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Top 10 Iconic Singers from Wichita, Kansas

For many decades, Kansas has had a vibrant country and bluegrass scene. The Country Stampede Music Festival – one of the largest music festivals in the country – and the bluegrass/acoustic Walnut Valley Festival are testament to the continued popularity of these music genres in the state. Among current leading country artists, Martina McBride and Chely Wright are natives of Kansas.

The state has also fostered some rock acts – the one that is most associated with the state is almost certainly the band called Kansas. Some famous and pioneering jazz musicians also had roots in Kansas. Listed below are the 10 Most Iconic Singers from Wichita, Kansas.

1. Stan Kenton

Stan Kenton Big Band 1973. Photo by Hans Bernhard. .

Stanley Newcomb Kenton was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades.

Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking. Kenton was also a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University.

2. Joe Walsh

Joseph Fidler Walsh  is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In a career spanning over five decades, he has been a member of three successful rock bands: the James Gang, Eagles, and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. He was also part of the New Zealand band Herbs.

In the 1990s, he was a member of the short-lived supergroup The Best. Walsh has also experienced success both as a solo artist and as a prolific session musician, being featured on a wide array of other artists’ recordings. In 2011, Rolling Stone placed him at the No. 54 spot on its list of “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.

3. Joyce DiDonato

Joyce Didonato. Photo by A MA. .

Joyce DiDonato is an American lyric-coloratura mezzo-soprano. She is notable for her interpretations of operas and concert works in the 19th-century romantic era in addition to works by Handel and Mozart.

She has performed with many of the world’s leading opera companies and orchestras, and won multiple awards including the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo.

4. Pink Nasty

Sara Beck, better known by her stage name, Pink Nasty is an American singer-songwriter. She is from Wichita, Kansas and currently lives in Austin, Texas. Pink Nasty has released three full-length albums. She performs with her brother, a rapper who goes by the stage name Black Nasty.

Pink Nasty’s third album, Pink Nasty was released in 2010. Reviews on the Oxford American and Austin 360 websites praise the album’s blend of quirkiness and pop. Beck studied at Berklee College of Music, and cites Weezer, Stephen Malkmus and The Strokes as influences.

5. Karla Burns

Karla Burns was an American mezzo-soprano and actress who performed nationally and internationally in opera houses, theatres, and on television. Her first major success was as Queenie in the Houston Grand Opera’s 1982 revival of Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern’s 1927 musical Show Boat.

Burns’s career spanned a broad repertoire from musical theatre, to opera, and stage plays. Her work included performances with the Metropolitan Opera, Â鶹APP Opera, the Teatro Real, Cairo Opera House, and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

6. Jay Bentley

Photo by phillyist. .

Jay Dee Bentley is the bassist and co-founding member of the punk rock group Bad Religion. He has played with the band through its whole existence with a small break between 1983 and 1985. Along with vocalist Greg Graffin, Bentley has appeared on nearly all of Bad Religion’s studio albums, with the sole exception being their second album Into the Unknown (1983).

Bentley’s main basses have been Fender models for most of his career in Bad Religion, primarily a black and/or white Precision models; in recent years, however, he has been an endorser of Epiphone and has his own Jack Cassidy signature.

7. Arthur Gunn

Dibesh Pokharel known by his stage name Arthur Gunn, is an American singer-songwriter of Nepalese origin from Wichita, Kansas who came to national attention in 2020 as the runner-up finalist on the eighteenth season of the singing reality show American Idol (AI).

He started singing in 2014, and is known for his “textured, sandpapery” vocals. He released his eight-song debut album, Grahan, in early 2018. He released another album, KHOJ, in 2019 with singles including “Ma,” “Khoj” and “Karnali (The River).”

8. Kendall Schmidt

Photo by Egidio02.

Kendall Francis Schmidt is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, music producer, and actor. He played Kendall Knight in Big Time Rush, and is a current member of the boyband with the same name.

On April 20, 2020, Kendall reunited virtually with his former members as they uploaded a video on the band’s social media platforms, sharing some wishes to their fans about the COVID-19 pandemic.

9. Chris Mann

Photo by Brad Barlow. Wikimedia Commons.

Christopher Michael Mann is an American singer-songwriter and actor from Wichita, Kansas. He came in fourth on the second season of NBC’s television singing competition The Voice in 2012.

Mann came in first on Team Christina Aguilera and represented her in the final round. His album, Constellation, was released on May 6, 2016. His studio work has been featured in the film Avatar, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, Letters to Juliet, Tangled, Sex and the City 2, The Smurfs, 2012 and The Philanthropist.

10. Freddie Brooks

Freddie Brooks is an American singer-songwriter and blues harmonica player. A native of Wichita, Kansas, he started performing on the Southern California blues scene in 1989. He played West Coast blues.

Brooks began playing in Southern California in 1989. He played with Bernie Pearl in a few bands before releasing his first and only album, One Little Word in 1999. Brooks was a regular performer in Orange County, California. Brooks also played with Jim Belushi.