The Nearly Lost World of American Folk Music
If not for two eccentrics, Harry Smith and Moses Asch, American popular music wouldn’t have so many roots in folk music and we’d all be the poorer for it.
If not for two eccentrics, Harry Smith and Moses Asch, American popular music wouldn’t have so many roots in folk music and we’d all be the poorer for it.
As the title All My Love For You suggests, this is a love album. Blues artist Bobby Rush solicitously offers his feelings and suggests the best is yet to come.
As Mitch Woods and friends show us, the blues never get old, even when it’s the new release of a more than five-year-old record with bonus cuts.
While their motives were more mercenary than musical, American small record label impresarios could hear the barriers falling between the races right before their ears.
Are Bob Dylan’s improved vocals in his later years a deliberate aesthetic choice? Has he re-focused his attention on the art of singing?
The 14 performances recorded over 26 years at the Montreux Jazz Festival capture New Orleans’ Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack at the peak of his powers.
While Europe embraced Willy Deville’s Bohemian multi-genre artistry, most US listeners remained ignorant of his music. The documentary Heaven Stood Still was made, in part, to rectify that.
As Bob Dylan learned, only through baring of one’s soul does one show the way forward, providing both a glimpse into the other and perhaps the shape of things to come.
Keith Richard’s 1977 drug bust in Toronto led to the controversial “Blind Date” benefit concert in nearby Oshawa. Many benefited, but not in the way you think.
Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding is more about what it is not than what it is. Does that hold true for the mythology of John Wesley Hardin himself?
Trombone Shorty and Jon Batiste bring the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest to a rousing conclusion.
Taj Mahal’s latest album, Savoy, reconstructs the music of his youth in its original style for a contemporary audience. It’s good time music for most times.