or the wish to have several “top twenty hits” simultaneously. Indeed, in the inter-war years, the chain store which pioneered low-price retailing to attract mass markets, Woolworths, launched its own cheap price record label at a time when gramophone...