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Leon Russell. Photo by Shelter Records. .

Top 10 Iconic Singers from Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Tulsa sound is a popular musical style that originated in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the second half of the twentieth century. It is a mix of blues, country, rock and roll, rockabilly, and swamp rock sounds of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Artists considered to have pioneered the Tulsa sound include J. J. Cale, Gus Hardin, and Jeff Carson. Although Dwight Twilley is from Tulsa, his power pop style bears no resemblance to the Tulsa sound; likewise, David Gates’ most recognized songs (including his work with Bread) were mostly in the soft rock genre. Here are the Top 10 Iconic Singers from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

1. J.J. Cale

J.J. Cale playing the blues. Photo by Louis Ramirez. .

Cale was an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and sound engineer. Though he avoided the limelight, his influence as a musical artist has been acknowledged by figures such as Mark Knopfler, Neil Young, Waylon Jennings, and Eric Clapton, who described him as “one of the most important artists in the history of rock”.

He is one of the originators of the Tulsa sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz. In 2008, Cale and Clapton received a Grammy Award for their album The Road to Escondido.

2. Leon Russell

Leon Russell was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling records during his 60-year career that spanned multiple genres, including rock and roll, country, gospel, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, southern rock, blues rock, folk, surf and the Tulsa Sound.

He collaborated with many notable artists and recorded at least 31 albums and 430 songs. He wrote “Delta Lady”, recorded by Joe Cocker, and organized and performed with Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour in 1970. His “A Song for You”, which was named to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, has been recorded by more than 200 artists, and his song “This Masquerade” by more than 75.

3. Dwight Twilley

Dwight Twilley is an American pop/rock singer and songwriter, best known for the Top 20 hit singles “I’m on Fire” (1975) and “Girls” (1984). His music is associated with the power pop style.

Twilley and Phil Seymour performed as the Dwight Twilley Band through 1978, and Twilley has performed as a solo act since then. His latest album, Always, was released in November 2014 through Twilley’s own label, Big Oak Records.

4. Elvin Bishop

Elvin Bishop performing at Boston’s On The Beach on July 3, 2010. Photo by Carl Lender.

Elvin Richard Bishop is an American blues and rock music singer, guitarist, bandleader, and songwriter. An original member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of that group in 2015 and the Blues Hall of Fame in his own right in 2016. In November 2021, his album with Charlie Musselwhite, 100 Years of Blues, received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.

5. Ivy Levan

Ivy Levan performing live at the Bootleg Bar in Los Angeles California on February 9th, 2014. Photo by Justin Higuchi. .

Ivy Rose Levan is an American singer, songwriter, model and actress from Bentonville, Arkansas. At 16, Levan moved to Los Angeles to pursue a music career, eventually signing to Cherrytree Records and Interscope Records.

In 2013, Levan released her debut EP album under Interscope Records titled Introducing the Dame where it peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Next Big Sound charts. The EP features the most popular single from the album “Hot Damn”. She released the first single, titled “Biscuit”, from her first studio album, on January 13, 2015.

6. Mary Kay Place

Mary Kay Place is an American actress, singer, director, and screenwriter. Place recorded three studio albums for Columbia Records, one in the Haggers persona, which included the Top Ten country music hit “Baby Boy.” For her performance in Diane (2018), Place won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress.

She was nominated in 1977 for a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female for the associated music album Tonite! At the Capri Lounge Loretta Haggers. Place wrote two of the songs on Tonite!: “Vitamin L” and “Baby Boy,” both of which she sang on the television series as Loretta.

7. David Gates

He is a retired American singer-songwriter, guitarist, musician and producer, frontman and co-lead singer (with Jimmy Griffin) of the group Bread, which reached the tops of the musical charts in Europe and North America on several occasions in the 1970s. The band was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.

8. Roy Clark

Roy Linwood Clark was an American singer and musician. He is best known for having hosted Hee Haw, a nationally televised country variety show, from 1969 to 1997.

Clark was an important and influential figure in country music, both as a performer and in helping to popularize the genre. He had hit songs as a pop vocalist (e.g., “Yesterday, When I Was Young” and “Thank God and Greyhound”), and his instrumental skill had an enormous effect on generations of bluegrass and country musicians.

9. Charlie Wilson

Charles Kent Wilson also known as Uncle Charlie, is an American singer, musician, songwriter, and the former lead vocalist of the Gap Band. As a solo artist Wilson has been nominated for 13 Grammy awards and 11 NAACP Image Awards, received a 2009 Soul Train Icon Award, and was a recipient of a BMI Icon Award in 2005.

In 2009 and 2020, he was named Billboard magazine’s No. 1 Adult R&B Artist, and his song “There Goes My Baby” was named the No. 1 Urban Adult Song for 2009 in Billboard Magazine.

10. Garth Brooks

George Michael and Garth Brooks at the Equality Rocks concert held on April 29, 2000 at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C., USA. Photo by David..

Troyal Garth Brooks is an American country music singer and songwriter. His integration of pop and rock elements into the country genre has earned him popularity, particularly in the United States with success on the country music single and album charts, multi-platinum recordings and record-breaking live performances, while also crossing over into the mainstream pop arena.