Perhaps best known for his productions of dance music with
Dinosaur L, and his classic proto-house track '
Is It All Over My Face', Arthur Russell's musical legacy bridges styles from rock over experimental music to disco. Born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the classically trained cellist moved to New York in 1973, after a stint in San Francisco, where he met and collaborated with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. In New York, Russel was drawn to the city's multi-faceted scenes of modern music, from minimalism to early punk and disco, and among the people he collaborated with were musicians like David Byrne and
Walter Gibbons. Russell died from AIDS in 1992, at age 40, and while commercial success eluded him during his lifetime, his work has been the subject of wide-spread interest posthumously. A documentary about his life premiered in 2008 and a biography was published in the following year.