Every now and then I reflect upon my musical listening habits back in about the 1970’s. Some of the musical performing groups that I listened to at that time were named like law firms:
- Emerson, Lake & Palmer
- Crosby, Stills & Nash
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
- Hall & Oates
- Loggins and Messina
- Seals and Crofts
- Simon & Garfunkel
(When I say “named like a law firm” my unstated assumption is that it has to have been a string of actual surnames of members. This disqualifies “Captain & Tenille” because Captain’s surname was actually “Dragon”. And it disqualifies “Earth, Wind & Fire” and “Blood, Sweat & Tears”.)
It was only years later that I learned about, and came to love, the brilliant jazz vocal music of the group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross which started in 1957. Maybe it was that group that started the idea of being named like a law firm.
Simon & Garfunkel
Seals & Crofts
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Captain & Tenille
Earth, Wind & Fire
Mumford & Sons
Thank you very much for posting. You are quite right Simon & Garfunkel and Seals and Crofts belong on the list. Thanks to you I have added those band names to my now-canonical list.
I feel that “Captain & Tenille” does not qualify. The Captain was so nicknamed because he wore a captain’s hat. His surname was “Dragon”, an offspring of the famous Carmen Dragon. Blood, Sweat & Tears was of course a riff on Winston Churchill’s famous speech, and although it sounds a bit like a string of surnames, my (unstated) rule was that it had to be surnames. The same for Earth, Wind & Fire which I have assumed is a riff on the ancient four elements earth, air, fire and water.
I guess as for “and sons” this is a common construct for names of businesses that are not law firms. But I don’t think law firms usually use “and sons”.
I recently read Toni Tenille’s autobiography and was fascinated. I read it all in one sitting. For me it was a page turner.
Yet another thing to try to be canonical about is keeping track of which bands used the ampersand and which used “and”. I hope I got it right.
Check out Medeski, Martin & Wood , who have litigated some heavy funk in their time