... any musical artist of your choice. I will start with Barbara Dennerlein.

1) at age 11 Barbara was given an organ by her grandpa as a Christmas present. it didn't have any pedals though. when Barbara went to her first organ lesson her teacher had a Hammond B3, so when she came home she told her Dad: "you have to buy me an organ with pedals; I want to learn the real thing". luckily for us her Dad obliged.

2) Barbara had lessons for only 2 years; after that she is self-taught.

3) at age 15 Barbara gave her first concerts in a in a jazz club in Munich and quickly earned a reputation as "the organ tornado from Munich".

4) Barbara doesn't only play organ; she also plays drums. she has a drum kit in her studio on which she practices on a fairly regular basis, though definitely not as much as she practices playing organ. she has never played drums on one of her albums or in a concert though.

5) Barbara has a complicated backstory with famous jazz organist Jimmy Smith; it started beautifully, almost like a fairy tale, and ended ugly. at age 15 (so late 1979 or early 1980; Barbara was born Sep 25th 1964) Barbara took part in an organ contest to which Jimmy Smith was invited as guest of honor; he was not a member of the jury though. Barbara came in 2nd in the contest; she played jazz on the organ. the ones who came in 1st and 3rd played pop songs that were popular at that time.

the 3 players who came in the first 3 places were supposed to play again. the 1st-placed played the same pop song. Barbara decided to play a different jazz number than she had played in the contest, and while she was playing she suddenly noticed someone gently brushing her hair aside (according to Barbara it was very long back then) to sit down beside her and play with her - Jimmy Smith! this was of course a slap in the face for the jury; the great Jimmy Smith playing with the one they put in 2nd place! they had apparently chosen the wrong one as winner.

for several years Barbara and Jimmy kept a good friendship; they went to each others concerts when the occasion arose, went to restaurants together and the likes. all this changed when about 2 weeks before Barbara's 24th birthday they both were to play at a TV-program called "Jazz Club". here is what Barbara said about that event in an interview:

I try to see the other person's side. I think that because generations of organ players have copied Jimmy Smith, maybe this affects someone's thinking, you know what I mean, because it's a fact, almost all organ players copy Jimmy Smith. A few, like Larry Young, had their own style, but for the most part, it's always - Jimmy Smith is the greatest and I want to play like Jimmy Smith. Now don't get me wrong, of course he is fantastic, but why should everyone play like Jimmy Smith, that's boring.

well, that's it. now for the artist of your choice...

oh, and in case you have no idea who Barbara Dennerlein is here three videos of her: one with band, one solo on a pipe organ, and the TV-performance of her which I mentioned in my initial post and which Jimmy Smith had apparently heard her practice; she played Dizzy Gillespie's standard "A Night in Tunisia" and her own composition "Tribute to Charlie". the YouTube title of the pipe organ track is misleading; she cites the famous toccata and fugue in D-minor, but the improvisation is based on the track "Downtown N.Y." from her 1992 album "That's Me".

Triumvirat....

1) Triumvirat's famous musician/singer/songwriter Helmut Koellen used to be a sound man for the band before he joined the group itself

2) Though developing a following and album sales in Canada, Triumvirat only ever played one concert there, on August 5th, 1975, in Calgary, Alberta, opening for Supertramp. The band had passport difficulties that prevented them from doing many Canadian concerts.

3) Doug Fieger, later of the group the Knack, joined Triumvirat briefly as a guitarist/vocalist in late 1975, but left as things within the group were pretty chaotic at the time, as Helmut Koellen had just left the band.

4) Triumvirat's fourth studio album, Old Loves Die Hard, reached Number 1 in Portugal in the year of it's release in 1976, and the group were invited there to receive an award.

5) Alas, after the success of their album Spartacus, entering the top 30 in America, and doing well in other parts of the world, the tour for the subsequent album Old Loves Die Hard had to be cancelled due to lack of ticket sales. With the next album, 1977's Pompeii, lead singer Barry Palmer had wanted to tour properly for the album, but group leader Juergen Fritz objected to doing so in any grand way, something that was never properly explained to Palmer. 

1 - Emerson, Lake & Palmer referred to each other by their respective nicknames of Fingers, Spud and Porky Pig

2 - The working title of the Karn Evil 9 suite was Ganton 9

3 - What sounds like a kick drum as 'heartbeat' on the atmospheric intro to the Endless Enigma from the Trilogy album was actually a percussive thump by Greg on his bass guitar (No, he didn't invent slap bass)

4 - The original title for Abaddon's Bolero from the same Trilogy album was Bellona's Bolero after the Roman goddess of war.

5 - HR Giger claims he was never paid for doing the artwork for Brain Salad Surgery

6 - (Bonus thang y'all) The band approached Salvador Dali to do the cover for the Trilogy album but on hearing his exorbitant fee they quickly had to withdraw their offer (kinda ironic seeing as how the market rate at that point was precisely zero based on 5)

I forgot to mention a nice anecdote Barbara told in an interview with Alan Bryson. she was going to give a concert on the organ of the dome of Passau, one of the largest organs in the world. it has 17974 pipes and 5 manuals which trigger 5 different sets of organ pipes, plus of course the pedals. this means that on average 62 pipes are assigned to each key or pedal. why on average? because on most organs some rows of pipes don't cover the full range, and I assume this is the same with this specific organ.

anyway, she was practicing on that organ at night (she couldn't do it during the day because too many tourists are in the dome then) and was playing a tutti with all stops out (meaning all pipes assigned to a key or pedal were on), and just as she did this a thunderstorm raged outside the church. can you imagine this? this is right outside of a gothic novel or a horror movie - a lonely woman raising hell on a church organ while thunder and lightning raise hell outside.

and just think of the noise she must have made! when she played a chord with 8 fingers and her 2 feet about 600 organ pipes went off at the same time. wow! I would have liked to be there.

you can find this interview on YouTube; here a link to the first part in which she tells that story of her playing accompanied by a thunderstorm:

Some Todd Rundgren things you might not know.

2. In the mid-1990's, Todd harnessed the rise of the internet to launch Patronet, severing ties with record labels and distributing his music directly to fans via a subscription model. A visionary move, predating iTunes or Napster by years.

3. Rundgren composed scores for several comedy films and shows, including Pee-Wee's Playhouse and the 1994 Jim Carrey film Dumb and Dumber.

4. When he was 21, he almost gave up music for computer programming. 

5. Todd had a feud with John Lennon.  https://grunge.com/459438/the-truth-about-todd-rundgrens-feud-with-john-lennon/" rel="nofollow - https://grunge.com/459438/the-truth-about-todd-rundgrens-feud-with-john-lennon/

6. In 1980, Todd his girlfriend, and houseguests, were tied up and robbed. Todd said of the incident - the robbers "threatened to cut all my fingers off if I didn't tell them where I hid all my cocaine, on the weird presumption that anybody in the music business had a lot of cocaine". 

Er, the OP says "any musical artist of your choice.". Unless Mr Knievel has made some albums I'm not aware of.

Okay, here's a brief musical factoid to get back on-topic:-

Snooker legend and Romford boy-wonder Steve "Interesting" Davis is currently a member of Krautrock trio, The Utopia Strong. Not a lot of people know that. 

As in.

7 - Keith Emerson said in an interview that the band joked amongst themselves that ELP stood for "Eat Lots of Potatoes"

Ooh, ooh, I knew that. Their album is really good too.