This Fourth of July weekend, you might feel moved to cue up Jimi Hendrix's 'Star-Spangled Banner' or the Ray Charles version of 'America the Beautiful.' Maybe Neil Diamond's 'America,' if you're feeling especially swell-chested. But your Independence Day playlist would be a lot longer if the Singing Senators hadn't broken up with such spectacular fireworks.

Formed in 1995 to sing a barbershop-style version of 'Happy Birthday' for fellow U.S. lawmakers, the Singing Senators were four Republican legislators with a shared taste for four-part harmony. Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott sang bass; Missouri's John Ashcroft sang baritone; Vermont's Jim Jeffords sang tenor, and lead vocals were handled by Larry Craig of Idaho.

The Singing Senators quickly made a name for themselves outside politics, performing on 'The Today Show' and with the Oak Ridge Boys. Taking instruction from Guy Hovis, a Mississippi organizer for Lott better known as one-half of Guy & Ralna, one of the more popular featured acts on the old 'Lawrence Welk Show,' the Senators recorded an album, 'Let Freedom Sing,' in Nashville in 1998.

Even in Lynyrd Skynyrd, a group noted for being a collection of free spirits, they called him "Wild Man." Drummer Artimus Pyle joined the definitive Southern rock group in 1974, replacing original drummer Bob Burns. Three years later, after a whirlwind run that included a trio of Top Ten albums and upstaging the Rolling Stones on tour, Pyle was staggering through a swamp in rural Mississippi, seeking help after surviving the band's infamous and deadly plane crash.

Pyle, an ex-Marine and a Kentucky native who was friendly with the young Al Gore, got his start in rock 'n' roll with boosts from Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band before being recommended to Skynyrd. By Pyle's own account, singer Ronnie Van Zant authorized his hiring sight unseen, sending a paper bag filled with $5,000 to recruit the new band member.

He missed few chances to sow his wild oats. On tour in the U.K., Pyle and some of his mates got into a brawl at a London hotel. Their opponents turned out to be members of the Metropolitan Police Boxing Team, and Pyle was carried out unconscious. After the plane crash, he missed an opportunity to join the post-Skynyrd Rossington-Collins Band when he suffered a broken leg in a motorcycle accident. Instead, he formed his own group, the Artimus Pyle Band (APB), which helped launch the career of the late Gov't Mule/Allman Brothers bassist Allen Woody.

If most rappers are hard, the Fat Boys were unapologetically soft. They were, by their own admission, the Three Stooges of hip-hop. "Other rap artists rap about crime," said Darren "The Human Beat Box" Robinson. "We rap to make people happy."

Robinson, also known as Buff Love (and, on occasion, the Ox That Rocks), was the most obvious reason for the Brooklyn group's self-deprecating name: At 450 pounds, he weighed more than fellow group members Mark "Prince Markie Dee" Morales and Damon "Kool Rock-Ski" Wimbley combined. Originally known as the Disco 3, the group adopted its new name after a European tour, when their manager complained about a $350 hotel bill for "extra breakfasts."

Along with Doug E. Fresh, Buff was one of the earliest pioneers of beatboxing, having taught himself the art form when his family couldn't afford a drum set. After winning a rap contest at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, the group was a New York sensation, combining Buff's beatbox showcases ('The Human Beat Box,' 'Reality') with nods to old-school rock 'n' roll ('Jail House Rap'). The Fat Boys starred alongside LL Cool J, Run-DMC and Whodini on Fresh Fest, the first major hip-hop tour, and they appeared in rap's early venture into Hollywood, 'Krush Groove.'

At a press conference in 1968, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were asked to name their favorite artists. Both Beatles singled out a virtual unknown named Harry Nilsson, who had just released a psychedelic pop album called 'Pandemonium Shadow Show.' It was a heady debut for the young singer from Brooklyn, who had only recently been cutting jingles for deodorant ads.

By the early 1970s, Nilsson was a bona fide pop star. His songs had been covered by the Monkees and Three Dog Night, and his version of Fred Neil's 'Everybody's Talkin'' won a Grammy after being featured as the theme to 'Midnight Cowboy.' Nilsson's melodramatic cover of Badfinger's 'Without You' was a No. 1 smash in 1972.

Having sat in on the 'White Album' sessions, he'd become good friends with Lennon and Ringo Starr. (Starr would lend his voice to 'The Point!,' Nilsson's animated fable featuring the hit song 'Me and My Arrow.') When the Beatle drummer wanted to make a horror spoof called 'Son of Dracula,' he asked Nilsson to star. Improbably, Starr was unaware that his friend's most recent album, 'Son of Schmilsson,' featured a cover image of the singer parodying old horror movies.

Besides being one of the great banjo pickers in American roots music, David "Stringbean" Akeman was famous for the cornpone comedy that made him a regular on the Grand Ole Opry and the 1970s hillbilly variety show 'Hee Haw.' There was nothing funny, however, about the way his pickin' and grinnin' came to an end.

Born into a farming family in rural Kentucky, as a boy Akeman made his own banjo out of a shoebox and thread. Later, he traded two bantam roosters for his first real banjo. Discovered by bandleader Asa Martin in a talent contest, he was invited to join Martin's band. When the boss couldn't remember the lanky newcomer's name, he called him "String Beans." The nickname stuck.

At six foot five, Akeman was also a pretty fair amateur ballplayer. Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, who ran a semi-pro baseball team on the side, asked him to join his squad. For three years in the mid-1940s, Akeman traveled with Monroe's great band, playing banjo and entertaining during intermissions with another performer as the comedy duo String Beans and Cousin Wilbur.

According to legend, Skip Spence once sat up in a morgue, a tag on his toe, and asked for a glass of water.

By then, he'd already been dead to the San Francisco rock scene for years. One of the brightest flames and quickest burnouts of the psychedelic era, Alexander "Skip" Spence drifted into decades of hard-core drug addiction after recording his only solo album, 'Oar,' in 1969. An early member of three key Bay Area groups -- Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape -- the dynamic, multitalented Spence was effectively through with performing by the age of 23.

After playing guitar for the first group and drums for the second, Spence took off for Mexico unannounced and was dumped by the Airplane. (One of Spence's songs, 'My Best Friend,' was later included on the band's definitive album, 'Surrealistic Pillow.') With manager Matthew Katz, another Airplane castoff, he put together a new group called Moby Grape. The band, with its three-guitar interplay and its effortless blend of country, folk, rock and psychedelia, was soon recognized as the cream of the San Francisco crop.

In an era when rosy-cheeked rock 'n' rollers were singing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' and 'I'm a Believer,' only one band had the audacity to write a song called 'I Hate You.' That group, which recorded its only album two years before the Summer of Love and a full decade before the first inkling of punk, was the Monks.

Five former U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Germany, the Monks started out as a garden-variety bar band called the Torquays. They changed their name, look and music after befriending a couple of German art students who vowed to make them the "hardest band in the world."

Though they'd developed a jittery garage-band sound inspired by the British beat groups that sprung up in the wake of the Beatles, the Monks positioned themselves as the anti-Beatles -- not mop-topped boys-next-door but psychotic-leaning weirdos dressed as medieval friars. The Fab Four's "pretty harmonies and sphincter-tight band arrangements," as frontman Gary Burger recalled years later, were exciting but not realistic: "The world wasn't a sweet place. Germany itself was a troubled country." So the Monks set out to make ugly music for an ugly world.